WalStreet Empowers Suppliers

Chambers of commerce are enduring and recognizable parts of the business landscape for cities large and small in the United States.

Beyond their many tasks — all rooted in promoting the area’s best attributes — they also can serve as a gauge of sorts as to how a region and its population is evolving. This no doubt is the case in Bentonville, where the population has skyrocketed from a little more than 11,000 people in 1990 to about 35,000 in the most recent census in 2010.

The reason for the rapid growth is largely because of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., but not solely because of Wal-Mart’s employees. Hundreds of retail suppliers, whose products fill Wal-Mart’s shelves, have set up a physical presence in Benton County in the last decade, putting themselves in better position to grow their business with the world’s largest retailer.

But for many of those suppliers, becoming well established in the Bentonville business community is not foremost on their to-do lists. Local businesses can get more value out of the chamber’s multiple networking events than can a national account manager who is working here with Wal-Mart blinders on.

“They just don’t have the time to get involved,” said Chris Campbell, shopper marketing sales director for California-based Coupons.com Inc. “For me personally, the chamber is a great way to connect with folks. Suppliers don’t have that time.”

The chamber recognized the opportunity to strengthen its connection with the supplier community, and responded with the development of the WalStreet supplier membership. A WalStreet membership provides all the benefits of a general chamber membership, but unlike the MainStreet membership, the programs are designed specifically for suppliers and service providers to Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club.

The most popular program is the WalStreet Speaker Series, developed by the chamber to provide Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club executives the opportunity to engage, inform and direct a large gathering of front-line suppliers. The morning events are held four times each year at the John Q. Hammons Center in Rogers.

Breakfast is provided for the attendees — anywhere from 400 to 600 — followed by a 30- to 45-minute address from the keynote speaker. A short Q&A session follows to wrap up the event, generally just after 9 a.m.

The program is noted for bringing in some significant speakers.

The chief merchandising officers for both Wal-Mart (Duncan Mac Naughton) and Sam’s Club (Linda Hefner) have been among the last four speakers.

Wal-Mart executives Dr. John Agwunobi (senior vice president; health and wellness), Mike Moore (president; Wal-Mart Central) and Pam Kohn (executive vice president; merchandise services) have been featured speakers in the last couple of years.

Jack Sinclair, who heads Wal-Mart’s grocery division, was the most recent speaker in September and Stephen Quinn, Wal-Mart’s chief marketing officer, is scheduled for Nov. 12.

Jeffrey Hendrix, vice president and Wal-Mart team leader for Snyder’s-Lance Inc. in Bentonville, said the WalStreet committee has been fortunate over the last 12 to 18 months to get speakers at the senior vice president and executive vice president level, which has been viewed by the membership as value-added.

Unless a company is fortunate enough — or large enough — to have top meetings with Wal-Mart on a regular basis, the WalStreet Speaker Series is one of the best outlets available to a vendor for top-down corporate directives.

“The whole point is to bring value to the membership,” said Hendrix, the secretary/treasurer of the chamber’s executive committee, and also a member of the WalStreet committee. “The whole point of [vendors] being here is to be more connected to the business that we do with Wal-Mart. So hearing from the senior leadership about strategy, where they are driving the business, that’s a huge benefit.

“As a representative of my company, my charge is to be able to provide an influencing guidance back to our organization as to the directional shifts of our customer.”

It’s a valuable program for Wal-Mart, too. It would be more convenient for an executive to broadcast a crafted message over the Internet or television than to meet face to face.

But the Speaker Series gives executives the opportunity to become more visible within the vendor community, and to be more transparent while distributing talking points to a large group.

“It’s like an external Saturday morning meeting,” Campbell said. “It’s a little bit less rah-rah and more directional as far as where Wal-Mart is going.”

 

WalStreet’s Roots           

The WalStreet Speaker Series has its origin a little more than a decade ago, from a program the chamber developed for vendors in hopes it would increase membership.

Former Wal-Mart executive Ed Clifford, who served as CEO of the chamber from 2001 to July, said there were between 400 and 500 supplier offices in Northwest Arkansas at that time. Wal-Mart’s growth has been mirrored by its suppliers, though, and Clifford said a safe estimate of current supplier offices is about 1,250 — ranging from behemoths like Procter & Gamble and Kimberly Clark down to one-person offices.

In its initial push to engage vendors, the chamber hosted events with the attraction for some of them being a Wal-Mart executive as a speaker, a private audience to which most suppliers weren’t privy. Membership among suppliers began to grow, and the chamber’s vice president of marketing and membership director, Tammy Thurow, assumed control of the programs in 2005.

“When I came on board, it was called ‘Champions University’ for our higher-level speakers and ‘Lunch and Learn’ for other speakers,” she said. “Anyone could attend if they paid to get in.”

In 2010, the program was re-branded as the WalStreet Speaker Series and the decision was made to keep the events exclusive to WalStreet members.

“We don’t sell tickets,” Thurow said. “You either have to become a member or have a friend [who is a member].”

Thurow said of the chamber’s 912 members, “about 350 to 400” are WalStreet members. An annual membership ranges in cost from $300 to $2,000, depending on the size of the company or service provider.

The number of series registrations per company is based on the membership level.

The event itself, as described by one WalStreet committee member, is a perfect blend of networking and information.

“It makes me feel good when I see a packaging person sit down next to a supplier that was looking for a packaging person,” Thurow said. “We want our members to do business with our members.”

 

‘A Huge Asset’

Thurow is credited as being the energetic force behind the series, effectively bridging the gap between Wal-Mart and the supplier community.

“Tammy has been the driver,” Hendrix said.

Thurow leads the WalStreet committee in a planning meeting once every quarter. The diverse group is made up of 16 men and women who are vendors from different categories, or third-party providers. The committee generally builds a list of potential speakers at the beginning of the year.

Thurow is the point person to complete the scheduling.

“I explain what the chamber is trying to accomplish and how to reach the suppliers with their message,” she said.

The series generally has a rolling schedule with two speakers “locked in” at all times while working ahead from there.

In the past, Thurow said the committee would schedule speakers in advance for an entire calendar year.

Because the program has trended toward inviting top-level executives, that is no longer the practice.

“I would love to schedule out a year in advance, but it’s just not possible, with the level of speakers we have now,” Thurow said. “I’m scheduling usually a couple of months in advance now. When I contact them, I always say I will do it with your schedule, and then do everything I can to make it happen.”

At the conclusion of every event, the speakers are customarily gracious and generous with their time, Hendrix noted.

As Sinclair commented during his remarks in September, they subscribe to the philosophy that the relationship between Wal-Mart and its vendors is a partnership, and that they are all in this together.

“I’ve been to the last 12, and I’ve not seen one yet where the speaker didn’t stay around for 20 or 30 minutes afterward to visit, make introductions, that sort of thing,” Hendrix said. “The more you know about your partner, the more business you can do together. This has been a huge asset to the companies that are here.”