After five years as head of membership-only retail warehouse Sam’s Club, it was recently announced that Rosalind Brewer will be exiting from her position as CEO. Doug McMillon, CEO of parent company Walmart, said to staff in a memo that Brewer was stepping down because “she wants a new challenge.”
“She’s leaving Sam’s with momentum,” said McMillon. “Roz and the team have developed a strategy that’s led to three consecutive quarters of improving comp sales and some exciting innovation.”
Brewer will reportedly be replaced by Sam’s Club’s current chief merchant, John Furner.
Brewer’s tenure as CEO saw Sam’s Club making advances in eCommerce, including the introduction of the box store’s Scan & Go feature — a mobile payment option that allows Sam’s customers to scan UPC codes on items directly into their phone’s Scan & Go app. When customers have finished with their shopping, they are able to pay directly on their phone, from anywhere in the store, as a way to bypass checkout.
Sam’s Club has faced increasing pressure from category leader Costco in recent years. Costco has managed to keep growth considerably higher than Sam’s Club, despite some slowed growth. Over the past three fiscal quarters, Sam’s has reported modest growth, according to Fortune, including a 1.4 percent rise in the most recent. 2015 wasn’t the best for Sam’s, which saw total sales down 0.1 percent and comp sales down 0.5 percent for the 2015 holiday quarter.
The big key to Sam’s loss then was food price deflation, which led to a comp sales decline in fresh and grocery foods during the fourth quarter of 2015. Sam’s Club and other bulk discount grocery sellers like Aldi and Costco are also potentially facing some serious competition from eCommerce startup LogicLane, which sells discount wholesale groceries on its eCommerce marketplace. LogicLane opened its first brick-and-mortar location late last July in Uniontown, Penn., as a way to expand its brand presence.
Apple debuted its lower-cost smartphone, the iPhone 16e, Wednesday (Feb. 19), saying the product’s price starts at $599.
“We’re so excited for iPhone 16e to complete the lineup as a powerful, more affordable option to bring the iPhone experience to even more people,” Kaiann Drance, vice president of worldwide iPhone product marketing at Apple, said in a Wednesday press release.
The new model joins a smartphone lineup that includes the iPhone 15 starting at $699, the iPhone 16 starting at $799 and the iPhone 16 Pro starting at $999, according to the Apple website.
The iPhone 16e is “built for Apple Intelligence,” the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) offering, according to the release.
The smartphone also offers Apple’s A18 chip, the Apple C1 cellular modem, a 48MP Fusion camera system and a 6.1-inch display, the release said.
The Big Tech firm will accept pre-orders for the iPhone 16e in 59 countries and regions beginning Friday (Feb. 21) and will make the phone available beginning Feb. 28, per the release.
The new smartphone will cost $170 more than the iPhone SE that it replaces, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
It also marks the biggest change in the history of the low-end iPhones that were introduced in 2016 and have not been updated in nearly three years, according to the report.
The company reported in January that during the fourth quarter — the first quarter in which it offered the iPhone 16 and Apple Intelligence — the iPhone 16 models performed stronger in markets where the AI features were available.
Apple reported a record number of iPhone upgraders during the quarter, with the iPhone 16 family outperforming the iPhone 15 family since launch. During a January earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook attributed this trend to a strong desire among existing customers to adopt the latest technology, with Apple Intelligence being a key factor.
The company’s installed base of active devices reached a record high of 2.35 billion during the quarter.
When Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence in September, it said the suite of AI-powered features integrates deeply into the company’s ecosystem, leveraging the technology to perform tasks ranging from text refinement to image manipulation, all while prioritizing user privacy.