Sam’s Club to expand stores amid Costco, BJ’s competition

DALLAS, Texas — Walmart-owned Sam’s Club plans to supercharge its expansion by opening about 15 new stores per year going forward and remodeling all of its approximately 600 locations across the country, the warehouse club’s CEO Chris Nicholas said on Wednesday.

With the boost from those new locations, Sam’s Club aims to double its membership over the next eight-to-10 years, he said at Walmart’s investor day.

Sam’s Club already had aggressive expansion plans. The chain announced two years ago that it would open about 30 new stores in the U.S. over the next five years. That was a shift after Sam’s Club shut 63 locations across the country in 2018.

Yet Sam’s Club is speeding up expansion at a surprising time: President Donald Trump‘s broad and steep tariffs have shaken Wall Street and injected fresh uncertainty about price increases, the U.S. economic outlook and consumers’ willingness to spend. The retailer pulled its first-quarter operating income forecast earlier Wednesday, saying profits could suffer if it tries to keep prices steady when costs increase due to tariffs.

In an interview with CNBC, Nicholas said he’s confident that demand for Sam’s Club will hold up, even if the economic backdrop gets worse. In fact, he said, the warehouse club’s focus on saving customers money may gain even more relevance.

“In times of plenty, we do well. But in tough times, we do really well,” he said.

Warehouse clubs, including rivals Costco and BJ’s Wholesale, have benefitted from U.S. consumers seeking value and larger quantities of items over the past five years while stocking up during the pandemic, weathering Covid-related supply chain shocks and looking to avoid higher prices from inflation.

Sam’s Club rivals Costco and BJ’s Wholesale Club are both expanding, too. Costco, which has roughly 620 locations in the U.S., expects to open 28 new clubs during its current fiscal year, including three planned relocations of current clubs, its CEO Ron Vachris said in early March on an earnings call. He did not say how many of those clubs will be in the U.S.

BJ’s, a Massachusetts-based retailer that’s historically had more clubs on the East Coast, announced plans to open 25 to 30 new locations over the next two fiscal years, including in parts of Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.

Sam’s Club began its recent expansion by rolling out a club designed to represent its future. The new location, which opened in the Dallas suburb of Grapevine, Texas in October, was its first new store since 2017. The location, which replaced one destroyed by a tornado, has a new look and an all-digital approach to retail. It has no checkout lanes, store displays of online-only items and a larger area for fulfilling e-commerce orders for…