The Supply Side: Walmart celebrates 40 years of buying American-made goods

It was 1985, and Walmart had 882 stores with annual sales of $8.4 billion and roughly 104,000 employees. The retailer was expanding in Colorado and Wisconsin. But that was also the year founder Sam Walton committed to buying more American-made products.

Walton wrote an open letter in February 1985 to 3,000 U.S. manufacturers and wholesalers telling them Walmart wanted to buy more U.S. goods because it could make a difference in saving some American manufacturing jobs.

“Our continued success depends on our mutual reaction to a very serious problem with regard to our balance of trade deficit,” he noted in the letter. “Walmart believes American workers can make a difference.”

In Walton’s memoir, he noted that the response was surprising. He said Walmart committed to high-volume purchases well in advance of shipping deadlines. That helped a lot of American manufacturers save enough on the purchase of materials, personnel scheduling and inventory costs to realize significant gains, he wrote.

Andy Wilson, a retired Walmart officer, remembers well 1985 and Walton’s focus on buying American-made products. Wilson said at first Walton became concerned about job losses in Arkansas and wanted to help.

Walton championed the Buy American initiative for the next few years and altered the formula the company used to determine a competitive pricing practice between goods made in the U.S. and those imported. He said if Walmart could get within 5% of the same price and quality, the retailer would take a smaller markup and go with the American-made products.

Walton stepped in to help a dress shirt maker in Brinkley keep its doors open with purchase orders for shirts sold at Walmart, according to his memoir. Wilson remembers Walton slamming down his trucker cap at a Saturday morning meeting and telling the cap buyer to get him a cap made in the USA. It was Walton and Walmart that supported Paul Mayhan’s Outdoor Cap company with its first U.S. plant in Miami, Okla., in 1989 to make caps for Walmart’s Buy American program. Outdoor Cap had a warehouse in Bentonville in 1984 but was sourcing its caps from Asia.

Over the next three decades, Walmart grew into the nation’s largest retailer and international business. In 2013, Walmart reaffirmed its commitment to support American manufacturing jobs by purchasing $250 billion in products made, grown or assembled in the U.S. over the next decade. The retailer reported that it met that goal ahead of schedule and in early 2021 committed to spending another $350 billion on American-made goods by 2031. At the end of fiscal 2025, Walmart had spent $176 billion toward its goal.

OPEN CALL
Walmart held its first Open Call event in 2014 to give entrepreneurs a chance to pitch their products in front of buyers at the retailer’s home office in Bentonville. Except for 2020, when Walmart held the event virtually, the company has annually hosted the potential suppliers on its corporate campus.

This year’s event is slated for Oct. 7-8, and Walmart buyers will hold 700 meetings with around 600 hopeful suppliers. Three companies pitching are from Arkansas, though Walmart did not disclose their names.

Ben Moore, CEO and founder of The Ugly Co., based in Farmersville, Calif., made his first trip to Bentonville in 2023. He pitched his natural dried fruit snack product to buyers at the Open Call event. Moore is a fourth-generation farmer from California’s Central Valley who sought to reduce fruit waste by procuring the blemished produce and making dried fruit snacks for sale in retail, upcycling the fruit that would have ordinarily gone to the compost pile.

Ugly dried fruits were placed in Sam’s Club in late 2024, and he pitched again to Walmart merchants a year ago at the Open Call event. Moore said he shipped his first orders to 194 test stores in June. He said the dried cherries and peaches are the best sellers. He also developed a new value-size package for the Walmart business.

“Everything is going super well,” Moore said. “My dream was to get the healthy fruit snacks in Walmart at a price that was affordable for all families. It’s a sustainability-sourced sweet snack with no added sugar. And our lowest prices are at Sam’s Club and in Walmart. Walmart opened the door for us to get this product to everybody regardless of grocery budget.”

Moore was invited back to this year’s Open Call event as a mentor for first-time suppliers. The best advice he can give hopeful participants dates back to his days in the military.

“Reconnaissance is everything,” he said. “For Walmart specifically, or Sam’s Club, the first thing everybody ought to do is go to the modular store set that they’re trying to sell into. Go analyze that set and talk to a handful of store managers at various Walmarts and Sam’s Clubs to learn that set and really understand what’s adding value to the category. Heed those store managers’ advice because that is the foundation. Everything starts with reconnaissance.”

OPEN CALL CHANGES
Also this year, Walmart took its Open Call on the road, hosting events in eight cities between April and June. Walmart said the events allowed entrepreneurs to meet Walmart buyers, get real-time feedback and possibly score a fast pass to the main event in Bentonville.

Walmart said more than 60% of its U.S. suppliers are small businesses. Since 2014, Open Call has helped thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses grow their operations, expand their manufacturing footprint and create jobs in their local communities, according to the retailer.

“America has no shortage of ideas — it’s the infrastructure and tools that are often the biggest roadblocks,” said Jason Fremstad, senior vice president, supplier development for Walmart sourcing. “We want to find innovations that can help close that gap and unlock new possibilities for U.S. manufacturing.”

Open Call was opened this year to breakthrough technologies that enable or enhance U.S. manufacturing. Fremstad said Walmart is looking for the best of the best of manufacturing innovation that can extend shelf-life, reduce cost or complexity in the manufacturing process, with the least impact on the environment.

Editor’s note: The Supply Side section^[1] of Talk Business & Politics focuses on the companies, organizations, issues and individuals engaged in providing products and services to retailers. The Supply Side is managed by Talk Business & Politics, and is sponsored by HRG^[2].

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