The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
To create an ecosystem that connects leaders of all kinds – industry, community, student, educational, civic, investment and entrepreneurial – to help overcome Omnichannel Retail barriers through exclusive, insight-rich content.
The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
Ep. 97 - Building a Retail Giant: Inside Sam Walton's Legendary Saturday Meetings
Four Walmart veterans with a combined 126+ years of experience gather to reveal how the legendary Saturday Morning Meeting became the cultural cornerstone that transformed American retail forever.
The conversation feels like stepping into a time machine to witness retail history firsthand. Andy Wilson hosts Arthur Emmanuel (38 years at Walmart), John Reeves (22 years), and Dallas Dobbs (36 years) as they share intimate stories about the weekly gathering that Sam Walton himself called "the very heart of Walmart culture."
What made these meetings so powerful? The veterans explain how they created a competitive advantage - while other retailers took weekends off, Walmart leaders gathered every Saturday morning to share insights, celebrate heroes, address weaknesses, and communicate strategy. By Monday, store managers had already implemented changes while competitors were just starting their week.
The unpredictability kept everyone engaged yet slightly nervous. Sam might suddenly sit at your table and ask about your department's numbers. Executives and buyers came prepared with "cheat sheets" of metrics, knowing they might be called upon without warning. The meetings balanced serious business with entertainment - from talent shows to Easter hat parades - creating an atmosphere that kept hundreds of managers returning each week with enthusiasm.
Most importantly, these gatherings reinforced principles still guiding Walmart today: listening to store associates ("Our best ideas come from clerks and stock boys"), maintaining strong supplier partnerships ("be firm but be fair"), and focusing relentlessly on merchandise excellence through programs like VPI (Volume Producing Item).
Whether you're a retail professional, business leader, or someone fascinated by how America's largest company was built, these firsthand accounts offer priceless insights into how culture becomes a competitive advantage. What leadership principles from Walmart's golden era could transform your organization today?
Okay, well, hello everyone, and welcome to Doing Business in Bentonville. I'm Andy Wilson and I'm the host today, and we've got one of the greatest podcasts coming up. I have been thinking about this for so very long and I've got some great friends surrounding me today and I'm going to introduce them, and then we're going to get jumped straight into this, but before we do that, I want to say something to all of our viewers and listeners. Thank you. Without you, what I'm about to tell you, it had not have been possible, because what you've done you have now moved us to 100 countries that we're viewed in, and thank you for that, because of your continued support and that you share these podcasts around the world and that you have supported us. So thank you so much. All the credit belongs to you for making this happen. We're honored by it and we are more than honored. We're humbled by that.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're going now to jump into this. Now, these are three of great friends of mine, and we have one thing in common We've all worked at walmart, right? Yeah, so, so, anyway, we have just and you're going to hear some story listen, I don't know where this thing's really going to go today, so you know most of the time, I know, okay, I got a script here hidden back here and I'm sort of following that script. If you, you can see my iPad today, there's no script, okay, so, but I'm very comfortable because I trust these men. But this is John Reeves. John, welcome. How long have you been at Walmart, john? I was with Walmart for 22 years. Okay, and we'll get into all the wonderful things you've done at Walmart. Arthur Emanuel, arthur, welcome, thank you.
Speaker 3:Officially 38 years, but I'm still involved in one way or the other. So all in all, about 45 years close to it.
Speaker 1:Arthur, I remember the first day I met you and I think you were store manager, if I'm not mistaken. John, I remember the first day I met you and, oh man, wait till these stores start coming out. This is Dallas Dobbs. Dallas, welcome, thank you.
Speaker 4:I was with Walmart for 36 years. 36 years. I'm not as old as Arthur, he's a whole lot older.
Speaker 1:You started when you was a baby. I thought when I first met you, you looked like 10 years old.
Speaker 4:I'm just saying it okay. I think when I came into the company, I started in the field. Yeah, I think when I came with the company, I started in the field. Yeah, and I think when I started, did you start? I did I started. Yeah, yes, yes, assistant manager trainee. Well, I think you were an assistant when I started. Really yeah, when did you start 76, 1976.
Speaker 1:What year did you become a manager? Oh, three years later. Okay, yeah, 79. Oh, three years later, okay, 79. So you were in New Hampshire, yeah, yeah, so, and I was at Walmart almost 30 years. And so there we are. Great, well, what we're going to do, here's the title the day of our content. We're going to try to stay here, but we see where we go. The title is the Saturday Morning Meeting. Wow, I remember. You know we did it and we're going to lead off. John's going to lead us off and he's going to read a quote from a great book.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I'm going to read a quote from Sam Walton, made in America my second most referenced book, andy, the Holy Bible being the first. You can't go wrong. But here's what he says about the Saturday morning meeting in his book, on page 163. He says take our Saturday morning meetings, for example. Without a little entertainment and a sense of the unpredictable, how in the world could we ever have gotten those hundreds of people most of our managers and some associates from the general offices here in Bentonville to get up every Saturday morning and actually come in here with smiles on their faces? If they knew all they could expect in the meeting was somebody droning on about comparative numbers, followed by a serious lecture on the problems of our business, could we have kept the meeting alive? No way, no matter how strongly I felt about the necessity of that meeting, the folks would have revolted. And even if we still held it, it wouldn't be any good at all. As it is, the Saturday morning meeting is at the very heart of the Walmart culture. Wow, that's great.
