I was fortunate to see and hear Bill Simon, President and CEO of retail behemoth Walmart, deliver a keynote speech at the NRF Big Show 2013 in New York earlier this week.
While the majority of representatives in the 27,000 attending this conference were big business connected, small business numbers were significant. For Simon, almost every other retailer is small given the size of Walmart.
I found Simon’s presentation compelling. It made me question the time and energy we in small business spend worrying about, talking about and complaining about big business. Walmart is serving its shareholders. To do that it needs to make more money. The key ways it can do that is to get bigger, to buy better and to be more loved by shoppers. If we in small business want to grow we have to do the same things.
Simon announced some initiatives, initiatives we could announce. The size of is company got his announcements noticed. We in small business and in channels like newsagencies need to do a better job at getting noticed for good initiatives. This is our biggest challenge – getting known and trusted for the value we bring to our communities. What Simon announced was not all that great but it got excellent press the next day because it was an announcement from Walmart. We need to be perceived y journalists, editors and publishers to be as important.
Here are some unedited notes I took (with the wonderful Evernote on my iPad FYI) during the presentation:
There is a national paralysis waiting for someone to do something. i.e. private sector waiting for the government to report on how many jobs the private sector has created.
Can we create a bigger pie, a bigger pie from which we can attract sales. This starts with us reaching outside what we are in business.
Three initiatives from Walmart.
- Support good retail jobs. Stand up for the jobs. Bring structure to the role of the jobs. To create a reason, a strength and happiness. This is where Tower can play a role and fit through our training program.
- Supporting US veterans. Identifying that veterans can be a terrific group to tap into to drive country and business prosperity. Calls on retailers to hire veterans. Walmart offering a job to any honourably discharged veteran within a year of their discharge.
- Supporting American manufacturing. Items made, sourced and grown in the US account for around two thirds of their products. Labour costs in Asia are rising, transport costs high. Tipping points indicate that bringing more jobs home can work. Walmart to buy $50B more US products over next ten years.
Got all veterans in the room to stand. Loud applause.
The tyranny of average. Average is not good enough. Average is below average. We have to act with passion, excitement and convistion. We have to do good. This is what differentiates us. This is what differentiates success.
It’s not about big or small. It’s about having a vision for your business and pursuing this to success.
Committed to working hard every day to get better and be more successful. This is a big business versus small business lesson – big business is not standing still.
This was a compelling presentation with plenty of takeaways even for this small business person. The breakout was Simon’s passion for business and retail.
On 11th Jan you posted we needed to act against coles/woolies before it was too late now Walmart is not so bad. They have almost destroyed whole retail communities in the US and pay their employees below the poverty line, sounds like coles to me.
one problem with these big companies is that they dont play fair. they use their political clout and cheque books to force deregulation of everything under the guise of fair trading, then they use all the dirty tricks that there sheer size allows to screw everyone else from suppliers, consumers and competitors. A lot of their ttactics are not illegal (some sail close to the wind tho) but most of them are certainly immoral.
just ask your self, are we better or worse off in this country because of coles/wooleis? and i mean from all view points, supplier, consumer and competitor.
the consumer might try to raise an argument to say they are better off, but in areas where competition has been killed off, they will probably find they are being screwed as well.
i dont believe coles/woolies add anything to our way of living.
Luke you are misrepresenting what I have write.
I happened to catch the documentary made about Walmart in about 2005/6 on SBS2 the other night.
Didn’t leave a good Walmart feeling with me.
The one thing I would like to do is support Aust products, but unfortunately our wages are simply not going to be competitive for another 20 yrs vs China/Asia, if then, so we just can’t make anything at a competitive price.
Luke, I don’t think Mark is comparing Coles/Woolies with Walmart. He is comparing the passion with which they
pursue their customers and their overall
belief in the US. He (the Walmart dude)
was telling them that they must buy from their own manufacturers and use their own
people (veterans especially) to sell the goods and once again VALUE AMERICA.
I think ??? Mark was telling us to do the same.
Employ more kids (they are the ones out of work) Employ single mothers (they need the work to feel good about themselves. Buy Australian where possible because the Asianisation of Australia will also be its downfall. In other
words we have to BELIEVE IN WHAT WE ARE DOING AND WHERE WE ARE GOING.
Yes: have a plan for your business, personally and the community, follow your plan with passion and price and be public in engaging.
Some newsagencies are the most important business in their local community.
Not wanting to take away from this Topic but what is the new tagging I see today going up for what was Petrol Plus (Woolies) to now Caltex?
Have they jumped in bed together with the discounting?
Mark in your post you wrote ” It made me question the time and energy we in small business spend worrying about, talking about and complaining about big business.”, how have I misrepresented what you have posted as on the 11th Jan you want us to spend energy and time worrying about big business?
Walmart pays its staff (including veterans) below the poverty line in the US, it employs minorities because they can be be easily ripped off. They like veterans because they do not have to pay health care and use the vet pensions to top up wages. They have been doing for decades what Coles/woolies are doing now, even going into smaller format stores to push out small family businesses.
June as far as passion goes Walmart operates on being the cheapest operator, that’s it nothing else, just do a quick search on how they operate and it has nothing to do with passion except making $$$ at others expense.
“Wal-Mart is experimenting with smaller “Neighborhood Markets” and “Marketside” stores to try and get into communities it either avoided by choice, or because it faced resistance by community groups that perceived its business practices to be unfair to workers and other neighborhood stores.” sound familiar to what Mark was talking about last week?
My beef with the post is that Mark spoke about how impressed he was that Bill Simon talked about passion in business and that average was not good enough yet his company does not practice what it preaches others to do, and that our duoploy and Walmart are the same beast as they only grow market share by killing off the rivals and force local producers to the wall by unfair trading practices, nothing else.
Luke I’ll leave my words to speak for themselves and not your interpretation.
What I have not provided in the two posts to which you refer is commentary on the social responsibility of Walmart or my views on the company.