Walmart buys Silicon Valley solution for Sam’s Club

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Walmart has returned to its acquisitive ways in Silicon Valley with the purchase of engagement and insights platform PunchTab, a four-year old company with talent and technology to help the retailer’s Sam’s Club division better personalize offers.

 

Jeremy King, head of WalmartLabs, and Jamie Iannone, president and CEO of Samsclub.com announced the deal to acquire PunchTab in a joint statement on the @WalmartLabs site. The deal involves the purchase of PunchTab’s and six employees who will join WalmartLabs including founder Mehdi Ait Oufkir.

 

“We’ll use the technology to enhance our existing 'customer relationship management' tools, or the technology behind how we reach customers across e-mail, on our websites, on mobile phones and in our physical stores,” King and Iannone said in the statement.

 

The deal is the 15th acquisition @WalmartLabs’ has made in the last four years, although prior to PunchTab it had been relatively quiet on the acquisition front.

 

“PunchTab’s first task is to leverage its software platform to enhance the ways we tailor offers to Sam’s Club members across our clubs, our mobile app and on Samsclub.com. Like most of the technology we build at @WalmartLabs, we plan to apply what we build for Sam’s Club to Walmart’s other businesses, including Walmart.com,” according to King and Iannone.

 

PunchTab was founded in 2011 by Mehdi Ait Oufkir, who was an early member of YouSendIt.com, helping to scale the company to 18 million registered users.