Speaker 1:So what do you guys remember?
Speaker 3:Let's talk about the Saturday morning meeting Thoughts, thoughts first of all, again, as John read, saturday morning meeting. It became legendary and every CEO of a major corporation wanted to come and attend this Saturday morning meeting. To me it was like horse rates, meaning our competitors. You know, they worked hard, like us, monday through Friday, but then they took a weekend off and then they came to their offices on Monday. In our case, we worked hard until Friday and then we came into their offices on Monday. In our case, we worked hard until Friday and then we came into the Saturday morning meeting.
Speaker 2:That's it.
Speaker 3:And when I was store manager, we would have a conference call on Saturdays, point being, in our case, like in a horse race, we got a head start because of Saturday morning meetings and we communicated that to the stores and the stores had those directions executed by Monday, while our competition came to work on a Monday. Then they reviewed what happened that week and then they so we had, like in a horse race, we had an X number of head start from our competition. That's one of my biggest lessons learned. Second thing was I can go on and on, but I won't give that. We'll talk more about it. But it was from entertainment. Yeah, celebrities, we used to look forward to who's going to be there this Saturday, and my favorite was Ed Nagy. Yeah, I don't know, my favorite was Ed Nagy. Yeah, I don't know the story about Ed Nagy. Is he wanted to see what is Andy Wilson wearing on a Saturday morning? Really, he was one of our fashionistas.
Speaker 4:Yes, For sure In tank tops especially.
Speaker 3:Yeah well, tank tops colored shirts and Ed Nagy used to just make a ball with it. I'm going to Andy Wilson's yard sale. We had fun and we developed relationships with Alice.
Speaker 4:I think we've got to back up a little bit to talk about the room. Actually, to be honest with you, the Saturday morning meeting when I started in 1984 was in maybe a 40 by 40 room in the corner of warehouse number one and to get to it you had to walk from the offices through the warehouse and it was a room that was exposed. Studs with paneling, no insulation, so in wintertime it's cold, in summertime it was hot as all get out, but you had to get there early. One of the things about Saturday morning meeting was it's supposed to start at 730, right, but when Sam was still there and live, it started when Sam got there. And if he got there at quarter till 7, right, but when Sam was still there and live it started when Sam got there, yeah, and if he got there at quarter till 7, then that's when the meeting started and you better be prepared. You know, and I think when you really think about the Saturday morning meeting, one of the purposes was to let everybody know what the rest of the company was up to Exactly, and I learned so much in the Saturday meeting.
Speaker 4:A lot of people didn't want to come, didn't want to work on Saturday, especially people that we brought in from outside the company. But inside the company, I looked forward to it. I will tell you I never went to one without a knot in my stomach, because you know Sam would wander around and you never know he might stop and sit on the table right in front of you and as stuff was going on, he'd turn around and he'd say so what were your numbers last week? And all the merchandising went to that meeting with a cheat sheet on their numbers, because if you got called on you wouldn't remember. So you had that written down somewhere, right.
Speaker 4:But it was always a unique, unique and, just like you said about this podcast, there's no agenda. There was never an agenda. We knew things that were going to happen, but we didn't really have an agenda. We celebrated heroes. You remember all of you guys bringing people in from the field department managers that had done extraordinary things and we celebrated those heroes. We talked about our weaknesses and we addressed them. One of the major things that we did Always kept a knot in my stomach was people like you and Arthur, traveling the stores during the week that on Saturday, found something that we screwed up. Right, john? Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I was frightened. Arthur and. I didn't do much of that, I'm sure, but to be honest with you.
Speaker 3:I don't think we're the biggest offenders now.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, you know, and I think that was a real positive about both of you guys in that when you found the problem, you called us. Yeah, and we dealt with it and, proactively, by the Saturday meeting, we had to fix and we'd stand up and talk about what that fix was. And the neat thing about that was it wasn't an opportunity to slam dunk the buyer or the person that made the mistake, it was. How can we translate this to the rest of the company? That's right, and how can we all learn from it? And it always ended up being a positive Joe.
Speaker 2:What do you think Well, I just I remember the year I came into the office, 1987,. I was in the sales promotion area at Dallas that you're familiar with. Yeah, In fact I may have replaced you, I don't know. Yeah, you came in behind me, Did you really? One of the responsibilities that I had was for the auditorium number one. Another responsibility was the VPI program.
