Sam's Club CEO reveals why the cashierless tech Walmart tested and axed became one of the warehouse chain's most important programs

Sam's Club's Scan & Go program lets customers scan items with their phone as they shop so they can avoid using a traditional check out.
Walmart stores had a similar program, but the company ended it in 2018 due to low adoption rates.
Sam's Club is now expanding the service with new features, and soon all items in the stores will be compatible with it, including alcohol — a new addition.
With a new pilot test launching soon, customers won't need to find the barcode on the item, and can just point their phone's camera at it, which will recognize what it is seeing using the app's computer vision.
The adoption rate for the tech has increased, but CEO John Furner said it could increase further as it becomes easier to use.

A program that Walmart piloted and axed is finding itself right at home at Sam's Club.

Scan & Go lets shoppers avoid using a traditional checkout. Using a phone or mobile device, customers scan barcodes to add the items to a virtual cart. When done shopping, all that they need to do is check with the greeter at the door and they are free to leave without ever waiting in line.

Walmart stores had a similar program, but the company ended it in May 2018 after only a brief test in a handful of stores, citing low adoption rates.

"We found too many errors in the process ... making sure people were scanning things right, multiple quantities, that sort of thing," Walmart CTO Jeremy King said on stage at NRF this year explaining why the company pulled the plug on the pilot.

Sam's Club stores have had Scan & Go for over two years, however, and it seems to be a much better fit, Sam's Club CEO John Furner told Business Insider. In fact, it's the only way to shop at Sam's Club Now, the chain's cashierless tech test location in Dallas.

Greeting the future

One reason the service works more naturally in Sam's Club is due to the virtues of the club format versus a Walmart store. That includes only one entrance staffed with a greeter at all times that's already checking receipts.

It's that greeter process that helps cut down on any theft — accidental or otherwise.

"I say it with all sincerity, most of the time I think that this happens, people do just miss something," Furner said. "Yes, there are people who do intentionally 'miss something,' but a lot of times it's just the item ... on the bottom of the basket and I've got a child who is screaming they want a hot dog or something. They're hungry."

Sam's Club

The greeters are there to check the basket, and rectify any mistakes.

"If you miss anything, we add it right there," Furner said. "We call it bottom of the basket, happens all the time."

The app is also integrated in the main Sam's Club app, making it available for more shoppers to use.

"We started it as a second app, and quickly when we saw people were adapting it, we moved it into the core app," Furner said.

Items at Sam's Club are also naturally larger due to the bulk warehouse experience, and there are no loose items — everything is packaged with its own barcode, making it eligible for the Scan & Go service. Previously, transactions with alcohol required two separate transactions due to the need to check ID with a cashier, but the chain is giving greeters the ability to check IDs, enabling them to be purchased with Scan & Go as well.

"The only deterrent we've really had with it is not being able to use the entire basket on it," Furner said. "We're about to add the last categories [of alcohol], so we think usage rates will go up quite a bit."

Scan and Go is currently seeing adoption rate increases of about 40%, and 90% of customers who try it will use it again within 90 days.

A bold new vision for the future

Sam's Club Now

Sam's Club is also testing a new feature for Scan & Go that uses computer vision to recognize items without needing to find the barcode.

It's "Using computer vision to work the way human vision works," Furner said. All a customer would need to do is point the phone at the item for it to recognize it and add it to the virtual cart.

"We appropriately designed the barcode for cashiers who were scanning an item on top of a big scanner so the barcode is typically on the side or the bottom. That works until you have your phone out and now you need to get to the bottom," Furner said. "So we had to rethink about: "Do we try to move all the barcodes to the top? Leave them on the side?" And one of the engineers said, 'Well, what if we could just use the camera to do exactly what our eyes do and you don't need a barcode?'"

That feature is ready to be pilot tested, and will roll out to the Now store in the next couple of weeks, with the rest of Sam's Club's nearly 600 stores to follow.

Using computer vision is an example of how Sam's Club is looking to use intuitive and scalable initiatives to add to the ease of the shopping experience, Furner says.

"When you're thinking about technology for people, it can't be intrusive in their life," he said. "We're trying to figure out what's the right balance between still enabling the technology to work and doing this in a way that reduces friction, but also a way that helps humans."

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