Walmart Canada recently announced the addition of Mobile Klinik kiosks inside five of its stores. The arrival of the smartphone and tablet repair service company in Walmart Supercentres is in line with the retail giant’s move towards offering more convenience for shoppers.
“Time is the new currency. We want to give people time back in their busy lives,” says Sam Hamam, senior director, licensees, at Walmart Canada of adding a repair service offering that’s appointment-free and which helps the retailer be seen as a convenient one-stop-shop.
Hamam says partnering with Mobile Klinik allows Walmart to meet a growing consumer demand in the repair sector: there are approximately 32 million smartphones in Canada, and Mobile Klinik research shows that annually there’s about 20% or 6.3 million broken phones that need repairing, whether from a drop, spill or an aging battery.
Mobile Klinik, which was founded in 2015, currently operates stores across the country and is opening its first Walmart store-in-store as its 50th location this week in Toronto’s Scarborough neighbourhood. “As a storefront retail business, our marketing strategy is anchored by our real estate strategy,” says Liz Hamilton, Mobile Klinik’s director, people and customers (Today, the company announced it successfully closed an equity capital funding raise of CAD $27.5 million. It says it will use funding to complete its planned roll-out of 200 Canadian stores by 2022 and has plans to grow its retail footprint to 80 in 2019.)
Hamilton says that the brand’s retail strategy has been to open stores in high-traffic locations in desirable local markets and expand awareness and reach with a digital campaign. The company will continue to focus on digital and search marketing, supplemented by partner activities around its Walmart store-in-store locations, she says.
The five Walmart locations in Alberta, Ontario and New Brunswick are meant to help Mobile Klinik test the scalability of the concept. While Mobile Klinik will drive its own marketing, Hamam says the brand will have a presence on Walmart’s website store locator and will benefit from its customer traffic.
When it comes to new service partners in store, Hamam says Walmart continues to add more services that meet a consumer demand (particularly within health and wellness). Recent new additions to Walmart’s partner portfolio are Planet Fitness, an 18,000 sq. ft. fitness centre and the Jack Nathan multidisciplinary medical clinic, which includes an onsite doctor’s office, blood lab, physio and chiro, as well as a nutritionist.
