Curation Secrets: Inside the Merchant Mind

Sam’s Club doesn’t win by carrying everything, it wins by choosing the right things. We’re joined by Kaity Whitmire, who leads the wellness business at Sam’s Club (HBA, OTC, and Baby), to unpack how curation, trust, and “more newness more often” turn a complex category into a simpler shopping experience for real families.

We talk about what member obsession looks like at shelf and online, why wellness is a need-state intensive space, and how trends like collagen, creatine, and protein are shaping what shoppers expect next (fiber is coming). Katie explains why a curated assortment can feel like a treasure hunt while still reducing choice overload, and how trusted retailers can help cut through the noise of social media claims and endless marketplace listings by making the complex simple.

If you’re on the brand or supplier side, you’ll get a clear view into what strong partnerships require: transparency, a strategic mindset, and a digital-first approach built for scale. Kaity shares why the club channel can be a brand-building engine, how price pack architecture can start with a club pack and ladder into other formats, and how testing online or in a handful of clubs can shape a smarter go-to-market plan.

We also dig into the omnichannel side of the member journey: why e-commerce still needs editing, how content and member reviews build confidence, and why Scan and Go changes the value equation by saving time. If you care about retail merchandising, wellness innovation, and the future of curated commerce, this one is packed with practical insight. Subscribe, share this with a retail friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Welcome And Katie’s Sam’s Story

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hello and welcome to the Retail Journey podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Charles Greathouse.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

And I am James Harris. And today we are talking to Katie Whitmeyer from Sam's Club. Katie. Hi. Welcome to the Retail Journey.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Thank you for having me. I'm so excited about this.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Yes. Glad you could be here. Um, you've had an interesting journey across retail, if you would, but would love to hear a little bit about you before we get started.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Yeah. Uh so first and foremost, I am a mom. Uh two very precious, very wild, tiny little children at home, six and three. Um, my husband and I live in northwest Arkansas. I'm actually a bit of a unicorn in that I was born here.

SPEAKER_04 0:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

And I grew up in this and essentially only ever worked at Sam's Club. Uh and so really, yeah, I'm a loyalist. Let's go. Um, so I have the privilege and honor of leading the wellness space for Sam's Club, which encompasses HBA, OTC, and baby. Um, I have an absolutely brilliant team and I've come up through merchandising. So I got to do things like I was a pharmacy technician in the local club.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Um, I worked in Wine and Spirits, which is a really fun category.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

I bet. Yeah. Uh I got to circle back to that.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Come back to that. Uh I got to learn about trash bags with the retail legend Tom Kinzer. So that was amazing. Got to do some finance planning. That was that was a time. Yeah. Uh, and then have kind of been in the OTC and wellness space ever since.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Excellent.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Finance planning, that was a time. All right. Yeah, that was a time.

unknown 1:37

I learned a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

I learned it was great. It was actually, so it was one of the hardest uh jobs that I've ever had. Not because I had to learn how to do a budget and that type of thing, like retail math, you you figure it out, right? Um, but it was a different type of leading. You had to figure out how to lead uh without any actual power.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Kind of cross-brims.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

You want to own the PM? Right. I just support the people that own the P. Uh and so that was a transition for me. But it's it taught me a lot about communication, it taught me a lot about uh cross-functional ways of working, and I think ultimately made me a much better merchant.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Well, a big part of leading is is influencing. Yep. And if you can learn to influence when you don't have authority, you can definitely lead what you have if you have.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

On the uh the Walmart side, that's why they made all the merchant training programs. You ended as a uh planning analyst, um, which is you know the the lowest of the totem pool, zero decision rights, just influence, focused on what the PL says about the decisions that are being made. That was an intentional move back in the day. I think they land in associate merchant roles now, but I uh I don't think I wanted that at the time, but yes, relish the ability relish the ability to like just influence, no decision rights whatsoever.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Hey, like I remember there's the this I had an absolutely brilliant merchant that I supported. Yeah, um, she'd been doing it for a very long time, and she uh she's from the Northeast, so she was just very direct in everything that she did. I'll never forget having to tell her you can't go buy this item. You don't have any open to buy crossing. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Clothes to buy.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

