Amazon reportedly isn't the only retailer toying with far-out new ways to get their products to customers.
After the Seattle e-commerce giant last year received a patent for a blimp-like warehouse that could hover above customers' homes, Bloomberg reports that Walmart filed a patent application for a similar system in February.
Both proposals would use the airborne blimp as a docking station for delivery drones to carry packages to the ground, but Walmart envisions its airship flying between 500 and 1,000 feet above ground. Amazon, by contrast, suggested that its floating warehouse could rise to altitudes of 45,000 feet.
Bloomberg added that the filing is likely to be approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office because Walmart offered more specifics about how the craft would work than Amazon's application.
Both companies view the systems as a method to move goods more efficiently between their brick-and-mortar warehouses and their final destinations.
“There are numerous ways to distribute and deliver products,” Walmart officials wrote in the patent application. “Getting the product to a delivery location, however, can cause undesirable delays, can add cost and reduce revenue.”