The Consumerist reported that Walmart has announced that it will drop the Wild Oats brand. Two years ago, Walmart announced that it would sell organic food to mass market under the Wild Oats brand, at lower prices than national brands of certified organic products. Now, Walmart is ending its “Wild Oats experiment, deciding instead to begin selling organic items under its own house brand, Great Value, and also sell more fresh produce,” The Consumerist said.
In a 2014 press release from Walmart, the company stated that customers would save about 25 percent or more when comparing Wild Oats to national organic products. The Wild Oats brand would be present at Walmart. The first featured lines of Wild Oats at Walmart included Wild Oats Marketplace Organic, Wild Oats Marketplace and Wild Oats Marketplace Originals.
“We know our customers are interested in purchasing organic products and, traditionally, those customers have had to pay more,” said Jack Sinclair, executive vice president of grocery at Walmart U.S. in 2014 when the company was first introducing Wild Oats to its stores. “We are changing that and creating a new price position for organic groceriesthat increases access. This is part of our ongoing effort to use our scale to deliver quality, affordable groceries to our customers.”
The Wild Oats brand may be familiar to some shoppers, but it had a complicated journey to Walmart’s shelves, the Consumerist said. “It was a pioneering health food grocer, which Whole Foods acquired in 2007 and was forced to sell in 2009. Wild Oats has since worked with Pathmark, Walmart, and Fresh & Easy to release lines of organic products.”
According to the Progressive Grocer, Walmart will phase out Wild Oats over the next few months. With the organic market growing, it seems odd that Walmart would stop carrying an organic brand.
However, The Wall Street Journal reported, “Now Walmart is switching tactics, hoping to add organic products to shelves in other ways, including selling more fresh produce and adding more organic food to its existing store brand, Great Value. Walmart would have to further expand its own network of organic-food suppliers.”
In an interview between The Wall Street Journal and Laura Kennedy, principal analyst at Kantar Retail, a research and consulting firm, she noted that Walmart’s move to drop Wild Oats is “an odd step to take when we know they are trying to increase private-label penetration and trying to target the higher-income consumer, but if Walmart was “losing money to a middleman, well, this is not a time Walmart wants to be losing anything.”
Organic products are still a fast-growing segment of the market, and experts told the Wall Street Journal that the chain simply didn’t highlight their new brand, or do anything to differentiate organic products on the shelves.
“That will change soon: when you see purple sections of a shelf at a Walmart store, that means that the shelf contains organic food. The retailer plans to begin selling inexpensive organic food under its own label, as well as stocking more organic produce and other fresh items,” the Progressive Grocer said.
For more information, visit The Wall Street Journal.