And she looked at me and she was like, no. Yeah, okay. Um, so I went back to my desk and I was like, how do I go back and do this? Right. And so that quickly was like, okay, if I can get an operations perspective of like, where are you gonna put this, right? If I can get a liability perspective of you're jeopardizing, you're not maximizing the sales that you get on this because it doesn't have space.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Um, and come back with the actual plan instead of just a product.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Maybe I will have a better outcome, right? And so I came back and I actually had a solution that time. Yes, and it was a wildly different conversation. And she saw value in that, and then we were partners in it, right? And so not only was I accountable to helping her make the space and do the buy, but now you know she was on the hook and we had a plan. So it taught me that's a great lesson.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Oh wow. So good, very humbling, also hard, very hard. Yeah, so you're a loyalist. Yes, you only worked at Sam's Club.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

I'm leaving at Sam's.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

I have to assume this is your favorite job.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

This is my favorite job.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

So what uh pulls you out of bed every morning, gets you so excited about this job.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Yeah, okay. Uh so first and foremost, my team. Like, I have the privilege of working with the most diverse, most brilliant group of people um that I've ever come in contact with. And so I get really jazzed about that because if you ask what motivates me, it's people, product, and innovation.

SPEAKER_04 4:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Um, I uh I love change. Uh, change is hard, but I think change forces us all to think differently and do different things.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Change could also be fun.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

It's so fun. There's so much energy in this space right now and just in retail in general, and you really can reinvent yourself if you have this appetite for change and you have this ability to be agile, right? And then I'm very people motivated. Like people, um people inspire me, people challenge me, people develop me and grow me. And so anything that I can do to interact with other people throughout the day is where I'm gonna spend my time and how I'm gonna get my energy.

SPEAKER_04 5:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Uh, and then I just love retail. Like when I was a buyer, I remember walking down the aisles and like my buy plan was like my family album. I love that attached to these items that you pour your heart and soul into to see a member respond and react. Like it's personal, and it even if they don't like it, right? I want to know why you don't like that, right? How can I make it better? Because I know what the intent is and I know what the capacity of the retail environment is right now, and I just want to serve people.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Yeah, yeah. So that's cool. And in this kind of space, like you're serving families in a significant way, you're serving people, helping them feel better, right? Um, giving them a delight or a treat that they might not have expected, obviously surprising them with value and simple savings or yeah, whatever the current savings instant. Obviously, it's instant, be simple. Um and yeah, so that's I mean, that's really fun. Yeah, love that.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Yeah, I uh I'm manual. Like it is so cool personally when your professional side um overlays with your personal machine so well. Yeah, and Sam's Club for me feels like home. Um, I had the opportunity to be a legacy Sam's Club child. Uh so I very much remember being uh in elementary school on a flatbed on a Saturday with my dad as he did club talk club tours. Um and then oh awesome. Yeah, like so. Retail for me, day one, was kind of ingrained in the blood.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Um, and I never just looked at orange juice as orange juice.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Right. Um so that was never ruined for you. It was just never normal. There was always strategy behind the mod.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Right. But normal was like, well, why does this look interesting?

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Why do I want to buy this? Right, like the shopper psychology piece always really interested.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

That's such a different perspective. It is like I remember when shopping was ruined for me because it went from I'm just looking for things I want to, I wonder why they did that. Yeah. I wanted you, oh, that's interesting. Oh, you must be trying to. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yeah, y'all, my friends and family will not go to the store with me.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Like any yeah, for sure. Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

They're like, you are not on a mission.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Doing it for them.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah, like you just constantly want to look at things, yeah, critique things, and ask why about things. And they're like, it's not a curiosity event. This is a shopping event. Yeah, like we are gonna buy things.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

It's so funny. So your your everyday members, people that are that come in and Sam's every week or two, they're used to this, but maybe a few people listening are Sam's Club does really well with new.

Wellness Trends And More Newness

SPEAKER_04 7:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

Right? Yeah. Um, I had the opportunity this morning, about an hour, and uh so I spent some time in the Bentonville Club.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

And I don't want to compare one department to another, but I did walk the whole store, and there's so much more new in wellness than in many other places. Now, maybe that's where a lot of the trends are, right? Collagen and uh uh you know different different things that are happening at the same time. Talk about your kind of philosophy behind new and you know what that means to the member, what that means to well, to Sam's.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Yeah, uh, so my philosophy is more newness more often, right? Um, and and I think it's as simple as that. Our members pay to shop with us, and they don't pay for necessarily they very simply said, they pay because of an item, right? They pay to shop with us because we have the very best item at the very best value. And then they keep coming back because we've figured out a way to remove the friction and we're maniacal about what that experience is and how do we drive excellence at every point in that journey, right? Um, wellness, I keep telling my team, wellness is on the precipice of greatness. Uh, it's one of the top five things on our members' minds when they walk in. And when you look at it, the wellness space is actually um setting the stage for what's happening in functional food and bev. People have known about collagen and they've known about protein for a long time in the wellness space. And now you're seeing it migrate into chips, into bars, into yogurts, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:10

