Hopeful entrepreneurs filed into the Sam Walton Auditorium early Tuesday (Oct. 7) for Walmart’s 12th Annual Open Call event. It is the 40th anniversary for the effort to buy goods made, grown or assembled in America and boost U.S. manufacturing.
John Furner, CEO of Walmart U.S., opened the event and interviewed Steuart Walton, board member and grandson of Walmart co-founder Sam Walton. Walton reminded the audience that Sam was 44 when he founded Walmart in the summer of 1962, and it was a gamble, but he had been honing his craft for at least 20 years.
Walton said it’s never too late to package up your experience and expertise and go forward with a new dream. Furner said every photo and video of Sam Walton in the Walmart archives shows him with a yellow pad, taking notes or holding an item he loved.
“He loved merchandising and he particularly liked products made in the USA, from wash cloths in North Carolina to wire patio furniture made in the Midwest,” Furner said. “Sam understood that buying American-made products supported jobs in factories and we are still following that plan today.”
Open Call, the biggest event Walmart holds each year, invites prospective and vetted entrepreneurs to pitch their items to buyers in hopes of getting a deal. Walmart will hold around 750 meetings Wednesday and provide golden tickets to items Walmart wants in stores and online.
Walton said Walmart did not grow into a $681 billion company by being complacent and comfortable. He said moving with speed, planning, and failing fast and trying again has always been part of Walmart’s philosophy.
Furner reminded the audience that there were plenty of failures in Sam Walton’s life and his ability to dream big. He said Sam and Helen Walton tried a liquidation center called Bud’s, a craft store called Helen’s, home improvement stores, drug stores and Sam’s Club. While most of those ventures were not successful, Sam’s Club has become a $90 billion U.S. business of its own since it was founded in 1983.
Walton said his grandfather was 62 when he opened the first Sam’s Club two months after visiting with Sol Price, founder of PriceClub and FedMart. Price was the father of the wholesale club model which ultimately merged Price Club into Costco. Sam Walton had opened three clubs in the first year. Sam’s Club now has 600 clubs in the U.S., with 200 more in Mexico and China. Clubs outside the U.S. report under Walmart’s international division.
NEW THIS YEAR
Walmart put together an employee group three years ago to focus on surety of supply and strategic initiatives. Jason Fremstad, senior vice president of supplier development, said Walmart saw an opportunity to seek out new technologies that can help restore industries like textiles, and agricultural processes to increase yield, grow more products close to customers and even create items in labs like cocoa used in chocolate flavored products.
This year there are 13 technology firms presenting services to Walmart merchants and category managers on Wednesday. This is a new feature at Open Call, but Fremstad said it makes sense to tap emerging technology to help address challenges with onshoring industries that lack a skilled workforce and have obsolete infrastructure.
“We know that if we are going to change where things are made, we are going to have to change how they are made. It will require innovation,” said Leah Platz, senior vice president of merchandising excellence at Walmart.
Platz said less than 3% of apparel is made in the U.S., down from 50%-60% in the 1990s. She said the industry moved offshore and the skilled workforce dwindled and the infrastructure became obsolete.
“Can you imagine if we take the old looms and aging apparel and textile infrastructure in the U.S. and modernize it with technology?” Platz asked. “There is an innovator here today that is doing that, applying automation to the old infrastructure, reducing costs because they are leveraging existing machinery that can do the work in a cost-effective and efficient manner.”
There also is an agri innovator attending the event to pitch a technology that allows for growing avocados in parking lots. The U.S. imports about 90% of the avocados sold in retail. She said the innovator has soil enrichment sprays and dwarfing techniques that allow for better yields and better sustainability. The smaller trees grown in planters in the green spaces of parking lots produce more fruit and generate less waste than a traditional avocado farm, she said.