Physician Practice, Meet Wal-Mart — Your New Largest Supplier
You’ve got to credit Wal-Mart with finding new markets to drive growth – in this case, in its own back yard. Over on Healthcare Matters , Tom Finn recently penned a piece summarizing and analyzing Wal-Mart’s recent move to tap the gr…
Walmart — Investing in Diversity (Women-Owned Businesses, That Is) For the Right Reasons
When supplier diversity becomes simply a whisper down the lane, reporting exercise built around a check-the-box mentality for Federal reporting, it’s pretty clear what the ultimate outcome of such programs will become. Namely, an inter…
The Walmart Inflation Test (Part 1)
For all you CPG and food companies in the audience (not to mention manufacturers), it should be no surprise that many producers are beginning to pass along the impacts of commodity price inflation, longer lead-times and in certain…
Looking Beyond Walmart’s CSR Positioning — The Real Reasons Behind the Drive to Buy Locally
Last Friday, Spend Matters opined on a number of total cost and environmental implications of this announcement from Walmart suggesting that the retail giant is going to move towards a greater embrace of local sourcing for fresh p…
Best of Intentions — Wal-Mart and the Challenges of the Greater Local Sourcing Good
It amazes me the disconnect between strategists and operators at companies that make grandiose statements about one policy or another only to find that such political campaign-like promises are extremely challenging to implement i…
A Captive Call Option: Walmart Makes a One-Sided Sourcing Deal with Li & Fung
You’ve got to admire Walmart for its procurement chutzpah. Or, (staying with the Yiddish theme for a minute), perhaps Walmart’s been more of a chazar in its approach. A colleague introduced me to this phrase, which is loosely translated as “a pig ? a…
Walmart Goes Direct and Doubles Down on Direct Savings
There’s been plenty of coverage describing Wal-Mart’s new
procurement strategy to avoid middlemen and cut $12 billion in spend in recent
weeks. Surely, savings is a significant motivation behind this recent
action, as it is with anything Wal…
Wal-Mart’s Supplier Alliance Program: Selfish or Selfless Supplier Development?
Over on Supply Chain Matters, Bob Ferrari recently described how Wal-Mart is putting its supplier development money where its mouth is for apparel suppliers, the group most likely impacted by CIT’s bankruptcy filing (which you can read expert opinion…
Melting Flashlights, Burning Hands – Target’s Spooky China Recall
Every month, it seems there’s another large-scale China consumer products recall. Earlier in the fall, it was Wal-Mart. Now it’s my favorite big-box non-warehouse format, Target. The LA Times blog recently reported that “Target has recalled 610,000 H…
