Changing the Game and Making History: How Supplier Diversity Is Walmart’s MVP

The story of Baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson, the legendary “42” of the Brooklyn Dodgers, is one of the great American narratives of the 20th century.

The first African American to break the color line in Major League Baseball in 1947, Robinson had a storied career in the game–playing in six World Series, helping clinch the championship for the Dodgers in 1955, and receiving the first Rookie of the Year award and an MVP. Impressive, but achievements won on the field only scratch the surface of his impact. Robinson’s breakthrough was a cultural earthquake. His talent, courage, and unassailable professionalism helped shatter the racist stereotypes well beyond the world of baseball, ushering in a new era of opportunity for African Americans in all fields.

Jackie Robinson–along with visionary manager Branch Rickey, who engineered his entrée into the majors–changed the game and made history. Their remarkable partnership is the subject of 42–a major motion picture from Warner Bros. staring newcomer Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and screen veteran Harrison Ford as Rickey. Set for release in Spring 2013, the film is also the inspiration for an ambitious multimedia campaign by Walmart.

The retail giant is highlighting its lauded supplier diversity efforts by paying tribute not only to Robinson but to everyday African American history makers who are the inheritors of his legacy.

“The purpose of Walmart’s partnership with the film 42 is to focus on saluting African Americans who overcome barriers, then and now,” said the retailer’s Director of Marketing, Sharonda L. Britton, taking a quick break from a full day of video shoots of Walmart supplier partners sharing their stories. The taped interviews will figure into a full-court media effort that rolls out during Black History Month in February and on to the film’s nationwide release in April.

“Walmart,” she continued, “plans on sharing the Jackie Robinson story, along with others who have faced challenges to find success, as a means of reaching out to and inspiring future generations of achievers.”

The promising buzz surrounding the upcoming film provides Walmart with an opening to place a bright spotlight on its work to broaden the diversity of its supplier network and provide suppliers with the tools needed to partner with the company successfully. The effort is significant because the potential impact–for small and minority firms with the products and skill sets that Walmart is looking for–is deep and far reaching.

The consumer reach of the company is massive, serving customers and members more than 200 million times per week through its Walmart and Sam’s Club retail outlets, online, and on mobile devices. Walmart operates in 27 countries and posted sales of approximately $444 billion in fiscal year 2012.

Those numbers represent a lot of shelves to fill and a lot of markets to serve. Walmart’s decision to prioritize diversity as a corporate strategy (black enterprise named the company one of the 40 Best for Diversity in 2012) stem’s from recognizing the importance of identifying signs of shifting tastes and emerging trends to keep its stores competitive. Strong supplier relationships are essential. Walmart is investing accordingly, spending $11 billion with minority and women-owned suppliers to date.

To further expand this thrust, Walmart last year teamed up with Black Enterprise to develop a series of 20/20 Vision Forums on supplier diversity to help entrepreneurs scale up their operations to land and service sizable contracts. This year, Walmart and be are co-promoting the “Get On The Shelf” initiative. This program is being re-designed to help suppliers sell retail products at neighborhood markets, Sam’s Club outlets, and big-box stores while bringing women-owned enterprises and minority-owned professional services firms into the fold.

Richelieu Dennis, CEO and founder of Sundial Brands, a manufacturer and distributor of organic skin and hair care products, has proven successful by following these guidelines.

“The core was that we had a great product from an integrity standpoint,” he says. “We were able to offer a cultural perspective and plug into a big business and still customize [our approach for] small customers.”

Sundial, named be’s 2008 Emerging Company of the Year, spent months working with the retailer to seamlessly integrate its brands into the Walmart structure. Another entrepreneur to benefit has been Amy Hilliard, CEO of The Comfort Cake Company. Hilliard set out to put her Southern-style baked goods (“the pound cake that feels like a hug”) on the shelves of major nationwide retailers right out the gate when she founded the venture in 2001. Herself, a veteran of high-scale corporate

marketing (see profile), she invested strongly in product development and pro-level packaging that consumers associate with big brand products. She also made sure she could produce to scale of a major buyer.

“I knew I wanted to be in the wholesale business, not have a small bakery.  In order to do that, I needed to sell to capacity from the beginning,” she said.

Hilliard sold her home to finance the launching of Comfort Cake, but the investment paid off. By 2007 her buttery cake slices were occupying prime  space on Walmart shelves. Hilliard came to entrepreneurship having already earned her stripes as a corporate marketing professional. Most small business owners don’t have that kind of edge or the perspective that comes with it. The traditional barriers that small and new business owners face–limited experience, lack of capital, little viable or supportive business infrastructure, especially in rural areas, and competitors with deeper pockets and established relationships–can inhibit growth of your bottom line. At their most oppressive, these obstacles can do something far worse; they inhibit vision.

