DBB Champions Vendor Relations

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. depends on its suppliers to help stock store shelves with everything from health and beauty products to plasma TVs.
Surrounding the home office of Wal-Mart in Bentonville, countless suppliers have set up camp to position themselves within hollering distance for constant contact with the world’s largest retailer.
Still, worlds collide when suppliers enter into business with retailers such as Wal-Mart. Bridging the needs and desires of each while ensuring a relationship of understanding is Steve Schotta and Doing Business in Bentonville.
Schotta is the executive director of Doing Business in Bentonville LLC, a group dedicated to increasing the knowledge of suppliers that are doing business, or hope to do business, with Wal-Mart.
“That’s what the purpose is: To go back and execute your job better today — better for Wal-Mart — and hopefully for the suppliers, they end up selling more merchandise through to the consumer,” he said.
Schotta was previously working for Kimberly-Clark Corp. He moved toBentonville for the company in 1993. He took a sales team of four to a multi-functional business team of 40. Kimberly-Clark is one of Wal-Mart’s top 10 suppliers and the world’s second-largest household and personal care products company.
In 2005, the newly formed DBB was looking for a leader and asked Schotta to take the position of executive director. After 26 years with Kimberly-Clark, Schotta accepted the challenge.
“I thought it was a good match based on my background and based on what I thought the supplier series could be,” he said. “I kind of had a vision of what it could be and the role it could play in the broad community. I wanted to be a part of it.”
The ownership of DBB consists of Schotta, Cameron Smith, Wayne Callahan and Jim Shankle. Their business plan reinvests revenues back into the programs with the goal of making it a bigger and better resource.
DBB’s bread and butter is its speaker series. Events this year focused on topics such as marketing, the future of Wal-Mart International and sustainability efforts.
Schotta has engaged Wal-Mart, which provides speakers on the various topics. The November meeting featured David Scogin, vice president and divisional merchandise manager.
Earlier in the year, Andy Ruben, vice president of corporate strategy/sustainability, spoke to the audience on Wal-Mart’s collaborations to meet sustainability goals and what the company expects from its suppliers.
“We’ve been very fortunate of getting strong support from Wal-Mart,” Schotta said.
Taking Direction
Much of the success of these programs is also due to DBB’s steering committee.
Schotta and 26 others create the steering committee, a who’s who of suppliers including brand names like: Time Warner Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., Nestlé U.S.A. and Newell Rubbermaid Inc. The committee provides sweeping knowledge of a number of industries.
“They have the best insight because they’re current suppliers to Wal-Mart,” Schotta said.
Randy Jerow is one of the committee members, representing S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. As a member, he is responsible for directing DBB’s programs and educating vendors, but he once was just an audience member.
When Jerow relocated from Cincinnati two-and-a-half years ago to the company’s office in Lowell, he wanted to know more about Wal-Mart’s operations and what he could do to optimize relations.
“There’s so much change going on in our industry, and with this particular customer, Wal-Mart, that it’s just a great way to stay close to the change taking place and understanding that,” he said.
Jerow said it’s more fun having an active role in the group, rather than being just a participant.
“I’m still learning about Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart’s always changing,” he said. “I’m able to lead and design the speaker group so that we can stay on the leading edge of that change and the understanding around it.”
Schotta has received a lot of positive feedback on DBB and its efforts.
“Whether you’re a large company, like where I was from, or a small company who needs more information on that topic, it’s proven to be beneficial,” he said.
DBB has more in store for next year. It will tackle the topics of in-store marketing and supply chain initiatives, but Schotta is developing more than speaker events. DBB will branch from its speaker series into two other initiatives.
In a partnership with InterfaceRAISE, a company that has been working with Wal-Mart’s sustainability efforts, DBB will provide an in-depth discussion on this hot topic.
“It really supplements the work of Andy Ruben and what his team is doing on sustainability through their networks process,” Schotta said.
The second initiative is in coordination with the Soderquist Center for Leadership and Ethics in Siloam Springs.
Rather than the usual two-hour speaker programs, this will be a three-day event. It will provide suppliers with Wal-Mart speakers and a supplier panel to discuss a variety of topics, such as the ideal team structure for working with Wal-Mart.
“It’s a great idea as a way to introduce either companies that are fairly new to working with Wal-Mart, or people in senior positions at companies that have just joined those companies and dealing with Wal-Mart is new to them,” Schotta said.
Dates for these events have yet to be finalized, but like the speaker programs, Schotta hopes to strengthen the bond between suppliers and Wal-Mart.
“Our intent is that when suppliers leave that morning that they go back to their offices and that they’ve got either new ideas or they’ve got some real reinforcement of some basic tactics for their company,” he said.