Walmart has looked at acquiring luggage company Away

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Gutierrez puts a low price dollar sign together at a Walmart
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• Walmart has looked at acquiring New York-based luggage
  startup Away. 
• In the past few years, Walmart
  has bought up a string of smaller consumer companies in a quest
  to become the “Netflix of e-commerce” — and a direct
  competitor with Amazon. 
• Multiple people said that
  Walmart has taken meetings with many successful
  direct-to-consumer startups in recent months as part of the
  retail giant’s plan to buy up more “digitally native,
  vertically intergrated” startups.

Walmart looked at acquiring luggage maker Away and held several
meetings with the startup, Business Insider has learned. It’s
unclear if the talks are still ongoing. 

Known typically as a low-cost retailer, Walmart is now seeking to
appeal to a higher-end, urban shopper. To do so, it’s made a
number of acquisitions in the last several years, including
e-commerce company Jet.com, women’s indie clothing brand
ModCloth, and men’s clothing company Bonobos. Just last week,

the company announced that it had bought up plus-sized
women’s brand Eloquii.  

Andy Dunn, head of Walmart’s digital consumer brands
and Bonobos founder, told
CNBC in September that Walmart will continue to buy brands,
just as Netflix has invested in television and movie
content. 

Away isn’t the only company that Walmart is keeping an eye on,
and Dunn often takes meetings with successful direct-to-consumer
companies, according to multiple people. “Walmart has told
everyone that they’re keenly interested,” one person said.
“Whether they write the checks is another story.”

“If you want to win, you’ve got to own great brands,” Dunn
told CNBC.
 “It’s kind of like what Netflix did.
They started making their own content. And we’re of the belief
the same thing is going to happen in commerce.”

Acquiring these newer,
direct-to-consumer startup darlings is part of Walmart’s quest to
own what it calls “digitally native, vertically integrated brand”
or DNVB. 

Dunn described how these newer,
Internet-founded companies could corner the millennial market

in a 2016 Medium post: ‘”The reality is the brand of the
future is a DNVB, but the future is not here yet,” he
wrote. 

“Some big companies now believe
they can make these brands themselves,” he continued, but
cautioned that this notion was one of “hubris.”

Luggage company Away has established itself as a successful
direct-to-consumer line. The startup’s sleek USB-equipped luggage
offerings were an early hit with consumers, and Away has since
announced its intentions to expand into a lifestyle brand with an
accompanying podcast and digital publication. Away has raised $80
million from investors including Accel, Forerunner, and Battery
Ventures. Dunn is also among Away’s investors.

Representatives for Walmart and Away declined to comment.