February 24, 2025 • 16 mins
Doug McMillon has been running Walmart since 2014. He’s credited with pushing the company into the digital age and successfully steering it through the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, he’s turning his attention to the company's next chapter and new challenges ahead.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg reporters Jaewon Kang and Devin Leonard travel to Bentonville, Arkansas, to interview McMillon about navigating a second Trump presidency, appealing to higher-end shoppers and the company’s ambition to go after Amazon’s e-commerce crown.
Read more:
- Walmart Wants to Be Something for Everyone in a Divided America
- Inside Walmart’s Corporate Culture Clash Over E-Commerce
- How Walmart Keeps an Eye on Its Massive Workforce
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
In January, a group of Bloomberg journalists, including senior BusinessWeek
writer Devin Leonard, flew to the small city of Bentonville
in northwest Arkansas.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
The first time I went down was two thousand and five.
It's in Benton County, which was a dry county at
the time, so base you could go to Ruby Tuesdays
and sign in. I think it was like some kind
of a private club thing. That's the one place you
can get a drink.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Bentonville has changed a lot since then, and a good
amount of that change can be traced to the retail
giant that's been headquartered there for the past six decades, Walmart.
Sam Walton founded the first Walmart just a few miles
from Bentonville in nineteen sixty two, and since then it's
grown from a small town store to the largest retailer
(00:52):
in the country, and in the last decade, under the
leadership of its current CEO, Doug McMillan, Walmart has been
on a mission to revamp its image. It's Bentonville headquarters
is a clear sign of that.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
The company is opening a new campus. It's you know,
three fifty acres twelve new buildings.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
That's Jaywon Kong. She was also in that group of
Bloomberg journalists who made the trip to Arkansas in January.
Jay one covers Walmart day in and day out, so
she's followed along as Bentonville has transformed.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
The Walton family. They've you know, invested quite heavily in
you know, hospitality, outdoor activities like mountain biking, and so
that's created this new vibe of pipster and cool.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
To me, it was literally like kind of like wandering
into like Shangri La or in the Ozarks. It was
a little hard for me to believe there's all these
upscale restaurants, all of them with these fancy cocktail menus.
We were staying in a boutique hotel that it literally
you know, just opened and it had very nice sushi
place in the lobby and the next.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Sushi in the Ozarks Rush. On their trip, Jaywan, Devin
and BusinessWeek editor Brad Stone sat down with Walmart CEO
in his office and they learned that the changes in
Bentonville signal even bigger changes McMillan wants to bring to
the company, and we're.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Trying to set the stage for the future. We want
to be able to recruit and retain the best talent
in the world. And having Bittonville progress in the way
that it has, and having this new home office campus
will be also whether it's food or the grounds, the
bike trails, the lake, all those kinds of things I
think will just help us do that.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I'm David Gura, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News Today. On the show Just what does the
Future of Walmart look like, we take you inside the
office of Walmart CEO to learn about the company's push
to level up in Bentonville and to cross the US
while it navigates concerns over retail competition, corporate talent wars,
(02:58):
and a new political climate. Dud mcmillon's office is on
the ground floor of a one story building. Bloomberg's Devin
Leonard says, it's the longtime Walmart headquarters.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
You know, the window looks out in the parking lot.
It looks like an office, you know, more suitable for,
you know, the head of a regional trucking company than
you know, a multi billion dollar global company, the America's
biggest retailer.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
But it makes sense given Walmart's history. Walmart founder Sam
Walton put in place a low price guarantee and his
mantra for decades has been save money, Live better. And
McMillan's office used to be Sam Walton's office.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
There's a picture in McMillan's office of Sam Walton sitting
at the same desk. So you're literally, you know, living
in a shadow. The company's whole origin story is the
Sam Walton story. The success we've had is because of
our people.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
That's Walton reflecting on the business in a video on
the company's YouTube page.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
They in turn, I've worked harder than our editors. We've
kept our prices lower than our competitors' prices. He had
this whole every day low prices discounter philosophy, and he
just blew past serious. He blew pasted Kmart and so
by the time of his death, which is nineteen ninety two,
he was one of America's richest men. I think at
(04:18):
times he was America's richest man. But he was this
folk hero, you know, this guy who drove around in
a beat up old Ford that he used for hunting,
and he kept a gun behind which which we Milan
told us he had.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
A shotgun behind the door in Tasty to go berten pack.