Speaker 1:That was very you better explain what that is.
Speaker 2:The VPI program is the volume producing item program and made famous by Sam Walton and his moon pies. And I just found out today that Dallas Dobbs was the buyer of moon pies.
Speaker 1:And he's kind of we go out the way.
Speaker 2:That must have been a fun year for Dallas. But in 1987, my first Saturday morning meeting, because I had the VPI program, I also had to solicit all the entries from the store and we'd get thousands of them. So I had two ladies that were just great in the sales promotion department that would go through all of those. It would give them a little bit of advice on you know what to look for and they would land on my desk on wednesday. The vpis and I would go through and select three winner and two runner-ups for every region in the company. So there was a lot of entries and then we would have a flyer or a handout that we would have on Saturday morning.
Speaker 2:Well, knowing that it started when Sam got there A and the fact that the VPI program is very dear to his heart, we had to have those passed out in the auditorium prior to anything going on. And at that time I don't know if you guys remember not that they had a stage in the auditorium and they had tables and the executives would be on the stage. So it was Sam and David Glass and Don Soderquist, all the executives, and then a chair on the end for me because I presented the VPI program. So talk about a knot in your stomach the very first time you do that, sitting next to Sam. But man, was he ever great? He loved to talk about merchandise, so I would present the VPI and he would elaborate on it.
Speaker 2:Now, backing it up a day, I always had to communicate with the buyers to let them know that, hey, one of their items has been selected, and so that somebody like Dallas would be prepared at the meeting to hold up the item and talk about it. So that was my first Saturday meeting, was actually being up on the stage and a lot of nerves. But, man, what a great opportunity for myself, because it was exposure to other people in the company. And a year later I got my first buying job, and most of that due to the exposure that I got from the VPI program in the Saturday morning meeting.
Speaker 4:Yeah, my first Saturday morning meeting. I remember the day, arthur, it was July the 10th 1984. And back then everybody that came into the office they introduced at Saturday morning meeting, right and Bill Smith, you guys remember. Sure, he was my boss at the time. He was the director of sales promotion, right Marketing, now now.
Speaker 4:But since rush, and he stood up and introduced me and and I'll never forget it, had a visual of it that I'll keep till the day I die um, that front table in the old meeting room, sam was sitting on the front of it and david glass was up there and Paul Carter and Jack Shoemaker and Don Sodaquist and several others. But Smith got up and he introduced me and I was, you know, just going to stand up and say wave and say hey, I'm glad to be here. And after he introduced me, sam looked at it, was quiet for a second. And Sam looked at Bill and he said well, bill, we're on a hiring freeze. Can you tell me why Dallas is here? You know what Bill said. He said well, sam, you know, I don't think I could tell it as good as Dallas can. Dallas, why don't you tell them why you're here? So I said something really unprofound, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:But I made it for another 34 years, so it was okay. Oh my gosh, let me read a quote from Sam Walken. I want these guys to keep going, but you know, sam, it's so many quotes, but one of the quotes I want to read today. I think it's very pertinent to what we're talking about. Sam says communicate everything you possibly can to your partners. You know his partners were all of us and all the people at Walmart, the associates and then anyone else that had business with Walmart. He said the more they know, the more they'll understand. The more they understand, the more they'll care. Once they care, there's no stopping them. And you know we could say it was no stopping us, because that's exactly what we were doing on saturday morning, fridays also, but saturday mornings, because we all grew up in the source. We worked on saturdays. You know we did that, so going to this was like a celebration for us, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:so I mean we got to hang out, you know, with the leaders of walmart. And here we were, young and growing up and we were just drinking in all of that knowledge and wisdom and information, you know, and then there was no stopping Right.
Speaker 3:So go ahead Head start on a competition. Yeah, to me, every Saturday when we walked in, if you remember, there was a sign that said through these doors, walk ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Yeah, and every Saturday when I walked through there, it made me feel, hey, I am an ordinary person and this company is giving me an opportunity to do extraordinary thing. And then when we went in through those doors because a company, like a retail company and many others, they are so interdependent on each other the Saturday morning meeting, to what you just read, both Sam's and the culture of this company was to communicate with each other. The Saturday morning meeting, to what you just read, both SAMS and the culture of this company was to communicate with each other, build relations. You don't know who we'd be sitting next to. I was in operation and Dallas would be sitting next to me and the guy from logistics would be sitting next to me, or legal.
Speaker 1:Or legal. We said yeah.
Speaker 3:So we built some intradepartmental relationships that came in very handy for the move and the communication. So the communication was then, and now is, a key core value of Walmart. So that was another big deal for us. And then, once again, as you mentioned, have fun. There was a sign, if you remember Sam Walton in a straw hat that said don't take yourself so seriously, put on a silly hat and sing a song. And it was fun. And, by the way, the other lesson was you better be prepared for your particular area, right? You have no clue what is going to be asked of you and some of us who were in the field. We'll get there at 6 o'clock in the morning and review all our stores.
