Sam’s Club Joining Retailers Who Are Betting Big On Holiday Shopping Season

With analysts expecting that the holiday season will be back, bigger and better following a less festive 2020 for everyone due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, retailers are gearing up for what they expect will be a busy shopping season—including Sam’s Club, a wholesale membership store that plans to go big this season with eager holiday shoppers in mind.

The retailer, which is owned by Walmart and operates nearly 600 stores across the United States, told CNBC that after focus groups with members, they learned that many expect to celebrate the holidays in a much more normal way this year, and as a result, they are preparing to serve their current members in the best way possible—with more sales events, bigger selection of products and items appropriately sized to accommodate larger holiday feasts.

“People have just felt like they got last Christmas stolen away from them and they’re eager to get back to some of those traditions with their family and their friends,” chief member officer Tony Rogers said. “Our member is telling us that this year they are going to get back to that like never before.”

As such, the warehouse clubs have launched larger size packages of popular holiday side dishes, Christmas-themed desserts, a new service dropping multipacks of wine at customers’ doors, do-it-yourself baking kits and more. Chief Merchant Megan Crozier said the company is also bringing back their larger-sized turkeys ahead of the holiday season, after stocking up mainly on smaller sizes last year, in addition to other proteins.

The expanded merchandise offerings will also include more than 25 new toy brands, more matching family pajama sets and other items that will inspire gift-giving.

The company is also preparing for the holidays with more sales events than ever before, festive activities including temporary ice-skating rinks at some stores, and a first-ever holiday catalog to lure shoppers inside clubs.

Besides early analysis which expects a 7% jump in consumer spending this holiday season over last year, Sam’s Club is basing its decisions on how it was affected by the pandemic. The company has hit record highs in membership, as consumers looked to stock up on items and have bulk supplies, and many moved out of cities and into the suburbs, increasing the amount of people shopping.

The company’s comparable sales rose 11.8% in the fiscal year that ended Jan. 29, over one year prior. Competitors BJ’s and Costco also saw big increases, with Costco’s sales growing 13.4% in the fiscal year ending Aug. 29, while BJ’s saw a 21.3% jump in the year ending Jan. 30.

The wholesale clubs aren’t the only ones who have been betting on a bigger holiday season. Not only have more retailers partnered up with companies to provide more “Buy Now, Pay Later” options online, but several have sweetened what they offer to seasonal workers in order to entice them to work in their stores and help handle the larger crowds.

However, the big bets are also not without some risk, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not yet released any official guidance on holiday gatherings like it did last year. While gatherings were strictly limited in size for much of the country and travel was strongly discouraged, this year, with 65.3% of Americans having at least one dose of a vaccine and 56.4% being fully vaccinated, it’s expected that there will be some eased recommendations, though there will be an emphasis on keeping gatherings safe.