Not zero weapons in the room.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Not there anymore. But McMillan has been very good at
you know, sort of. He has one foot in the
past and one foot in the present.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
McMillan started at Walmart in nineteen eighty four. Bloomberg retail
reporter Jay Won Kong says his first job at Walmart
was unloading trucks at a warehouse.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
He's spent his whole career at Walmart. He's someone that
a lot of people who work at the company find
really relatable.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
McMillan became a buyer and worked his way up the
corporate ladder. He was the CEO of Sam's Club, Walmart's
membership warehouse chain named for Sam Walton. Then he led
Walmart's international division before becoming CEO of the company in
twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Round the time when he took over, Walmart wasn't just
trailing Amazon. Its e commerce sales were lower than eBay
and Apple, so they were really coming from behind, and.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Walmart wasn't just lagging its rivals when it came to
e commerce. When McMillan got the top job, the company
was coming off years of slumping sales and a plateauing
share price. Before he took the helm, there were years
of discussions within Walmart about how they could keep customers
from turning away from brick and mortar supercenters and toured
online shopping.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
And there was a big debate about what do we
do about that, and some people thought, oh, you know,
it'll never be bigger than the the US catalog market.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
At that time, it was only about a two percent
share of the US retail business that in those categories
done three commerce, and people would say things like, we're
not going to put a banana in a gallon of
milk in a ups box and ship it to somebody's doormat,
So how is food even going to work in e commerce?
Speaker 3 (06:17):
They launched Walmart dot com in two thousand, but there
really wasn't a commitment and there were always people, you know,
thought Amazon, you know, it's not a big threat.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Back in two thousand, Amazon had been around for about
six years and hadn't turned to quarterly profit. Walmart meanwhile,
sat comfortably on top as the country's largest retailer. But
in the next decade plus, as McMillan moved from running
Sam's Club to Walmart International. He saw the way e
commerce cut into business, and when he took over his CEO,
(06:46):
he set his sights on expanding Walmart's online sales. In
twenty sixteen, two years after he became CEO, McMillan spent
billions of dollars buying Jet dot Com and several other
young online shopping sites in an effort to catch up.
Jet was supposed to be Walmart's e commerce brand, but
(07:07):
within a few years, Walmart had shut Jet down and
finally decided to put its weight behind its own online store,
which was good timing. When the pandemic hit.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
A lot of stores were shut down or they didn't
have products you know, on shelves. Walmart, because they are
the biggest, and they were in a lot of you know,
parts of the country one of the few places that
remained open. So they gained new consumers during that timeframe.
And when inflation started and prices of i mean everything
(07:39):
went up, they were able to appel to newer consumers
as well. Well.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
And also if they're delivering stuff, you know, within an hour,
because in ninety percent of Americans live within ten miles
of a Walmart.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Now Walmart is the world's second largest e commerce company,
with US sales expected to reach one hundred and fifteen
billion dollars this year, according to market research company e Marketer,
But in the company's latest earnings report, its profit forecast
was below what Wall Street analysts expected, and an expected
one hundred and fifteen billion dollars in e commerce is
(08:16):
still a fraction of Amazon's expected four hundred and eighty
seven billion dollars in US online sales. McMillan is hoping
to close that gap.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Actually, my first day, when I was a teenager applying
for a job, there was a poster over the recruiting
desk for the warehouse that had a Walmart tractor trailer
running a Kmart tractor trailer off the side of a mountain. So,
you know, at seventeen years old, I'm like, huh, this
is a competitive spot. I like that, and I know
who were competing against, and that representation that was on
(08:48):
the wall showed us behind. I like that and our
peripheral vision, we're seeing the very best competitors and studying
what they do and then take the best of what
they do and apply it.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
If you can't to compete with fast fashion companies like TIMU.
E commerce behemoths like Amazon and retail competitors across the spectrum.
