Walmart Underwear Industry Expand

Wal-Mart announced on October 12th U.S. time that it acquired Bare necessities, an online underwear retailer. It did not disclose the transaction amount. The latter mainly sells underwear, swimwear, socks and other intimate apparel.

Bare necessities was founded in 1998 and sells more than 160 brands including Wacoal, Calvin Klein, SPANX and Chantelle. Wal-Mart says it bought it because the site is "a leader in its category and it enhances the consumer experience."

Bare necessities will remain independent and more than 170 employees will continue to work in Edison, New Jersey. However, the site's co-founder and CEO Noah Wrubel will also include Wal-Mart and Jet.com's underwear categories on the pipeline.

In the future, products sold by Bare necessities will continue to be sold online at Walmart and Jet.com. In August 2018, Moosejaw, an online outdoor retailer acquired by Wal-Mart a year ago, officially settled on Wal-Mart's official website and has a store page. At the same time, other outdoor brands Wal-Mart has sold in the past, including Leki, Deuter, and Black Diamond, were asked to withdraw.

Currently, Wal-Mart's online retailers have ShoeBuy, outdoor apparel retailer Moosejaw, men's Bonobos and vintage women's ModCloth. The latter three were acquired in 2017.

On October 9, Wal-Mart also acquired Eloquii, a U.S.-based brand that produces oversized clothing. It did not disclose the transaction amount, but insiders have revealed that Wal-Mart's valuation of Eloquii is around $ 100 million.

ShoeBuy, Moosejaw, and this acquisition of Bare necessities are all integrated online retailers selling multiple brands. Bonobos, ModCloth and Eloquii are all online brands.

With the acquisition of numerous online clothing retailers and brands, Wal-Mart is still competing with Amazon. Two acquisitions in two weeks seem to be a defensive move by Wal-Mart to defend market share.

Wells Fargo predicts that Amazon will surpass Wal-Mart this year to become the largest US apparel and footwear retailer. It believes that Amazon's sales in the apparel and footwear category will exceed $ 30 billion, while Wal-Mart's sales will be around $ 20 billion. In the online apparel and footwear market in the United States, Amazon's share reaches 35%, which is 4 times the second place.

Compared with Wal-Mart's acquisition to expand the clothing market share, Amazon's measures to expand the clothing business are mostly to launch its own brands, convince clothing and footwear brands such as Nike to settle in, and launch the Prime Wardrobe "try before you buy "Service to cultivate the habit of buying complex clothing online among consumers.