Following the retail supplier community
More than 20 years after the death of Sam Walton, nearly 1,300 suppliers have set up offices within a 27-mile radius of Wal-Mart’s home office in Bentonville.
The supplier community provides roughly 5,800 high-income jobs and brings further socio-economic development and cultural diversity to the region.
Having the supplier offices in Northwest Arkansas is one of the catalysts that buoys income levels and home prices higher than in surrounding counties. This sector also creates a critical mass of top talent from a vast array of industries related to products, services and supply-chain logistics. Not only does this sector support Wal-Mart, but many of the suppliers in Northwest Arkansas also do business with other large national and regional retail companies.
Talk Business & Politics, through the sponsorship of Propak, intends to enhance its coverage of this important economic sector. (Please submit your story tips, ideas and feedback here)
by - February 20, 2019 1:00 pm
Consumer households spend an average of $10,500 annually on food and consumables, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While that comprises a big part of household spending, it’s also…
by - February 18, 2019 12:54 pm
Walmart’s big sustainability push known as Project Gigaton was announced in 2017 in partnership with the Sustainability Consortium. The milestone project involves Walmart’s removing 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse…
by - February 4, 2019 3:37 pm
Voice assistants are a new frontier in retail. With the majority of consumers (77%) now using smartphones, the market is ripe for disruption, according to Jake Stanley, co-founder of Little…
by - January 28, 2019 4:55 pm
Crossmark, a marketing and merchandising services firm, announced a new alliance with Fayetteville-based WhyteSpyder designed to provide clients with immediate digital merchandising solutions to grow online sales. David Newman, chief…
by - January 16, 2019 1:11 pm
Online grocery is slowly growing its share in the U.S., but in the next five years, analysts expect e-commerce food sales will be a $59.5 billion market, a compound annual…
by - January 3, 2019 3:41 pm
In early 2019, consumers across Northwest Arkansas will be among the first in the country to eliminate clunky coin change using digital piggybank software developed by Bucket Technologies. Bringing the…
by - December 10, 2018 12:56 pm
Rogers-based tech company RichContext is a startup launched in mid-2016, but it has rapidly grown its client base to include some of the biggest names in the consumer packaged goods…
by - November 25, 2018 4:57 pm
Brick-and-mortar retailers large and small face many changes. While a majority of shopping still occurs inside a physical store, its role is likely to evolve to more of a fulfillment…
by - November 14, 2018 6:03 pm
Walmart continues to invest in technology that increases efficiency in the supply chain and lowers costs of the system with fewer employees as machines do more of the work. The…
by - October 30, 2018 6:04 pm
Retail returns remain a challenge for even the largest retailers like Walmart and Amazon. A recent report from Optoro, a Washington, D.C.-based provider of returns optimization software, found the impact…
by - October 29, 2018 3:19 pm
Three years after its inception, Fayetteville startup Good Eats Food Co., has a new owner. Lakeside Foods, headquartered in Manitowoc, Wis., acquired the vegetable company, founded by Trey Taylor and…
by - October 15, 2018 12:16 pm
It’s been almost a year since Bryce Paden and Trent Carrender quit their jobs and jumped head first into i2i Labs, a Rogers-based startup that acts as a matchmaker between…
by - October 12, 2018 4:40 pm
As Walmart continues to rapidly expand its online grocery pickup business, the retail giant says it’s important for suppliers to lean-in and try new strategies. “We are in this together…
by - October 11, 2018 6:28 pm
Walmart is in the midst of transitioning the protocol and oversight of third-party content providers who work on behalf of suppliers selling items on Walmart.com. The retail giant said it…
by - October 8, 2018 2:38 pm
As online retail continues to grow so does the need for better reverse logistics to handle customer returns. A recent report from Cerasis found the costs of reverse logistics exceed…
by - October 3, 2018 5:26 pm
Walmart continues to digitize processes aimed at improving customer shopping experiences and better equipping its workforce. Tom Ward, vice president of digital operations at Walmart U.S., said some of that…
by - September 23, 2018 5:15 pm
Chicago-based C.A. Fortune, a national consumer products sales and marketing agency, recently hung out a shingle in Bentonville in the company’s effort to establish a foothold in retail central serving…
by - September 17, 2018 4:17 pm
With the shift of many retail categories to online, suppliers who typically have served brick-and-mortar stores are facing somewhat uncharted territory, according to Chris Moore, vice president of sales and…
by - August 13, 2018 9:41 am
Fayetteville brothers Austin and Quinn Simkins believe a family recipe handed down for four generations is their key to a national business. At ages 8 and 4, their grandmother began…
by - August 9, 2018 5:37 pm
With more households using subscriptions for consumables, services and entertainment, there is less need to shop in stores. Retailers of all sizes have felt the squeeze from Amazon and its…
