Parts of the Tempe campus’ Memorial Union transformed into a 1,500-square-foot “pop-up” Walmart this week, making school and dorm supplies available to students on campus.
This is the first time the supermarket has built a temporary store for students. The store opened Saturday in the basement of the MU under Taco Bell and Wells Fargo. The store will close Thursday at 5 p.m.
Students are able to purchase dorm supplies like trash cans, vacuums and even big-screen TVs from the store.
Jason Zelinski, Walmart’s regional merchandise manager of Arizona, called the project “the campus living store.”
“Most [students] don’t have cars,” Zelinski said. “A lot of them are from other countries, so they obviously couldn’t bring a computer or an alarm clock.”
The concept of the store started about six weeks ago as a coffee conversation, Zelinski said.
“What we wanted to do in bigger metro markets is try and get into smaller areas,” he said, referring to the Tempe campus as one of these “smaller areas.”
They wanted to bring Walmart to the students instead of students going out to find a store, he said.
A divisional president asked Zelinski if he could make this happen, he said, and a few weeks later it did.
“I started calling around and making connections at ASU,” Zelinski said.
ASU is one of six college campuses around the country with a pop-up store, but ASU is the only school with an indoor store.
At other pop-up Walmarts, the merchandise is being sold out of trucks in parking lots.
“I said, ‘Well hey, it’s Arizona, it’s 110 degrees, I’m not doing this out of a truck, let’s do this with class,’” Zelinski said.
Walmart also helped at the student welcome back events by handing out goodies like gift cards, maps to close Walmart stores and reusable bags.
During student move-in days, the pop-up store stayed busy.
Cara English, executive coordinator for Access ASU, an organization that helps students get ready for college, went to the store to check out what it had for students and how affordable it was.
“When I was a freshman here, I didn’t have a car and my parents dropped me off, so I had no way to get to a Walmart or a Target to get supplies,” English said.
The store was helpful for incoming freshmen Xiyu Lei and X’zngyu Chen. Both are marketing students from China without a car.
“It’s convenient, it’s on campus, it’s next to our dorm and they have a lot of stuff here,” Lei said. “That’s why this place is pretty cool.”