The protein into everything.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

It's in everything, right? And fiber's next. And so um I take great responsibility in making sure that the wellness space at Sam's Club delivers really great treasure hunt type experiences for our members that keep them on the cutting edge of what's new, what's emerging, with the best quality and value proposition that they can find anywhere in the market. And the beauty of it is we're a curated environment. And so you don't have to walk a million aisles with a million items to try and figure out what's the best of the best bypassing.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

There's only one, maybe two on the shelf. I had that hard choice for you.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

I had that impression in the main kind of aisle of wellness where you've got collagen products and creatine products. And um, I thought I bet the the percentage of new here is greater than not just other parts of the club, but really anywhere because you have such a reduced skew count.

SPEAKER_04 10:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Um, a really large percentage of it can surprise you every couple weeks.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Yeah. I'll tell you, the the whole box is doing a great job though. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Right? No, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

The entire box is really maniacally focused on items right now and how much more newness is in the market compared to three years ago is insane. Yeah. And all boats rise when the waters rise. And so I think what you're seeing from Sam's Club is we're really ambitious to give members reasons to come down the aisle and explore and find great items and find great solutions for different need states that they have, right? And wellness, uh, we have a joke internally, and we say like wellness technically is skew intensive because it's need state intensive.

SPEAKER_03 10:47

Yeah. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Like I have to cover everything from your headache to your multivitamin to your herbs and supplementation, all the way down to your band-aids. Yeah. Right. And that's just a vast assortment and we head to toe. Um, and it's a privilege, but it also makes it a little bit complex. And for the average person that's not engaged consistently with a healthcare professional or anything like that, it's a very intimidating space. Yeah. And so it's our job, and it's also the the kind of unique asset that Sams Club has is that we're a curated environment. And so again, we drive simplicity by only having a couple of options per meatstake for that member.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

They're just the best.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

They're the best of the best.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

The best options, the best of the best. That's uh and that takes a lot of knowing. It does. I mean, you must be curious. We talked about how you shop and you're not fun to shop with. If you're not also curious, you're just trying to buy stuff, like, yeah, no, this isn't gonna be fun for you. Yeah, but if like talk to us about like, I don't know, where does that come from? And and I don't know, if someone's out there, maybe they're buying, maybe they're in the supplier world. Like, how would you encourage them to really take curiosity on behalf of the member with them? Like, yeah, what does that look like?

Curiosity As A Merchant Advantage

SPEAKER_00 12:03

I think uh about a couple of things. Number one, you have to be member obsessed at Sam's Club. Like, I have to care about every single component of the member's interaction with an item and their experience, right? Um, I have to constantly be curious. Um, we Latrice is really her big take right now, Latrice is our CEO, and her big take right now is ask for more and what's your more? Right. And what we did yesterday is not good enough for today. And so even if we have a great item on the shelf, my team is going back and saying, like, how can I make this better? What's next in the evolution of this? Um, and I think that curiosity is gonna be what sets a good merchant apart from a great merchant. Um, and you know, the world is never gonna be as slow again as it is today. And so if that's crazy to think about the future, right, then we're gonna be part of the left behind series.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Yeah. So you kind of lean in there where you know items are a big focus. Um companies, suppliers bring items, right? Yes. Um what's yeah, uh so we could we kind of break down about 50-50 of people that work in retail, people that work uh on the CPG side of things that that listen. Um how what what's what's best case? What are you looking for in a supplier where you say, oh, that this is somebody I can work with, I could partner with.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Yeah. Um brands can be built at Sams Club, right? And I think there's this historical notion of I've got to be X percent of the market before I can come and enter the club channel. Yeah, that's not the case, right? And our members pay to shop with us because of items. And if we can present an item that takes care of a need state for a member at an incredible value, they're gonna buy it.

SPEAKER_04 13:53

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

And so as I think about what makes a really great supplier relationship, number one, they're strategic. It's not transactional. If all we're doing is transacting a PO, then we're not serving the member to the best of our ability, right? Yeah. And what being strategic really means is number one, you're transparent. Um I have to know what you know and you have to know what I know so that we can be um aligned from the beginning and we can stay aligned throughout the journey.