Walmart and McMillan have to face a few challenges. There's
keeping Walmart's workforce of over two million global employees happy,
pitching the brand to more upscale shoppers, and navigating a
(09:19):
complicated political environment. How McMillan is trying to do all
that after the break to keep Walmart on top, Doug
McMillan wants it to appeal to as broad an audience
as possible. That means expanding beyond the deal seekers and
(09:41):
trying to capture higher end shoppers. But Walmart has tried
this before and it didn't go so well the first
time around.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
In two thousand and five, they rolled out this line
of apparel aimed at urban women, which certainly wasn't their
core customers, called Metra seven, and they promoted it within
an event a New York Fashion Week with a big
apage spread in Vogue that kind of bound because the
clothing really didn't appeal to upscale buyers, then it was
too expensive for their core customer. They also embarked on
(10:13):
something not long after that called Project Impact, which was
an attempt to make the stores look and feel a
little more like Target, which traditionally appealed to a more
affluent demographic, and that didn't work out either. I mean
then they kind of widened dials and took items off
the shelf, and they kind of had to reverse a
lot of that. So now they're kind of doing that again.
They have two new clothing line, Scoop in Free Assembly
(10:35):
and Jay one and I went to a New York
Fashion Week show. Their creative directors Brandon Maxwell, who's you know,
the very well known fashion designers. Yeah, and you know,
done dresses for Michelle Obama. And at the same time
they've embarked on a big sort of rebooting of a
lot of their stores. They're sort of walking type broke,
(10:56):
and you walk around, you see fancier you know, Pete's
and things like that. At the same time you see
two dollars displays of belvi To cheese and things like that,
and they say it's work.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Walmart reports that more than seventy five percent of their
market share gain last fall came from customers with annual
incomes of over one hundred thousand dollars, and the company
is hoping it's e commerce business will extend those gains
because shoppers who wouldn't normally set foot in a Walmart's
store can buy from the retailer online, shoppers like Bethany
(11:28):
Frankel of Real Housewives of New York fame, who bought
a new bag on Walmart's website. Frankel posted a review
of that bag on TikTok. It's a knockoff of the
Ermez Birken bag, which some people call a work in.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
So here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
This is eighty five dollars. This is like twelve thousand.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
This is like flying Private, This is like flying Spirit
in the luggage compartment. While she said the work in
was Spirit Airlines quality compared to the real thing, she
still found plenty of things to complement and inside it
actually doesn't look all that different. The bag went viral
and then the company took it down after all, it
(12:07):
was a fake. It's worth noting even though it's sold
on the Walmart dot com marketplace, it's not something Walmart
makes Walmart dot Com now, just like Amazon sells third
party products.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Managing the customer experience in trying to build trust and
being responsible for things in a world where you don't
actually own all the inventory and make all the decisions
is more challenging.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
If managing a marketplace whose inventory it doesn't fully control
is one challenge, and even bigger one is managing a
company with Trump back in the White House. Every CEO
of Walmart for the past half century has worked with
the sitting US president. It's part of the job. But
during Trump's first term, McMillan made his criticisms of the
(12:51):
president known. In twenty seventeen, he condemned Trump's response to
a violent protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying, Trump this just
an opportunity to quote, bring the country together by unequivocally
rejecting the appalling actions of white supremacists, unquote. And even
before that, he'd weighed in occasionally on some hot button social.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Issues, doing things like lobbying state officials in Arkansas and
not to pass a bill that would have restricted GBT rights.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
It's not clear he'll be taking the same tack this
time around. In early January, McMillan traveled to Florida for
a meeting at Mara a Lago, and this is what
he said.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
He told Trump, We're here long term, We're a large employer,
we serve a lot of people. We want the country
to thrive. How can we be helpful?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Like many US based multinational companies, Walmart will be affected
by the president's protectionist policies. McMillan says he's not too concerned.
Walmart dealt with new tariffs during Trump's first term, but
Jaywan says the economic picture is different in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Another factor to take into account is years of historic inflation,
and there's a huge uncertainty around how that's going to
impact consumer spending. And Walmart, you know, they're used to
operating under this environment.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
And Devin says there are less obvious ways Trump's policies
could hit Walmart's bottom line.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Robert F. Kennedy Junior Health and Human Services Secretary, but
he doesn't think that food stamps should be used to
buy processed food and sugary.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Drinks, and Walmart receives about twenty six percent of SNAP
benefit spending. Walle McMillan tackles these challenges. He said that
at the top of his mind is the ordinary task
of being boss, recruiting and retaining good talent. When he
took over in twenty fourteen, Walmart faced dissatisfaction from some
employees who were trying to organize, McMillan raised the company's
(14:48):
starting wage and offered better benefits.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Everything we do wages, cash bonuses, equity, health care decisions.
