Sam’s Club private brand gets sustainable makeover

Sam’s Club is revamping its its Members Mark private label assortment as parent company Walmart focuses on regeneration.

The warehouse club retailer is shifting its Member’s Mark private label brand to become sustainability-driven. Throughout the past two years, Sam's Club has launched, renovated, and reformulated more than 1,200 Member’s Mark items, and is now releasing a new tagline, "Made with Our Member and Planet in Mind.”

In 2020, Walmart set a goal of becoming a regenerative company, which led Sam’s Club to begin evaluating its sustainability efforts. Sam's Club aims to remove certain ingredients from Member's Mark food and consumable products, while increasing its assortment of items that are made using practices that promote animal welfare, help support land and ocean health, mitigate deforestation, utilize more sustainable textiles, and come from renewable sources.  

Specific goals Sam’s Club has set for Member’s Mark products to meet by 2025 include:

• Meeting animal welfare guidelines.
• Antibiotics-free poultry.
• Sustainably sourced seafood.
• Cage-free eggs.
• Fair Trade-certified coffee, tea and cocoa.
• Responsibly sourced paper, pulp and timber.
• 100% recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging.

The company also intends to incorporate more recyclable, reusable, and industrially compostable components in Member's Mark items and packaging. Additionally, Sam's Club plans to reduce the brand's environmental footprint by calling for suppliers of Member's Mark items to participate in Walmart's private sector consortium to reduce or avoid one billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, Project Gigaton.

In addition to the new tagline, Sam's Club is introducing a new Member's Mark logo and design construct. Customers will begin to see the new logo and check design included on packaging over the next 18 months.

As it continues to develop sustainable Member's Mark items, Sam's Club will partner with Walmart and leverage the “My Member's Mark Community,” a group formed in 2019 that includes more than 40,000 Sam's Club customers who provide feedback and input on Member's Mark items throughout every phase of a product's lifecycle.

"The Sam's Club member is at the center of everything we do, so as we continue to evolve the Member's Mark brand, we intend to develop items that are reflective of the ingredients, processes and materials they want – and don't want – in their products," said Prathibha Rajashekhar, senior VP, private brands and sourcing, Sam's Club. "Now, as we introduce new Member's Mark items and renovate existing ones, we are making decisions that not only focus on quality, innovation and value, but on the impact we are making on the world around us." 

Member's Mark was founded by Sam's Club in 1998, and in 2017, Sam's Club consolidated its 20 proprietary brands into Member's Mark. Member's Mark items are available across a variety of categories, including grocery, health and wellness, baby, apparel, home and furniture products, office, and technology.

Sam's Club, a division of Walmart Inc. operates nearly 600 stores across the U.S., including Puerto Rico.