SPEAKER_04 14:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

The other thing is they have to be as maniacal about my member as I am, right? They have to consider the item, the family album, like I do, and they have to be as passionate about that. And then I think the third thing is they have to have a growth mindset. Um, we are a growth retailer and we are focused on growth and they have to do that as well. And they have to think about things like capacity, they have to think about scale, right? Um, they have to think about hominy. You have to have a digital first mindset, right? And those things, while very simple and and elementary, really are the steps for success for a great partnership.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

In your category, especially that digital first, there's a lot of things to research. Yeah. Right. Especially if you're if you're already taking, these are my five supplements I take every day. And I'm gonna, I really want to try this sixth thing, but it doesn't overlap. There's a lot of opportunity for research. Do you see that on the site?

Making Wellness Simple And Trusted

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Oh, absolutely, right? Um, and it's both a an exciting thing and a kind of a scary thing, right? Um, there are less and less people that we are considering medically motivated, meaning they've had an engagement with a healthcare provider coming down the aisle than ever before because preventative wellness isn't arise.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Everybody wants to live a healthier life. And if I can make one small step today that keeps me out of a chronic condition down the road, why would I not do that?

SPEAKER_04 15:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Um, and so members are looking for information everywhere that they go and they're being inundated all the time with information. It can be their neighbor Susie, it can be Betsy on social media, it can be this TikTok influencer that they just saw, right? And so I think that's again where a credible retailer like Sam's Cloud becomes really valuable because they trust us, right? And they know we're not gonna put something out there that's not efficacious or that hasn't been vetted. And so really it's up to us then to make the complex simple. How do I take all these really massive, you know, uh and compelling claims about all the things that this might treat and really boil it down to say, hey, this might help with XYZ. You take it like this from a dosage standpoint, and this is the regimen, right? Um, and if we can, if we can be very thoughtful about making the complex simple and we can make it easy for the member, that's how we're gonna win. And that's how we'll be relatable in this world of noise to your point where you could easily end up with 45 different things as part of your morning regimen.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Yeah, right. I think we, you know, we we often talk about um, you know, we're in Betonville, the the land of Walmart. I have not too many people start off with Bettonville, the land of Sam's Club. Um, I think we're gonna start saying, you know, we support Sam's Club and Walmart instead of L Mart and Sam's Club. We love Sam's Club. Well, we we love Sam's Club. It's been uh it's been really fun, and it's been fun to watch, you know, different environments, different categories, different departments, and and the ways that people bring things to life, but it's clear that the member trusts what the what Sam's Club says, this is the best. Um in the rest of the e-commerce world, it isn't this is the best. It's this is all the things. Um I um I take quite a bit of supplements as a recovering vitamin merchant. Um and so I I believe in it and I take them and I and I love them. Um and I have have died inside when some of the Spring Valley private brand items I created have been you know discontinued or changed. It's like, no, my formula. Like that was awesome. Why didn't we change this? It's gone. Um that's fine. But I have a hard time. Um now that I've been uh promoted to customer from uh Walmart Inc., my wife and I don't argue about shopping on Amazon as much. Like I certainly like let's start with Walmart. Please can we start?

SPEAKER_04 18:17

Please.

Why E-Commerce Still Needs Curation

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Like, do you know what I do for a living? Let's start here. This is Bentonville, come on. Um, but there's still some times where it's like, okay, Amazon, okay, it's fine, whatever. Uh supplements, absolutely not. Like you can't just buy something on Amazon, you don't know where that thing came from. It's it's hard and it's getting more complex. This marketplace thing has become really complex. I'm interested in the land of you know, eternally long tail assortment, and you're selective and omnichannel. What's the role of e-commerce? Like, help people think through like this isn't about an eternally long tail. Right. Like, what does the e-commerce at Sam's Club mean for the member?

