Cover Story: One Step at a Time

Meijer's top categories online can be credited for upward of 10 percent of all company sales in select product categories, and it's seen weeks when that number swelled to 20 percent. Yet other product categories represent as little as a quarter of a percentage point of total sales.

"Looking at some of our competitors, if we did consistently across the board between 2 [percent] and 5 percent of our general merchandise business online, that would be great," says Tom Nakfoor, Meijer's vice president of e-commerce. "But I can't say that we're there yet, across the board. We're just too new and still growing."