We're trying to build a ladder that people want to
get on to build a career, not just come for
a job.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
For a or two.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Successful store managers can now make over six hundred thousand
dollars a year. The company also recruits employees from Google
and Amazon, and last year Walmart shares rows by seventy
two percent, and in the years ahead, McMillan's big bet
on Bentonville could test things. The company is closing some
satellite offices and asking many employees to relocate to the
(15:30):
new Arkansas headquarters. McMillan himself is also moving desks and
will soon say goodbye to Sam Walton's storied office in
the old HQ.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
It's still a hard sell even with all of this
quote unquote cooler stuff, and people are riding around in
knee bikes and fancy coworkingess centers and great cocktails.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Doug and the other executives are super focused on keeping
their momentum going, keeping up with competition and growing and
making sure that they don't fall behind again.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gora.
This episode is produced by Julia Press. It was edited
by Aaron Edwards and Danielle Sachs. It was mixed and
sound designed by Alex Sekura and fact checked by Adreana Tapia.
Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is
Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Meemster Boor. Sage
(16:29):
Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. If you liked this episode,
make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever
you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
In January, a group of Bloomberg journalists, including senior BusinessWeek
writer Devin Leonard, flew to the small city of Bentonville
in northwest Arkansas.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
The first time I went down was two thousand and five.
It's in Benton County, which was a dry county at
the time, so base you could go to Ruby Tuesdays
and sign in. I think it was like some kind
of a private club thing. That's the one place you
can get a drink.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Bentonville has changed a lot since then, and a good
amount of that change can be traced to the retail
giant that's been headquartered there for the past six decades, Walmart.
Sam Walton founded the first Walmart just a few miles
from Bentonville in nineteen sixty two, and since then it's
grown from a small town store to the largest retailer
(00:52):
in the country, and in the last decade, under the
leadership of its current CEO, Doug McMillan, Walmart has been
on a mission to revamp its image. It's Bentonville headquarters
is a clear sign of that.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
The company is opening a new campus. It's you know,
three fifty acres twelve new buildings.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
That's Jaywon Kong. She was also in that group of
Bloomberg journalists who made the trip to Arkansas in January.
Jay one covers Walmart day in and day out, so
she's followed along as Bentonville has transformed.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
The Walton family. They've you know, invested quite heavily in
you know, hospitality, outdoor activities like mountain biking, and so
that's created this new vibe of pipster and cool.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
To me, it was literally like kind of like wandering
into like Shangri La or in the Ozarks. It was
a little hard for me to believe there's all these
upscale restaurants, all of them with these fancy cocktail menus.
We were staying in a boutique hotel that it literally
you know, just opened and it had very nice sushi
place in the lobby and the next.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Sushi in the Ozarks Rush. On their trip, Jaywan, Devin
and BusinessWeek editor Brad Stone sat down with Walmart CEO
in his office and they learned that the changes in
Bentonville signal even bigger changes McMillan wants to bring to
the company, and we're.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Trying to set the stage for the future. We want
to be able to recruit and retain the best talent
in the world. And having Bittonville progress in the way
that it has, and having this new home office campus
will be also whether it's food or the grounds, the
bike trails, the lake, all those kinds of things I
think will just help us do that.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I'm David Gura, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News Today. On the show Just what does the
Future of Walmart look like, we take you inside the
office of Walmart CEO to learn about the company's push
to level up in Bentonville and to cross the US
while it navigates concerns over retail competition, corporate talent wars,
(02:58):
and a new political climate. Dud mcmillon's office is on
the ground floor of a one story building. Bloomberg's Devin
Leonard says, it's the longtime Walmart headquarters.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
You know, the window looks out in the parking lot.
It looks like an office, you know, more suitable for,
you know, the head of a regional trucking company than
you know, a multi billion dollar global company, the America's
biggest retailer.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
But it makes sense given Walmart's history. Walmart founder Sam
Walton put in place a low price guarantee and his
mantra for decades has been save money, Live better. And
McMillan's office used to be Sam Walton's office.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
There's a picture in McMillan's office of Sam Walton sitting
at the same desk. So you're literally, you know, living
in a shadow. The company's whole origin story is the
Sam Walton story. The success we've had is because of
our people.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
That's Walton reflecting on the business in a video on
the company's YouTube page.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
They in turn, I've worked harder than our editors. We've
kept our prices lower than our competitors' prices. He had
this whole every day low prices discounter philosophy, and he
just blew past serious. He blew pasted Kmart and so
by the time of his death, which is nineteen ninety two,
he was one of America's richest men. I think at
(04:18):
times he was America's richest man. But he was this
folk hero, you know, this guy who drove around in
a beat up old Ford that he used for hunting,
and he kept a gun behind which which we Milan
told us he had.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
A shotgun behind the door in Tasty to go berten pack.