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yeah, it still has to be curated, right? I mean, yeah. Based on behavior, that they don't go past the first page um the bulk of the time.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Most of the time, not the first.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

Yeah, right. Like it still has to be a curated environment. Um, but we also have to be cognizant of the the shopper psychology behind how they interact with e-commerce, right? And the member doesn't think about it in terms of a channel, right? They think of it in terms of a um shopping experience, right? And I need a certain product and I need it in this time frame and I need it this way. And that's gonna dictate do I go in club, do I go online, do I have it delivered, right? Is it okay to ship to my home? Like all of those are our decision points kind of in that model. And as we think about the role of e-commerce, it is the fastest growing channel by far and away. It's also where we can do a really great job from a reach perspective. Our clubs are curated, right? And um, a member in Florida does not behave the same way as a member in California sometimes, right? Does not behave the same way as a member in the Northeast, right? And so to come into a club is a very um, very tough thing to do. Um, because we have to make a big bet from a productivity standpoint and you know it's one in, one out kind of mentality. To come in online, what we can actually do is we can put it in front of a member where they would expect to find it, and we can figure out who the member is that's gonna buy this, right? And then we can take those learnings and maybe expand into club from there. But I have way more traffic in club. I mean, the largest club is on your is in your hand.

SPEAKER_04 20:38

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Right. And if you think about it like that, that changes the game because everybody, nobody would say, I don't want to be in the largest club.

SPEAKER_04 20:44

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Right. And so when you think about that and you think about the size of it, um, dot com represents a significant number of clubs volume for us. And so when you go online and you have a curated environment, you can really kind of build a basket the way that you want that basket to be. We can tell the member more content about what the item is and why of it. We can show them inspiring images. Like I can show you toothpaste with a toothbrush with floss. Yeah, I can show you the entire three-piece system.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

The whole thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Wow, and then you might say, Okay, well, I didn't have floss on my list, but now I have floss on my list. Yeah, right. So that's a better experience.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Dentists around the country are just celebrating your ability to regimen these guys. Come on.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Is on fire, which is also the barometer of your health and your body. So oral health is very, but you can also see reviews from members about products, and I think that's really important too, is I want to control the story that's different kind of verification going on with Sam's Club reviews.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

It is it carries weight.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Right. Like you know, these are people just like you that paid to be here, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:52

That's interesting. And none of them are paid for because they couldn't be there were they not a member that bought the product.

SPEAKER_00 21:59

Right. Syndicate some reviews. And so there is some syndication out there, but it's on brains or items that are at SamsCloud.

SPEAKER_04 22:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

So you know that it's real and you know that it's a usage. Um, and I think that's really important just as you go through the validation and the trust again behind the quality of why the item is there.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So going back to suppliers a little bit, um, so you kind of explained these this is what you look for in a great partner. What about that company that says or has thought Sam's wasn't an option? And now they're hearing Sam's is an option. How do they think about how to bring value to something that sells in mass? Uh, how to think about putting that into a club environment?

What Members Mean By Value

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Yeah. So our members tell us very so we have a thing called uh our members mark community. Um, and it's live, it's a member community where we can go out and ask them about products, we can ask them about experiences, we can be like, how do you define value? Right. So they tell us very directly, uh, which is great. And uh part of that goes back to that member obsession. We literally are that obsessed that we're listening to that level of detail from our members. And when they define value, price is very important, twice as important as anything else, right? Um, but they also define value as quality and experience. Yeah. And so they give us credit for the quality.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Experience in club or experience with the product? Both, both. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Any touch point of experience. Like how was the packaging when I arrived at the shelf? Or how did it arrive to me if it was shipped to my house, right?

SPEAKER_04 23:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Um, does it tell me what it needs to do? Does it, you know, not spill if it's a gummy vitamin? Do the gummies not all clump up at the bottom and then I can't get my hand through the top of the jar, right? All of those things. And then did I have to wait in line? Because I didn't have scan and go, which you should have scan and go. Um, use that scan and go. Yeah, that's time is money, and that takes away from the value equation for us. And so all any touch point that the member has goes into that experience metric that we evaluate and they contribute value to.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

When you mentioned scan and go, I'm glad because I was going to bring it up because it is one of the smartest things I've ever seen a retailer do. Um and just my personal experience with it, I'm a little bit slow with technology, a little bit of a late adapter. So I was in a club shopping one day, and just for years, you know, you go to the thing and you check out, right? So it was since um Scan a Go as an option. I'm standing there, it was around Christmas, around the holidays. Uh every line was pretty backed up, and I and that I remembered. And I pulled up the app, scanned all the stuff in my cart, and just walked out and never have touched a register. So did you it's amazing, it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

You walk into other retailers and you're like, wait, what? I have to wait.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Like that's not optimal, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and the delivery's um impressive. Like it's it works really well. Now I'm in Benville. So I don't know. Maybe, maybe we're really, really good here. We're expanding, but like, boy, are we good?

