Sam's Club
Sam's Club is a membership-based retail warehouse, owned and operated by Walmart. With over 600 clubs across the world, it is one of the biggest names in the e-commerce business.
View websiteSam's Club associates were ordering tires and batteries through a slow, paper-driven process — leading to long customer wait times, inconsistent inventory data, and a steep learning curve for new hires. We set out to digitize the entire tire-and-battery workflow into a single, intuitive app.
Design Process
“We need a standardized operation among different clubs in the same market. We have no way of pulling up member information, this makes it really difficult to serve members, especially when they are returning to the club after a long time.”
— Sonny, Tire and battery center team lead
Pain points
Early research surfaced four recurring friction points across the ordering journey — each became its own design focus area.
Service
Associates had no clear way to track order status once a customer dropped off their vehicle, leading to repeated walk-ups and phone calls.
POS
The point-of-sale system lived separately from the ordering tool, forcing associates to re-key the same information twice.
Signature
Customer sign-off for service work was still paper-based, creating a bottleneck at handoff and no digital record for disputes.
Inventory
Stock counts were updated manually at the end of each shift, so associates often promised tires that were no longer in stock.
We worked side by side with engineering and store operations from day one — running weekly desk-checks on the club floor, pairing on flows in real time, and folding associate feedback directly into the next design iteration.
User flow
Mapping the end-to-end journey — from the moment a customer requests service to the final sign-off — helped us pinpoint exactly where the legacy process broke down, and where a single connected flow could replace it.
Wireframes
Early low-fidelity explorations let us test the core ordering flow with associates before investing in visual design — quickly cutting steps that didn't hold up on the floor.
The shipped experience brought ordering, point-of-sale, signatures and live inventory into a single connected app — designed to hold up on a busy floor and scale across hundreds of clubs.
Overview
A home view that surfaces the day's open orders, inventory alerts and customer hand-offs at a glance — so associates always know what needs attention next.
The beginning
A guided intake flow walks associates through capturing vehicle details and service needs in just a few taps, replacing a multi-page paper form.
Key journey
From quote to checkout to digital signature, the core ordering journey was redesigned as one continuous flow — cutting average order time dramatically.
Recurring use
Returning-customer shortcuts and saved vehicle profiles made repeat visits faster, reducing redundant data entry for the busiest associates.
Visual assets
A small system of icons and illustrations gave the app a distinct, approachable personality — consistent across every screen and update.
3D marketing video
This animation was an experimentation I did in Cinema 4D and After Effects. When I shared it with the team, marketing and business loved the concept and used it as a marketing video during Walmart's annual tech summit.
Market release
In July of 2019, Sam's Garage was released to the Florida market across 15 clubs. This was our test release, and our goal was to observe any breakdowns or usability issues and iteratively fix them before releasing to the wider market. Associates had never used the app before, and within the first few minutes they were able to order tires.
Chain release
After observing the app in the Florida market for a month, we released it to all 600+ Sam's Club locations. Post-launch, I visited several clubs in the California and Vegas markets for usability testing.
Overall, Sam's Garage was a huge success — we had completely digitized the tire and battery system in less than 9 months.
Recognition
During Walmart's annual shareholder's meeting, Sam's Garage was one of the key highlights of Doug McMillon's (CEO, Walmart) speech.
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