Fifer Bullish on Second Boom

Matt Fifer grew up a Branson boy, but the Missouri native’s heart now belongs to Northwest Arkansas.

“There’s nobody in this town that’s more bullish on Northwest Arkansas than I am,” Fifer said during a recent interview at his Bentonville office.

Fifer, like countless others, came to Northwest Arkansas as a result of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

A member of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s 2009 Forty Under 40 class, he left Walmart in 2004 to start a shopper marketing agency now called Store of the Community.

Fifer, 39, also co-founded 8th & Walton, a supplier education firm, in 2006. He then brought all of his businesses under the 101 Ventures umbrella in 2011.

It’s the work Fifer has been doing with one of his companies, Selling to the Masses, though, that has cemented his notion that big things are in store not just for his enterprises, but the area as a whole. Selling to the Masses launched about eight months ago, and essentially is a series of workshops for those who have an idea for a consumer product they want to get into the marketplace.

About 400 people have participated in the workshops, Fifer said, and working with them dovetailed with a fascination he’s had for Silicon Valley in recent years. Fifer deemed himself “kind of a student of Silicon Valley, the phenomenon that is Silicon Valley, and why it is that what was then sort of a farming community with all these orchards is now the center of it all when it comes to information technology.”

“The more I studied Silicon Valley,” he added, “the more parallels I was able to draw between that and Northwest Arkansas.”

As a result, Fifer and Grace Calloway recently wrote a two-part article — available at walmarthelp.com — explaining why they believe Northwest Arkansas soon will experience a boom and perhaps become a hub for retailing and consumer product innovation. Fifer spoke about the article, and the four ways in which he believes the boom will manifest itself.

“First, the locals will break out,” Fifer said, pointing to companies like Rockfish Interactive, Saatchi & Saatchi X and his own as examples of businesses that focused on Walmart-related “low-hanging fruit” initially, but now have expanded all over the country and, in some cases, the world.

Like the Silicon Valley, Fifer also believes “much will be invented” in Northwest Arkansas.

“A lot of people are leaving those larger companies they’ve worked for and are starting new businesses and pioneering in existing industries, and even inventing new industries, right here,” he said,

In the case of Selling to the Masses, Fifer has helped create “a conduit between those big new ideas and their ability to realize their potential in the marketplace.”

“My belief is that a lot of these companies, a lot of these inventors with those big ideas, are going to recognize all the talent and all the capital and all the connectivity that exists in this market, and they’re just going to relocate here,” Fifer said.

Fifer believes retailers will follow the innovation, too. He pointed to the recent opening of the South Korean retailer E-Mart’s procurement office in Bentonville, and said he expects amazon.com and others to eventually establish a presence in the area.

“It makes sense because where else in the world can you go and have access to 1,300 of the world’s biggest consumer product companies?” Fifer said.

The fourth piece of the boom, Fifer said, will be the institutional investors who come looking for a piece of the action. Fund managers from cities like Kansas City and Atlanta already are regular visitors, Fifer said, “trying desperately to figure out how to invest in this local economy.”

There’s no doubt Fifer has invested in Northwest Arkansas, and in more ways than one. He and his wife and four children are active at Centerton First Baptist Church, as well as in the typical youth sports and music programs.

One of Fifer’s children is adopted, and he said that’s an interest he’ll continue to pursue.

“My wife and I have got a real heart for orphans in general, and she and I have been trying to figure out how we can  do more with international adoption beyond our own personal experience,” he said.

“When I clock out for the last time, my sense is that she and I will probably give whatever is left of our life to finding homes for the defenseless.”