SPEAKER_00 25:08

We're expanding. Yes, we're expanding express delivery. Uh, there's a lot of exciting things. You think about the the beauty of Sam's Club. I mean, imagine it's three o'clock in the afternoon and you're like, I did not make dinner plans. It is my wife's birthday.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Um, you're in a bad way.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Yeah, and guess what? I'm out of XYZ, right? You can get dinner delivered, you can have a great ready meal solution.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

Whether it doesn't look like it came from fast food.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

That doesn't look like it, yeah. It came from fast food, right? Like it's real quality ingredients at an incredible value. You can get her a diamond necklace, uh, and then you can get your multivitamins in your toothpaste.

SPEAKER_02 25:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Same order.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Well, if I've got a sick kid, and it can be in your home. And your sauna. That was where I got hung up today. I had a hard time moving past the the barrel sauna.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

This belongs in my bag.

SPEAKER_04 25:58

Yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

I mean, it's just it's awkward when I go in in my swimsuit with a towel, but other than that, that's great. They frown on that again. Yeah, no sampling the sauna in the club. You know, it's sure.

SPEAKER_04 26:10

Yeah, sauna is incredible.

How Brands Should Approach Sam’s

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Yeah, yeah. Awesome. I love that so much. Um, I mean, the uh ability to be very much item-centric and to celebrate a really cool innovation on behalf of your member. Um, last time I saw you was at Expo West, one of the craziest trade shows on the planet, Natural Product Expo. You know, thousands of exhibitors, so much to see. A lot of those, I wonder what the conversations you had were like, but are they thinking about a curated assortment as part of their their go-to-market strategy? Like what is it? How would you how would you speak to those entrepreneurs about guys? Listen, what you're thinking about when you think of Sam's Club might not be what Sam's Club is today.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Yeah, yeah. I think uh so Sam's Club in the past, right? Um, we've but we've been on a journey. And I think where we're at today is very different from where we've been in a positive way. Like we are maniacally focused on items and we care a whole heck of a lot about what the experience is behind that item and how our member interacts with it. And so when I went to Expo, like I'm talking to um, let's use a toothpaste example, right? Um, there was a natural care toothpaste brand that we were talking to. And she was like, Yeah, we're, you know, we're coming off of our D2C, we're thinking about retail, we don't really have an idea of where we want to go yet.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

And I said, Sam's would be perfect.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Have you thought about the club channel and Sam's Club? And she was like, Yeah, but don't I have to be, you know, 20% of the market before I can have a conversation? I was like, absolutely not. Like you have a and so our members are um obsessed with better free products. And it's something that we've done a brilliant job from a members mark standpoint with our made without lists and things like that. Um, and so our members are expecting higher quality from us in the beginning, right? And we have members asking every day for alternatives that are better free that don't have the dyes, the fillers, all of the things. And so I was able to stand there with her and be like, I've heard directly from our members that they want a solution like this.

SPEAKER_04 28:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Right. And so it's really up to us to figure out how do we bring this to life, if this is the right brand in the right time. And actually, when you think about coming to retail and you start with club, it's a whole lot easier to design price pack architecture because I can tell you what a club pack would look like that makes sense for our members. And then you can architect down from there what a retail pack might look like and what a, you know, a beginning a sample pack might look like. And what that allows you to do is come into club with a pack size that's conducive for the member at a price point that they're willing to pay for, right? Um, sometimes what happens if brands wait too long to do the hard work of price pack architecture on the front side, we get pack sizes that are just never going to make sense for my member, right? And that's really hard. And so I think from a fundamental item build standpoint, that's a benefit. The second piece of this is I'm curated. And so there are a handful of toothpaste skews on my shelves today. And so you have the opportunity to come in and potentially be 100% of the assortment for a natural, better for you toothpaste.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

That's pretty compelling, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:20

To a significant member base that's engaged.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

Large member base that's engaged, and they're gonna give you real-time feedback and we can scale together. Right. Um, and that's the other piece of it is I have the ability or my team has the ability to decide how we go to market, right? Do we go to market first in a handful of clubs and online that we know that we have a high member base that's shopping your brand today? Um, do we start 100% online because that's the only place that anyone has ever seen your brand? Figure out who's the member that's buying it, where do they live, and then where could an in-club environment look like, right? There is not a um playbook, if you will, of you have to do XYZ when you come to market. You literally build that with the brand.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Curated, curate that to make sure not just a curated assortment, it's curated go to market, curated member care.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

I mean, it's journey to make sure that we're putting the very best item in the very best place for success with our member base.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Well, I think that's an important um thing to kind of look at. It doesn't have to be a bigger size of a flavor that exists elsewhere, like it can be a place to trial. It can be, right? If it's it has to be on trend, it has to meet need state. Uh, but it could be the place where you you you you put it in for a little while, it blows through. Now you know something works. Right. Sam's Club and everywhere else.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Right? We're great trial grom for things like testing and unfolding.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

And you're fast.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

We're fast. We are like you know, in a club, uh Sam's Club environment, like you know very quickly if you're gonna make it or not.

