Forty Under 40: Matt King

It has been a busy year for Matt King. He got married in February and in May switched jobs, joining Unilever after two years with Rubbermaid. His title as sales analyst remained the same, but that was about it.

He went from managing $60 million worth of product lines like Sanford and PaperMate to more than $500 million in the laundry detergent lines of All, Wisk and Snuggle.

Cracking the vendor community serving Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is no easy task, and King had plenty of doubters when he told them he wanted to move into the supplier business after five years as a financial analyst for Northwestern Mutual in Fayetteville.

Without RetailLink experience or an “in” to the vendor world, it was King’s interview skills that landed him at Rubbermaid in May 2005 over a field of nearly three dozen candidates.

A natural self-starter, King has run the Hogeye half-marathon, enjoys biking around Lake Fayetteville and has performed missionary work in Honduras, Mexico and Gulf Port, Miss.

For fellow rising professionals, King’s advice is to get as much work experience as possible in college even if it means getting an occasional “B” rather than an “A.”

“It pays huge dividends in the outside world,” he said.