Sam’s Club personalizes apparel, photos with digital platform
Sam’s Club is offering online access to made-to-order apparel items and enhanced photography and photo printing services.
The discount warehouse club retailer is partnering with Amaze Software to provide a new online member service enabling the creation of custom apparel and photo products. The platform includes updated product editors, AI-enabled technology, and a personalized product library intended to shorten design and creation time.
Made-to-order apparel
Sam’s Club is enabling customers to create made-to-order holiday sweaters, in an effort to take advantage of the “ugly holiday” sweater trend. The new service, which will include seasonal offerings in the future, gives customers digital access to templated designs they can personalize.
Photo services
Sam’s Club’s new enhanced photo editing design tools take 30 seconds to four minutes to edit and layout up to 50 images following photo upload. The retailer has also entered into a partnership with Shoott, a female-led professional photography company.
Shoott services will initially be available to Sam’s Club customers in 60 cities beginning Monday, Oct. 3, 2022, with plans to expand to additional markets in the future.
“Shoott’s mission is to provide an ‘affordable luxury’ photo service that helps families all over the U.S. get amazing photos,” said Shoott CEO and co-founder Jenifer Tsay. “We’re so excited about the photo products that Sam’s Club offers to help transform Shoott’s digital photos into premium photo products that families can cherish forever.”
“We’re creating experiences and offerings that allow us to revolutionize the photo and customization category at retail for our members,” said Charles Moore II, omni senior merchandising director, photo and customization, Sam’s Club. “With partners like Amaze Software and Shoott, we’re positioned to transform our services into a next-gen personalized product and photo shopping experience. Knowing our members can capture and make memories in a flash is exciting.
“We’re looking closely at customization and laying the groundwork to set Sam’s Club up as a destination for quality personalized items that you can customize for less,” said Moore. “With partners like Amaze Software and Shoott, we’re positioned to transform our services into a next-gen personalized product and photo shopping experience. Knowing our members can capture and make memories in a flash is exciting.”
Sam’s Club follows omnichannel holiday tradition
Offering made-to-order sweaters is not Sam’s Club’s first interactive, omnichannel holiday promotion. During the 2020 holiday season, the retailer offered customers the chance to visit a virtual reproduction of the Griswold home from the 1989 movie, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”
Customers were brought to a customizable homescreen featuring an interactive picture of the outside of the fictional family’s house, where they could click on small red buttons next to certain features of the house, such as holiday decorations, and be led to an instant “buy now” popup screen. A customizable view of the inside of the home offered more instantly shoppable holiday items.
[Read more: Sam’s Club offers holiday shoppers a virtual ‘Christmas Vacation’]
Sam’s Club, a division of Walmart Inc. operates nearly 600 stores in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.