SPEAKER_02 30:55

The first meeting I ever had at Sam's Club would have been in like 2000. And the buyer I was talking to, she said, we roll our sleeves up over here. And I've always used that analogy when I talked about Sam, you know, at Walmart, you wear the jacket, not literally, but yeah, you wear the jacket. Sam's you roll your sleeve up because you're item merchants. Yeah. And and it's to your point, you've only got room for a hundred. So if you're bringing in five, five have to go, it really get kind of down and dirty. Yeah. That has to be fun.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

It's so fun.

SPEAKER_02 31:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Uh Sam's Club um is a uh an environment of entrepreneurship, right? Like our merchants are literally driving their business every single day from the ground up. And I think it is so fun because of the speed and the agility within the framework that we get to operate in.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yeah, it's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

It's been fun, fun to watch. Um, I was never blessed to be in the club. I thought you had to graduate to be in the club. Some of us, I guess just starting the club. You've always been in the club. Congratulations, Katie. Thank you. Um, but yeah, no, it's um it's been awesome to work together, awesome to find ways to innovate on behalf of the member. It's just um, I don't know, it's just kind of different when you're able to be selective um and and help make choices um on purpose.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Yeah. And I I think the other cool thing about Sam's Club in general, though, is how closely we do work with Walmart.

SPEAKER_04 32:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Um, we are an enterprise, and if Walmart wins, I win. And vice versa. And so I I think that's the other cool thing is we can take learnings from the Walmart side. We can take learnings from the Sam's Club side and we can share. Um, and we can be better together. And at SAMS, we have access to um the the enterprise and what is kind of leveraged from a technology standpoint, from a logistics standpoint.

SPEAKER_04 32:50

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

Infrastructure standpoint. Like all of that is within our realm of possibility and it is another added benefit to the ways of working at SAMS.

What’s Coming Next In Wellness

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Yeah, yeah. Anything uh exciting that you're able to share about like, you know, new things. You mentioned some, you know, expansion to express delivery happening, or um, I'm sure there are some members listening that might not live in Northwest Arkansas. Yeah. Uh as far as like, yeah, what what else is coming from Sam's?

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Yeah, y'all, there's a lot of exciting items coming. Um, so over the next call it two months in the wellness space, we'll have over a hundred new items hit.

SPEAKER_04 33:28

No kidding.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

Between in club and online. Yeah, we've got resets happening, items are transitioning. Uh, so lots and lots of new items coming. We are continuing to focus on the site experience right now. We've been through um some migrations with data and things like that.

SPEAKER_04 33:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

We're kind of finessing all of that now. And so um, there's gonna be new capabilities that roll out from a site experience standpoint. Delivery is only gonna get better, right? Yeah. Um, and again, club experience is continuing to improve day in and day out. And I'm really proud of what the operators are doing there to deliver.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

Love that. Yeah, and looking at the quarterly results, the it's been there for quite a few months now. Sam's is on a roll.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

Yeah, the momentum is going. Yeah, it's great.

Lightning Round And Retail Blunders

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Well, we are approaching time. Um, so like to end with the lightning round.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

Okay, let's go.

SPEAKER_02 34:16

So we'll start with uh with the the the evergreen. What are you reading, listening to, consuming right now that's kind of informing your your world?

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Oh man. Okay, so um this is gonna sound well, I'm just gonna come out with it. So Latrice came back over and day one, she uh started talking about the Made in America book. Uh it and I try and read it every year.