Speaker 1:Because you have no clue 120, 30 stores we had.
Speaker 3:Sam will get there and he may ask a store like Atoka, Oklahoma. It's a little bitty store but he could ask you a question if that was your store. Hey, what's going on in Atoka? I saw their numbers and they look good or bad, whatever it is. So us regionals had to be prepared, with all our 100 stores.
Speaker 4:And you know, most of the time, he already knows the answer yes. So you better not say something that wasn't real, yes, and so did the other leaders.
Speaker 3:Like the glasses and the soda quiche, we were blessed Right and in those meetings, like you said, us young pups, we got the opportunity to build relationships with senior leadership and so on.
Speaker 4:So be prepared, walk through those doors with ordinary people like us doing extraordinary things, communication, have fun, and there's many other key learnings from that, but that's the ones that come to mind, and you know our jobs, all of our jobs in the office. I don't care who you were, even if you were the janitor. It was a stressful situation.
Speaker 3:And to your point of VPI, it was fun, right, but there was an opposite award to VPI, called fish. First in still here, I think I won it a few times I won it no seriously.
Speaker 3:And that was part of the fun. Yeah, okay, you picked an item. It a few times, I won it. No seriously, and that was part of the fun. Okay, you picked an item. It's doing great and we'll have fun with it and you'll get a plaque for that. Whoever and the senior leadership had to participate in it. David Glass was awarded a fish award with an actual fish, a stinking fish.
Speaker 1:We gave that at one of the yearly meetings. Yeah, yearly meetings.
Speaker 3:Part of being, you know, have fun. And the message there of the VPI was you know, mr Glass always used to say we are a merchandise-driven company. Yeah, and from that generated the VPI thing that Sam came up with just to keep us focused on merchandising. And particularly he was one of the best and, like you, igor, item merchant. Yeah, he loved item merchandising. Yes, he did, oh, boy, and we used to have fun with those items merchandising in the Saturday morning meetings.
Speaker 1:You know, I think and there were two merchants in the room with us, but let's talk about that but we were a merchandise-driven company. We are, Walmart is a merchandise-driven company. You sit and you walk through stores today even which is awesome that philosophy is still here in Walmart, but that's a big deal. Yeah, and I don't know what your job was. You had to have a merchant that had an item, didn't you? I mean, he required Sam, required everyone to be. You know, and we'll talk about the stores in a bit, but talk about that from your perspective, both of you.
Speaker 4:Well, after the morning meeting, Senator, I was in a merchant meeting and, as a buyer, if you weren't standing up talking about your business, your boss thought you weren't doing your job. Yeah, and it was all around items. Usually we'd get up and show an item that we had found or a department manager had sent a VPI in on. That was doing really well and how they did it. And you know, like the moon pie, I tell you I had a store, call me one Monday morning on moon pies and say I had something I wanted to share with you. I didn't have time to turn it in in the VPI but I ordered Back in those days they were ordering with the Red Books Remember Red Books, right when you had inventory one half of the square and what you're going to order on the other half, and he put down to order 20 cases.
Speaker 4:Well, the person at store level that keyed it, in which we didn't have computers then either, keyed in 200 cases and it would take a while for a store to sell 200 cases of a Moon Pie, but he decided that he'd go to the front. He built a display of Moon Pie, but he decided that he'd go to the front. He built a display of Moon Pies and he brought a microwave up there with him too which was a brand new thing in the industry microwaves were and he would heat a microwave for 10 seconds Moon Pie microwave and then cut it up and just hand it out to people as they came in and sold through that NCAP. 200 cases in one weekend a Friday, saturday and Monday, because we were closed on Sunday and it was interesting. I went and shared it with Sam and you know what Sam's VPI was the next year.
Speaker 1:Yes, we do all know.
Speaker 4:Well, that was part of it, but one of his real VPI's was microwave oven, and that's when they started demonstrating cooking in microwave ovens at the front door. That started the sampling program in the entire world.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize that's what I was talking about. Yeah, it was really something you know. Someone always tells us, if you know we would, if there was some state, we would turn it into something positive. That was our mindset and that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 3:You know people talk about making lemonade out of a lemon. Right, vpi program was that also, it was underdeveloped items. How can you find them? And it was items and it was a mistake. But rather than crucifying someone, it gave them an opportunity. How do you turn that lemon into a lemonade? So we learned a lot from VPI. And then, of course, the underdeveloped items and so on. Right.
Speaker 2:That reminds me, arthur, of one of the things I remember distinctly about you in the Saturday morning media was the Bucket of Time program. Bucket of Time program. The philosophy with that was are there items out there that you can add on to a purchase, that you could add on and put in the cart? And if I remember right, that was championed by Arthur Emanuel himself and he would get up in the meetings and talk about Bucket of Time items and Buck, buck, buck, that's right, bucket of time. And that was another way that you got everybody that was at that meeting together and it took people that could take on the responsibility.
