Serena Williams’ topical performance care brand Will Perform is headed to Walmart. 

After entering Goal in December 2022, the brand is now greater than doubling its footprint, entering 3,000 physical stores with three stock keeping units and Walmart.com with all skus. Including its Goal partnership, it’ll be available at nearly 5,000 doors total nationwide.

“We’re here to assist everyone live lively and healthy lives. That’s the massive idea and Walmart is the most important retailer in america and accessibility is a extremely vital a part of our strategy,” said Hank Mercier, cofounder and chief executive officer of Will Perform. “Succeeding at Walmart is critical to our success.”

Based on consumer feedback since launch, the brand selected three specific skus to enter Walmart, also selecting select stores they thought could be most successful.

“We’re going to have the Relief products, the Will Relieve Lidocaine Pain Relief Roll-On, $13, the Will Relieve Lidocaine Pain Relief Spray, $13, but then to point out their support of performance care, we’re also going to have our Rest sku [Will Rest Nightly Muscle Recovery Lotion, $13], which was really vital to us and really vital to Walmart,” said Mercier.

With Will Perform, Williams selected to emphasise performance care, reasonably than pain, because the brand’s core consumer is a young, lively female. For Mercier, the colourful packaging, imagery of Williams and use of case-focused product names, like Soothe and Rest, will speak to this shopper, differentiating Will Perform from heritage brands on the pain aisle. Moreover, the brand is depending on its daring packaging to drive purchases in Walmart.

“We’re anticipating a rather different experience [in Target versus Walmart]. Now we have three skus versus six. We’ve got beautiful in-store signage with Goal, whereas Walmart has very tight standards for signage,” Mercier explained. “Our challenge is to ensure that that our packaging, and our marketing plans on Walmart.com and our support of the ecosystem of how Walmart talks to their shoppers, is powerful. Packaging goes to must work really hard for us.”

While the brand is targeted on its Walmart strategy, continued retail expansion is on the horizon.

“We’re going to be deliberate about how we expand, but it surely is cheap to assume that we have now ambitions of being in all key retailers for this category sooner or later,” Mercier said.