SPEAKER_04 34:39

Sam Waltons.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Yeah, Sam Walton's book. It's been a year since I read it. So I picked that book back up uh two weeks ago and I am almost finished with that. Uh, what am I listening to? I listen to everything. So I think that's part of being curious and being a uh um merchant at heart. Um and so I'm all over anything that is a wellness podcast, I'm all over anything that is a business podcast. I also love a good true crime podcast. Like the treadmill, that's yeah, yeah, true crime seven because I gotta like disassociate from what's happening. Yeah, um yeah. So I think that that that's a high focus for me. And then also like I am in the trenches of just social commerce and what's happening out there, right? And so um every night from eight o'clock to nine o'clock after I put my kids to bed, I call it my hour of life study. Uh, and I just go check out other retailer sites. I check out social, I check out literally anything on my phone that I can get my hands on and see how people are talking about things, what items are trending, um, what neat states are out there. I read Reddit a lot, things like that. Just stay curious.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Love it. Um, I get to ask the fun question. Uh, biggest retail blunder. They may still be in back rooms somewhere, but being slow through.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Listen, I tell I tell people a lot, like, there's no such thing as a bad item. Uh, there's just an item for it's time.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

Uh I'll never forget. I was the assistant buyer for tabletop and trash. And I have been in a pottery barn. I've been in a Williams Sonoma, which is gathering inspiration for tabletop, and hammered plates were in at the time. And so I came back and I was like, we should create a hammered plate that's plastic and disposable. Very elegant, like very bougie. Um, so we did. We launched it on pallett, and no one bought it.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Yeah, it was gonna be huge.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

Yeah, it was gonna be huge. It turns out no one bought it until it was like$2.91. Yeah. Uh and they bought all of it. And then in turn, the core skew of a plastic plate that I had uh sold nothing. Yeah, yeah, right. So I killed that business, yeah, the seasonal business.

SPEAKER_04 36:39

Cool, cool.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

Hello, Amar. Yeah, it was uh it was a nightmare. I learned so much.

SPEAKER_04 36:44

Oh, bad.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

Sometimes just because it's a trend to mean that the is gonna purchase it. Uh, and again, that's the balance of curation, right? Like that was a first in-class example of do we need two plastic plates at Sam's Club? We sure don't.

SPEAKER_02 36:57

Yeah, yeah. Um but you just don't you don't learn on a win, yeah, on a fail.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Yeah, and get better. I also didn't ask the member, right? Like I didn't sit back and say, is there an actual demand for this in a plastic plate? I didn't go back to the member. That was miss number one. Yeah, and so ironically enough, the the senior buyer that I worked for at the time, he gifted me at my wedding a pack of hammered plates. Come on, he got it at the Sam's Club for two dollars.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

That's it for a great, great price. That's pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 37:26

Yeah, so that was that was a humbling experience.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

So awesome. I love that. And then just to wrap it up, you know, what are you looking forward to over the next year or the next 12 months? What what's uh you know what beyond your day-to-day passions of people product and innovation and innovation, PPIs, what what are some things in the next year that you know have you pretty juiced?

SPEAKER_00 37:47

Yeah, y'all, I'm so excited about the Ron Sam's Club is on. I think that the way we are changing the game from an item standpoint, the way that we are delivering a frictionless experience for the member and then the people that we have working on this. Like I we had an item parade yesterday, and I got to sit back and listen to probably 30 items go up on stage and just talk about the why behind the item and what it was solving for. And I cannot wait for our members to walk down the aisles.

SPEAKER_04 38:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

Um, but on the flip side, I also can't wait for more brands to come and talk to us, right? Because our members are hungry for new brands and they're hungry for a broad for a not a broad assortment, they're hungry for an assortment that solves um problems for them in the retail environment. And Sam's Club can do that. And so I'm just really, really excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

Yeah, for the brands that are like maybe on the edge or like this might be worth the conversation. Like, what what steps should they take?

SPEAKER_00 38:40

Yeah, I think they should absolutely reach out to us, right? Whether that's on LinkedIn, whether that's an email, however, whatever format that looks like, but we'd love to have conversations.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

Yeah. I think there's just a belief out there of like not available. It's like, no, are you kidding me? We're always hunting. We are always this is like we're we're trying to serve the member. Like this is what we're here for.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

We are. We want to talk to brands, right? Because we know, again, we're listening to our members, we know exactly what they're asking for. And so it's up to us to go find the thing and bring it to life.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

So we post this short, yeah, like reply.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

Reply, send it out. Reply. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

Thanks for being here, Katie. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Closing And Where To Listen

SPEAKER_02 39:19

This is great. Really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

I love this. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

Yeah, thank you. And thank you all for listening. Uh, as always, you can find all of our episodes on our website at highimpactanalytics.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.