Speaker 3:The background of that was at that particular time I forgot the exact numbers, but we had almost like 100 million transactions a week, right. And then we used to talk about cross merchandising If the sales were down and it started off with hey, if we can just get those 100 million transactions just one more dollar, that's 100 million dollars a week, right. And you do that through cross-merchandising and this and that, and that's so much support from you guys and the whole company up to the department manager level. So it was not that Buck, buck Buck didn't become famous or successful because of us in the home office. It was that department manager at the store that made it happen. Right, that's right. They came up with more cross-merchandising idea than we could ever think of, right, and it got the whole company excited about Buck at a time, and of all the things I did in my career at Walmart, from being a regional vice president, senior VP, opening Argentina and Brazil people still remember me. Yeah, just Buck, buck, buck. I remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Let me read another quote and I want to hear you guys think about things around this, but the other quote, really what I'm going to read. He says the key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. It's terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stock boys. So what do you think of when you hear Sam? Because he told us that every Saturday morning to get in the stores, right, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I got to tell you, andy, it's a philosophy that I adhere to today. I mean, I still get in the stores. It drives my wife crazy sometimes because what do you have? You're at the stores again, but things change a lot and having your finger on the pulse of what's going on in the store, I think, is critical to no matter what you do or how your career evolves. It's still where things happen. That's where things happen, and I always look at what people are putting in their carts and wondering why they made that decision. Even with Omnichannel and everything else that you have going on today, I still think that's the most important thing is that transaction that happens at the store and the people that are out there every single day. They're the ones that know it best.
Speaker 3:And the Saturday morning meetings became a big vehicle to keep moving that forward. Because us, you know, we were in stores every week and we would give an example of what was happening in a store and you guys as merchants happening in a store, and you guys as merchants were in the store and Saturday morning himself he would bring up or recognize some department manager or a store manager or a clerk from that week when he was in the store and other leaders, and every Saturday morning, if you go back and look at it, there was examples given why that saying that you just read was so important that our best ideas come from the store and those ideas were shared by us at every Saturday morning meeting, one or two here and there.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, yeah, it was always. I love to tour the store with Sam.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, I want to talk about some of our store tours for sam, so go ahead.
Speaker 4:that's great, but he uh he was just, uh, a bowl full of questions and and you know that store managers would all be nervous as a cat when sam would be in the area, right, and it was always a phone calls were burning up.
Speaker 1:that's right. Where? Where is he? We tracked him. We didn't have a satellite, we tracked him. That's right. That's right.
Speaker 4:But when I was in marketing and I traveled with him, he'd always give me his yellow pad because he talked with his hands and I'd take the notes and I'm sure he did that with everybody that traveled with him. But his interest was really in the store associates and he'd see, you know, a department manager.
Speaker 1:We'd be walking down the Action Alley with the group touring and he'd see a department manager an aisle over back in the cross aisle section and he'd leave the group and he'd go back, yeah, yeah, and find that person just to talk and you knew not to follow him when he left that group because he needed some one-on-one, because he, you know, he went back there to ask that department manager how that store manager was doing, yeah, and and he wanted the real deal, you know, and he got it, you know, because they, they just, they just trust this out, yeah, but to this point that's where he went and learned, we all did.
Speaker 4:And I love touring competition with him. That was always fun Because he was always looking for something they were doing better than us Right, dallas, I'm going to underline that.
Speaker 1:The first tour I've done with Sam in competition, I talked about what they were doing poorly. My mistake I was called out. That's fairly not a nice way, but you know. In other words, what I learned was he's not interested in that, he wants what they're doing great. So we can improve that, right, right.
Speaker 3:There's a very famous story about that Him and Bud and another executive. They were visiting stores and went into a competition and this other key executive at that time who was pretty I mean pretty instrumental in Walmart's success they came out, so he's driving. He said okay, bud, what'd you see? Bud, his brother right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, bud his brother. I asked the other executive what'd you see, bud his brother? Right, yeah, bud his brother. I asked the other executive what'd you see? A dirty store, and you know the auto stocks. And the executive turned to him and said what'd you see, mr Sapp? He said I found these pillows that they're selling two for a dollar. I'm a two for five dollars, or something like that. He said that's a great item, so-and-so, you need to get with the buyer and get us those pillows To your exact point. He always looked at and I visited. I was a store manager in Dyersburg, tennessee, and you know, get a call, pick me up at the airport. Huh, yeah, went to the call pick me up at the airport.
Speaker 3:Huh yeah, Went to the airport, picked him up. First thing he does is let's go to Kmart. Yeah, we went to Kmart. Usually did that before you hit the mall or something.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, always.