For the past two years, Walmart has focused increased attention to the Deep South, the so-called “Black Belt,” where small farmers have traditionally struggled to upscale their operations beyond serving local grocers and farmers market.  Walmart is helping awaken small growers to their potential to be major league produce suppliers.

“The missing link in the region had been a big company that could bring dollars, technology, and a contemporary business perspective to agricultural development efforts,” according to Ronald McCormick, Walmart’s senior director for sustainable agriculture.

He added that the prospect of a large partner such as Walmart would give area farmers an incentive to grow, to expand their vision of what they can achieve. Working in collaboration with Tuskegee University and other local historically black land grant institutions,  the company is conducting pilot programs in five states (Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Georgia).

“The ability to see the scope of possibilities is one way to overcome a particularly sensitive hurdle: small businesses and big buyers speak a different language,” said McCormack. “In one instance we had a need for watermelon, so we ordered 17 truckloads from a group of local farmers. For them, a truckload meant a pickup truck’s worth of melons, so that’s what they grew. Then on the day of delivery, these massive semi trucks   drive up. You can see the problem.”

Mishaps like these are also learning opportunities, says McCormick, noting that this coming season Walmart is expecting to buy an estimated 200 “semi-sized” loads of watermelon from those farmers.

Much of what McCormick advises local farmers is applicable to the myriad small businesses nationally looking to “Get on the Shelf” at Walmart. He says suppliers should tailor products to the buyer’s needs as well as develop partnerships with other small ventures as  way of achieving scale quickly and affordably.

“We know that there is still much more work to do, and many more suppliers we can help develop and prepare to do business with Walmart,” says Britton. “We’re proud to partner with African American suppliers in breaking barriers to opportunity. Step by step, Walmart’s Supplier Diversity team is changing the landscape for small business. In their own way, they are making history.”

Amy Hilliard,
CEO of Comfort Cake

How this entrepreneur follows the principles of Jackie Robinson
to reach the ‘gold standard’ as a Walmart supplier

Before launching Comfort Cake in 2001, Detroit native Amy Hilliard had built an impressive–in many ways, groundbreaking–corporate career. Her resumé boasts senior marketing executive positions with Bloomingdale’s, Gillette, Pillsbury, L’Oreal, and Burrell Communications Group. “All gold standard companies … I had gold standard ambitions,” she says.

During her years with these firms Hilliard helped pioneer strategic niche marketing targeting diverse consumers. Indeed, she was a key figure in putting supplier diversity on the corporate agenda and, in turn, created the kind of environment where she would find opportunity as CEO of her own venture. Today Comfort Cake products are distributed nationally to major retailers, including Walmart, and through its website, www.comfortcake.com.

Landing her first contract with Walmart was a grand-slam homerun but she soon found it necessary to adapt in order to keep the partnership alive. “Not long after we started, trans fat free requirements began spreading across the country and Comfort Cake had to take a step back and work that out if we were going to able to continue as a Walmart supplier,” says Hilliard. After some time off the shelf to regroup, newly formulated Comfort Cake products have come back strong, with distribution expanding from 42 stores to 500 by February 2013.

“I was very gratified with how they were willing to work with us to find that sweet spot. Walmart thinks long term,” she says, also crediting Walmart’s willingness to partner with her on product development (coming soon, the new Sweet Benefits line of sugarless cakes) and going the extra mile to invest in her potential to reach the next level as an entrepreneur.

“Walmart sponsored me to attend classes at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, even though I already have a Harvard MBA. They use a great deal of foresight to understand their suppliers’ capabilities as markets change and shift and identify where there may be a need to evolve. It was a phenomenal experience and I was extremely grateful.”

Given her experiences as an entrepreneur and corporate executive, Hilliard finds it easy to identify with Walmart’s focus on the legacy of Jackie Robinson, whose work ethic and sense of grace when confronting adversity she believes set a gold standard for African Americans in business–and in all fields–to emulate.

“He was an amazing icon who showed that diversity is good business and that breaking barriers is about performing at the top of your game, developing relationships, and making the way for others to follow and do better.”

What made Robinson so heroic is that he achieved great strides as a ballplayer when he broke the color line in the majors some 65 years ago. He made a commitment to demonstrate professional excellence, maintain his dignity despite racist attitudes inside and outside the ballpark and fight for equality. He continued that tradition after baseball, helping to create employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for blacks as one of the first black vice presidents of a major American corporation and co-founder of Freedom National Bank, an African American-owned financial institution based in Harlem.

Says Hilliard: “If you don’t see it, you won’t believe it. The best thing we can hope for when we succeed is that we help the next generation believe in their dreams.”
Hilliard, like other such entrepreneurs, is clearly conducting business in the tradition of 42.