Walmart to Focus on Smaller Stores in 2013

Walmart Stores Inc. (Bentonville, Ark.) will be focusing efforts on its smaller urban concept, according to U.S. president and ceo Bill Simon.

“We’re trying to do more with less,” Simon told an investors conference in Orlando yesterday. “We’re trying to become more efficient in the use of capital. So the square footage will roughly stay the same, but you’ll see more doors open, because we’re going to be opening smaller stores instead of supercenters.”

Currently, about 90 percent of the company’s more than 4000 stores in the U.S. are supercenters. And Simon said there are about about 125 more supercenters scheduled for this year. But, he said, there are also as many as 115 small formats stores – units below 60,000 square feet.