Speaker 4:He had already counted the cars.
Speaker 3:Cars. That's right, and I'll be damned he found out more about Kmart from a little old department manager there, because he had that ability about him, like being a grandfather kind of an ability. He would find out more about the competition, what's selling good, what's selling bad, this and that, and then we went to my store. So competition piece and we learned all that. And then we went to my store, so competition piece and we learned all that. So he practiced everything he preached. So did our other leaders. You know the glasses.
Speaker 4:He had such respect in the industry. Everybody knew him too. I went and toured a Target store with him once, and we did that before we hit the Walmart, and as soon as he hit the front door, people knew him. The store manager for the Target store ended up within two or three minutes wanted a picture with him yeah, and wanted a picture with him, and Sam was, so he was just one of those people that you just trusted too, and, of course, sam, before we left the store he wanted to hire the manager right because he's running a good Target store.
Speaker 4:But Target had just implemented a new receiving program I can't remember the name of it, but it was a number and Sam had been talking to the store manager. He said, hey, I understand you guys have this new receiving program. Can you tell me about it? And the guy says, sure, let me just take you in the back. Oh, we'll sit through it. And he walked us through the whole thing, I mean, and Sam came back with a plan for Walmart how to take what they were doing and improve on it.
Speaker 3:And connecting it to Saturday morning meetings. You know, we were expected to be in competition and we were expected to give some kind of an update on some kind of not every Saturday, but a bit different person. It'd be a merchant. He would ask you you know, have you been to so-and-so competition? Did you notice this and that? And all that became part of this Saturday morning meeting. It was not only talking about Walmarts, but it was also talking about meeting, right, it was not only talking about Walmart, but it was also talking about competition, right, and in every area, not just operators or merchants, and it was the construction people. Somebody's building a better store than us or had this idea about this in their area, and all that. So we'll talk about competition in those and that was communicated to everyone.
Speaker 2:Right, hey, I remember him saying in the Saturday morning meeting he would say who's been in the stores this week, who's been out? Right, exactly.
Speaker 3:Other than the operators. If you're a, volunteer.
Speaker 2:You might call on you. Where did you go this week? What did you see?
Speaker 4:So you had to be ready. Well, so be ready. As merchants, we traveled once a month with a bridge for four days. Go out on Monday morning, sometimes Sunday evening, come back on Thursday and then you'd get prepared for the Friday and Saturday morning mentions.
Speaker 3:You were expected to, after you had that time, eat what you cook.
Speaker 1:Talk about that. What is for our viewers? Eat what you cook.
Speaker 2:Eat what you cook, and they still do it today, by the way.
Speaker 2:I still see mentions of eat what you cook, but basically it was as a buyer. You would go work in the store for a couple of days and normally I would go and set a modular, like if I just had a modular land in the stores. We'd go out and set it. Sometimes it'd be an overnight thing, where you'd bring in your supplier base and all meet there and basically you would learn from the eyes of the store what your product is and how they perceive it. And, my goodness, could you learn a lot about how they execute your items and what you can take back to do better as you were planning for the upcoming seasons or whatever, and you know what he and I there were a lot of fun too. We had a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:I think what you just said, too, was highlighted, is that you would take the supplier with you, right? So you know, from the standpoint of suppliers, they were bought in just as much, almost as much as you were to the success of Walmart, because they were your partners. And, of course, now we have this opportunity to live in northwest Arkansas, where there's over 3,000 supplier offices in this area, and I had Tom Luccio recently he talked about parton campbell, was one of the first to go here, you know, and but that's the thing it was. It was all such a team, wasn't it even into outside the walmart if you didn't work for walmart, but, like the merchant, like they were part of your team, right, sam used to talk about that as a win-win relationship.
Speaker 4:Right, there's no buildings out there that had Procter Gamble on the front and there's no manufacturing facilities that Walmart owned. So for both of us to be successful, we both had to win. Both of us had to make money. I can tell you, when Sam renegotiated the price on moon pies, we went from 14.5 cents to 12.5 cents apiece, and he was tenacious on it. But you know, once the company came back and said, okay, we'll give you 2 cents off, and Sam thanked him for it. And then he said now can you make money at 12 and a half cents? And the supplier I mean he was speechless for a minute and he said afterwards, after Sam left the meeting, he said to me he said you know, I've never had a retailer care if I made any money or not, but it had to be a win-win situation or neither one of us would have done it. That's a great story.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and he had a special relationship with suppliers that he preached to us. It was only him. David Glass did that Shoemaker, and we were taught or preached to at Saturday morning meetings be firm but be fair. And as I think about what's going on right now with these terrorists and all that, we do need to remember be firm but be fair. And that was our reputation, and every once in a while John, some knucklehead, will kind of go his own way.
