If one is to believe the best-seller sorting feature at Walmart.com, the most popular engagement ring Wal-Mart's (NYSE:WMT) namesake website is a 2-carat round solitaire diamond ring that will set your bended knee back to the tune of $5,488. If you have $7,642 burning a hole in your pocket, you can swap that for a new 60-inch plasma TV at Walmart.com.
What's the deal with Wal-Mart's website? Those who associate the chain with bargain-priced staples may be floored by the array of pricey sleigh beds and leather recliners that are available only through the company's online store.
But because a website can span the wired globe, it makes perfect sense for Wal-Mart to take some big-ticket chances in the electronic realm. That 2-carat engagement ring would likely collect cobwebs at a bricks-and-mortar store. Online, where every competitor is a single click away, Wal-Mart can afford to take chances if it can offer the same offline values to an online audience.
A $5,488 engagement ring at Wal-Mart may seem like a reach. Just consider this: Original Rule Breakers stock pick Blue Nile (NASDAQ:NILE) knows all about the proposal process -- it has sold well more than 50,000 engagement rings during its dot-com tenure. However, the high-end jeweler's average order is for a mere $1,300. So what's next, Wal-Mart? Segways? Jewel-encrusted brassieres?
Even though it's unlikely that Wal-Mart would take the same kind of chances in the bricks-and-mortar world, it probably wouldn't mind upgrading its discounting image. Target (NYSE:TGT) has been able to propel its "cheap chic" approach to attract a more upscale clientele than one would expect from the country's second-leading discount department store chain. Target claims that 43% of its shoppers have college degrees with a reasonably robust median household income of $55,000 a year. Think that Wal-Mart or Sears Holdings' (NASDAQ:SHLD) Kmart wouldn't want a piece of that action?
Giving it the old college try certainly couldn't hurt. The Internet has been conducive to big-ticket merchandise, after all. The largest category by sales volume at eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) has been automobiles. Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) was one of the first Segway retailers, and if you're a Burning Man fan, Jeff Bezos' online empire will sell you a Badonkadonk land cruiser for $20,000. Yet those two Stock Advisor-recommended companies haven't lost the bargain hunters with their high-end offerings. Nor is Wal-Mart likely to lose its audience. It's not as if anyone is going to confuse Wal-Mart with Hammacher Schlemmer or Tiffany (NYSE:TIF) just because it stocks a few pricey items in its virtual storefront.
Going pricey is the right thing to do, even if it starts with a $5,488 investment in an eventual "I do."
Come back tomorrow, when Seth Jayson and John Reeves tackle both sides of the Wal-Mart story in this week's holiday-fueled edition of Dueling Fools.
Blue Nile has also been recommended by the Motley Fool Hidden Gems newsletter team.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz has probably spent more at Wal-Mart's online store than at its offline empire in recent years. He does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story. T he Fool has a disclosure policy. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.
