With international Web sales lagging behind major competitors such as Amazon, Wal-Mart is stepping up its overseas e-commerce expansion, looking for staff, talking to vendors and mapping its approach to what could become the world's biggest Internet initiative.

Rest assure we will be reaching out to them to assist because we know exactly how this should be done.

Snapshot from article:

Wal-Mart already pulls in the most sales of any retailer—$405 billion last year, including about $100 billion from international operations in 14 countries. While the company doesn't disclose Internet sales, indications are the retailer has a lot of growing room. Trade publication Internet Retailer estimated that Wal-Mart's e-commerce sales in 2008, the latest projection available, were $1.74 billion. That compared with No. 1 ranked Amazon.com Inc. at $19.2 billion and No. 2 Staples Inc., at $7.7 billion. Other brick-and-mortar retailers like Office Depot Inc., OfficeMax Inc., Sears Holding Corp. and Best Buy Co. outranked Wal-Mart in Web sales, with Wal-Mart entering the list at No. 13. This was before Wal-Mart said it was making a great push to improve online sales.

Read the entire article here.

Related post: Playing the "Wal-Mart-China" Global Game

Posted by: The Global Small Business Blog

We featured the report, Taking on the World, in a recent edition of our monthly e-newsletter, Borderbuster, but for those of you who don't subscribe, we think it's important enough to re-highlight here. The report is published by KPMG Canada.

Growth opportunities for Canadian private companies don't always come from north of the border or sea to sea. Increasingly, foreign markets are the places to be if an organization is to achieve maximum growth in today's global economy. Indeed, Canada's future prosperity depends to a large extent on Canadian businesses' ability to compete globally by expanding successfully beyond the country's borders, thus taking full advantage of global markets and opportunities.

The report documents the extent of private companies' foreign operations to date; sheds light on the benefits of global expansion for private companies, and the key challenges and risks of doing so; and provides information about local employee and supply resources in foreign markets.

Access report: Taking on the World

Emerging markets are not merely generating economic growth. They are also producing companies that are worth investing in, and that are even starting to take on and beat the best of the developed world’s multinationals.

Find out who they are and where they operate here.

And while you are at it, check out the Economist country profiles to figure out a plan on how to work with these champions.