Speaker 3:But be firm but be fair, Because we are in a business to buy and sell. Selling happens in a store, so you got to have clean stores, you got to have this. That Buying happens with a supplier. Like you said, we were in no manufacturing. That principle still applies. Right, Buy, sell, and then there's a lot of dots in between. Right, they have to play their role in this. But be firm but be fair At rank times our buyers and everyone else that deals with the outside firm, just remember be firm but be fair. Like you said, he asked this Moonpile guy can you make money at 12.5 cents? Because he was interested in their well-being too. It wasn't to break them or to spy for brand coverage, and that has just kind of become part of the culture. Yeah, and for a company our size to believe in. All that thing happened because of Saturday morning meeting, Right, Because those kind of messages that's where we shared it got to everyone, Whether you were in construction, legal, this, this, this Right.
Speaker 4:So Should I tell the story about the relative to direction coming on Saturday meeting about the signed shop, you know.
Speaker 1:I think you should, and then we're going to begin to wrap. So you, gentlemen, be thinking about that and please do, because that's a great story. Yeah, it's a great culture story.
Speaker 4:Well, and Arthur mentioned it, you know, after the Saturday meeting we all came out of that meeting with a to-do list, basically, and everybody that was in that meeting, if they traveled the stores, they took that list with them and before I came into the office I was in store 115. Do you know where that is? West?
Speaker 1:Point Mississippi. Yeah, yeah, I was just down the road, right yeah, amory or Aberdeen, amory and Aberdeen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I thought so yeah, I was in both of those stores and I was in West Helena, arkansas, yeah, arkansas, yeah, yeah man, I think that's true.
Speaker 4:I'm in the.
Speaker 3:South John.
Speaker 2:I was in.
Speaker 4:Stillwater. But anyway, we were in an old store store 115, and 41,000 square feet, but that was the average size of the store back then. That's a neighborhood market today, right, but we did. Those stores built this company, they did. But we had an old building and an old sign and the sign was a wooden sign and it was lighted with spotlights and we were getting an updated sign. And the Mitchell building is where we used to make all of our signs and they'd throw them on the back of the truck and then they'd drive them to the store and we had a person that would put them up. So we knew that we were getting a new sign.
Speaker 4:So Monday morning I'm opening the store it's 6 o'clock in the morning and I hear this knock on the front door Bang, bang, bang bang. And I look out because it was the cash offices back then. We're at the front, get the store open. And I looked out and there's this guy in blue jeans and a flannel shirt and a ball cap. So I went down there and said, hey, we're not open yet and he goes hey, I'm so-and-so from the sign shop. I've got your new sign I've got to put up. I said great, oh great We've been expecting you Opened the door up and started to tell him he could do where he could plug his drill up and all that stuff and he goes.
Speaker 4:Well, before we do that, I'd like to get a cup of coffee and I'd like to walk your store. And I said, well, okay, well, we had all gotten that list from the Saturday meetings to Monday morning and he had those notes and he walked the store looking for this feature and for this modular and walked the back room, which was really important back then because it was door to floor, right, you didn't keep anything in the back room that you couldn't, but that was part of the beauty in the communication coming out of the Saturday morning. It was that everybody was on the same page.
Speaker 1:You know, dallas. To sum up our conversation, you know the Saturday morning meeting. It was a tool for communication, it was a tool for motivation, and it was a tool for motivation and it was a tool for learning. But what you just described is a tool for reinforcing the culture. Yeah, because there a guy from a sign shop had the notes from Saturday morning meeting. So Sam used to say if we can get this message from here to the person pushing the shopping carts in, then we're successful. We've done it. We've got the message all the way down to the people. Now the bottom may be someone pulling the carts in, but we didn't have those carts. We do a lot less business, so that person is still very, very important. So I'm not minimizing the importance of that person, but that's what Sam's goal was, wasn't it? It's to get the message all the way. And we did it. We got it done and everyone got it done in those days.
Speaker 3:And it still can be done and must be done. You see John Furner out in the stores regularly. You see Doug McMillan out in the stores regularly. You see Doug McMillan out in the stores. But there needs to be more than just John Furner and Doug McMillan. Right, you're right. And every division and so on, and the communication piece.
Speaker 1:Right, perfect, Dallas. Any closing comments.
Speaker 4:No, I appreciate the opportunity to get together with you guys. It's always good to see old friends. We worked really hard in those days. We came in at 6 in the morning. When I took the job they told me I had to be here at 7.30. If I wasn't in my chair at 6 o'clock I was late and we never left until after 6. That's right, and you didn't never left until after 6.
Speaker 2:That's right. And you didn't get a good parking spot. That's right. That's the problem.
Speaker 4:And when I first got here we parked in the ditch in front of the office. When it rained you had to go move your vehicle or something Covered up in water.
Speaker 1:John, any final thoughts?
