Across my almost 40-year career, I have seen quite a few changes in business, industries and technology. In college, my first computer experience was in an era pre-PC where we used punch cards to “write” out commands for programs to run on a mainframe computer in a city hundreds of miles away… transmitted by analog phones in a cradle. Equally, I have had the chance to meet, work with, and call on a wide variety of business luminaries across the decades and the quote that is the title of this essay comes from the one and only Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart.
It was 1986 and I was working as a Marketing Assistant for Kimberly Clark. Based at HQ in Neenah Wisconsin, I had the chance to work with a wide variety of the senior execs at KC during those days and was working directly for one of my personal mentors, Bruce Paynter. Bruce passed away from ALS in 2009, and I have written a number of essays about Bruce, and they are listed in the archive to the left of the home page for this blog. Take a few minutes and read about the lessons I learned from him over the years.
Getting back to the mid-80’s and my experience with Sam Walton. I was part of a team of KC managers and execs (led by Ralph Buckingham, the bigger than life President of sales for KC) who went down to Bentonville Arkansas to meet with this relatively small southern retailer… Walmart. Now by then, Walmart had over 800 discount stores (over 10,000 total stores today) and had not yet opened its first supercenter. The original discount store was a small discount department store that sold no food, produce, dairy, or traditional grocery items and offered a very limited selection of Kimberly Clark products. A regional customer for KC for sure, but not in the top 10 list of national accounts (and probably not top 20 either!!) Regardless of its size, and seemingly insignificant prowess, we went down to Bentonville for my first ever “top-to top” customer meetings.
While I don’t remember too many of the meetings and all the topics covered, the final conversation led by Sam Walton himself is one that will never be forgotten. He and his team walked us through their future plans to build a brand-new store concept… the Walmart Supercenter. (the first Supercenter was opened in Missouri in 1987) He described it as two stores in one… a discount store on one side and a grocery store on the other… both sides fueled by the same “everyday low prices” consumer promise. While an interesting topic, it all seemed pretty fanciful and hard to believe. Sam Walton finished his pitch by asking KC, just like he was personally asking a number of other prominent CPG companies (P&G, Kraft, General Mills, Coke, Nabisco, to name a few) to put members of THEIR team in Bentonville to work directly with the Walmart team…. so “someday with your help, maybe, just maybe we can be bigger than K-Mart.”
I still remember those exact words and the stunned silence of out KC team. K-mart was one of, if not the largest of Kimberly Clark’s customers in 1986 and it was IMPOSSIBLE to imagine that Sam Walton’s dream (vision/fantasy/mirage/etc.) could ever come to life. We politely finished the meeting and went out into the parking lot of Walmart’s HQ… which was literally the old Bentonville High School. I remember the team laughed and was sure that this Arkansas retailer would NEVER be bigger than K-mart and that we could NEVER imagine putting a KC sales exec in that town, dedicated to working with Walmart. If memory serves, Ralph Buckingham did decide to put a sales exec on Walmart to keep an eye on things but moved them to Memphis (over 300 miles from Bentonville.)
I share this story today for a few reasons:
#1) I was triggered to capture this in writing by the announcement that the last K-mart in America is closing this month…. pictured above. Not only is Walmart definitively bigger than K-mart, but they are also the largest retailer in the world by a mile!
#2) Secondly, as a young marketing assistant in 1986, I wasn’t sure who was right in that Arkansas parking lot. Sam Walton had big ideas and big dreams and was asking for our help…. and I had a sense that we could help him and the folks at Walmart. The KC execs were so SURE that his vision was nothing more than a pipe dream or a fantasy… but didn’t completely dismiss him or them either. I learned an early lesson (repeated numerous times across my career, most notably at Blockbuster, see https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-gravity-of-blockbuster.html) that while “Change is Certain, Progress is not,” … no one can forecast the moments of massive transformation when “Change” morphs into “Progress”.
#3) Finally, I have learned a ton across my career and am working hard today to keep adding to those important lessons. In life and in business we operate in the “forward/drive” gear… there is no reverse. Remember, we have an infinite INABILITY to change yesterday, but an infinite ABILITY to affect tomorrow! Try hard to take the lessons of your past… or lessons you are learning today… and work hard to apply them to make tomorrow better than yesterday and “maybe, just maybe we can be bigger than K-mart!”
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