Speaker 2:Yeah, just you know we've talked a lot about the business part of this and a little bit about the fun, but I remember specifically some really, really fun things that took place in the Saturday morning meeting, and one of them was on a Saturday morning the Razorback football team was playing South Carolina and Fayetteville. It took probably a one o'clock kickoff. Well, like Arthur mentioned, everybody that was anywhere near Bentonville wanted to go to the Saturday morning meeting and in this particular case it was the head coach of South Carolina, sparky Woods, shows up, and of course you know Sam, oh, get up and say something. And then Sam said OK, well, we need to call the hog.
Speaker 2:Yeah, always we need somebody to lead it. Sparky, why don't you lead it? Anybody that ever worked with Sam could not refuse anything that he asked you to do. So Sparky Wood said okay, everybody, nobody says any word about this, it doesn't get out. He led everybody in calling the hogs. I thought that was testament to the influence of Sam Walton. And the other one that I distinctly remember was one Saturday morning when Sam said things are a little, we need to perk things up a little bit. Why don't we have a talent show?
Speaker 2:And he points somebody you organize a talent show and for the next, probably 10 Saturday morning meetings, we had Walmart associates that had talent, yeah, some that didn't, some that didn't.
Speaker 1:I remember some that did.
Speaker 4:That was one of those.
Speaker 2:They would sing or dance or do skits or whatever, and it just lightened everything up.
Speaker 3:One of the songs we used to sing oh Lord, it's Hard to Be.
Speaker 2:Oh Lord, it's Hard to Be.
Speaker 3:Sam will lead it. He'll sing.
Speaker 2:I also recall the time that David, sam and Don saw this on Easter, put the Easter hats on and sang Easter Parade. I remember that Everybody it was stressful. Yes, when you showed up like Dallas said you didn't want to miss, you would say, yeah, this is my Saturday off, but gosh, what's going on. Then I miss it. You would worry about what you missed and then you'd find out Competitive, fun-spirited.
Speaker 3:You know him doing the hula at Wall Street, the chief financial officer riding a white horse, downtown Bentonville with a pink wig All our Saturday meetings were for me with a pink wig.
Speaker 3:All our Saturday meetings were For me, andy, to close it off, and I recommend all my friends, your friends and our friends that are listening to this podcast to read this book. Go buy it. Yeah, it's called Build to Last, and this book compared companies in that century, the ones who have been successful and the ones who failed. And the companies that held on to their core values succeeded and this was they. Compared Walmart to one of the competitors. I won't name them, but this is what was written about Walmart, the reason for their success and their core values.
Speaker 3:Walmart, we exist to provide value to our customers, to make their lives better. We are lower prices and greater selection. All else is secondary. Werner and Doug are still practicing that's right. And and Doug are still practicing that. That's right. And the company is still practicing that.
Speaker 3:Swim upstream Buck. Conventional wisdom that was Sam here, 8% net profit on the bottom line that was swimming upstream when he did the whole thing, and on and on it goes Still applies. Be in partnership with employees what you read Right Still applies today. Work with passion, commitment and enthusiasm Still applies, and our people are doing that. Run lean expenses Expenses still matter. And pursue ever higher goals still matters. And then some companies such as Johnson, johnson and Walmart, made their customers central to their ideology. Still, if you listen to the messages from the key leaders, whether it be Sam's or Doug or John, still matters. So that's the key to the success of Walmart.
Speaker 3:That culture was created through that Saturday morning meeting. All these things were communicated to us in those days in Saturday morning meetings. Today, we things were communicated to us in those days in Saturday morning meetings. Today we have different means of communicating, but these core values still apply. Still apply. I just drove. I had a meeting today. I just drove through the new campus, the building I was in. You know the name of the building Old Roy. Yeah, the culture is still. The campus is a history lesson.
Speaker 2:History in itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It is, but thank you so much. Yes, just like John and Dallas, I feel honored to be part of this podcast and willing to help anyone that I can help to continue to tell the Walmart story, because Walmart story, walmart success, is a success for a customer. Walmart success with employees is or with the suppliers is providing jobs to the millions of people around the world in the communities they didn't have a job, don't know what they will do. So when Sam said, hey, look out world, here we'll come, we'll improve the standard of living around the world, the present day company is still practicing that. My only request is that we keep preaching, be firm, but be fair, especially during these trying times. Right, now.
Speaker 1:Well said, arthur, arthur. Thank you Dallas, thank you John. Thank you, it's been a pleasure to all of our viewers and guests. Thank you so much. This has been a wonderful, wonderful time together. We're great friends and I hope you've really enjoyed our podcast. Let's hear from you when we post this podcast. You can go to our website. It's doingbusinessinbettenvillecom. You can check it out there. There will be, of course, our podcast will be there, along with some bios and information on our guests today, so you can reach out to them if you would like, and there'll be information there. Again, to all of our viewers and watchers. Again, thank you for making this happen. We really appreciate you. Gentlemen. What a day.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much. Goodbye everyone, thank you, bye-bye.