Not zero weapons in the room.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Not there anymore. But McMillan has been very good at
you know, sort of. He has one foot in the
past and one foot in the present.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
McMillan started at Walmart in nineteen eighty four. Bloomberg retail
reporter Jay Won Kong says his first job at Walmart
was unloading trucks at a warehouse.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
He's spent his whole career at Walmart. He's someone that
a lot of people who work at the company find
really relatable.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
McMillan became a buyer and worked his way up the
corporate ladder. He was the CEO of Sam's Club, Walmart's
membership warehouse chain named for Sam Walton. Then he led
Walmart's international division before becoming CEO of the company in
twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Round the time when he took over, Walmart wasn't just
trailing Amazon. Its e commerce sales were lower than eBay
and Apple, so they were really coming from behind, and.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Walmart wasn't just lagging its rivals when it came to
e commerce. When McMillan got the top job, the company
was coming off years of slumping sales and a plateauing
share price. Before he took the helm, there were years
of discussions within Walmart about how they could keep customers
from turning away from brick and mortar supercenters and toured
online shopping.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
And there was a big debate about what do we
do about that, and some people thought, oh, you know,
it'll never be bigger than the the US catalog market.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
At that time, it was only about a two percent
share of the US retail business that in those categories
done three commerce, and people would say things like, we're
not going to put a banana in a gallon of
milk in a ups box and ship it to somebody's doormat,
So how is food even going to work in e commerce?
Speaker 3 (06:17):
They launched Walmart dot com in two thousand, but there
really wasn't a commitment and there were always people, you know,
thought Amazon, you know, it's not a big threat.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Back in two thousand, Amazon had been around for about
six years and hadn't turned to quarterly profit. Walmart meanwhile,
sat comfortably on top as the country's largest retailer. But
in the next decade plus, as McMillan moved from running
Sam's Club to Walmart International. He saw the way e
commerce cut into business, and when he took over his CEO,
(06:46):
he set his sights on expanding Walmart's online sales. In
twenty sixteen, two years after he became CEO, McMillan spent
billions of dollars buying Jet dot Com and several other
young online shopping sites in an effort to catch up.
Jet was supposed to be Walmart's e commerce brand, but
(07:07):
within a few years, Walmart had shut Jet down and
finally decided to put its weight behind its own online store,
which was good timing. When the pandemic hit.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
A lot of stores were shut down or they didn't
have products you know, on shelves. Walmart, because they are
the biggest, and they were in a lot of you know,
parts of the country one of the few places that
remained open. So they gained new consumers during that timeframe.
And when inflation started and prices of i mean everything
(07:39):
went up, they were able to appel to newer consumers
as well. Well.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
And also if they're delivering stuff, you know, within an hour,
because in ninety percent of Americans live within ten miles
of a Walmart.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Now Walmart is the world's second largest e commerce company,
with US sales expected to reach one hundred and fifteen
billion dollars this year, according to market research company e Marketer,
But in the company's latest earnings report, its profit forecast
was below what Wall Street analysts expected, and an expected
one hundred and fifteen billion dollars in e commerce is
(08:16):
still a fraction of Amazon's expected four hundred and eighty
seven billion dollars in US online sales. McMillan is hoping
to close that gap.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Actually, my first day, when I was a teenager applying
for a job, there was a poster over the recruiting
desk for the warehouse that had a Walmart tractor trailer
running a Kmart tractor trailer off the side of a mountain. So,
you know, at seventeen years old, I'm like, huh, this
is a competitive spot. I like that, and I know
who were competing against, and that representation that was on
(08:48):
the wall showed us behind. I like that and our
peripheral vision, we're seeing the very best competitors and studying
what they do and then take the best of what
they do and apply it.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
If you can't to compete with fast fashion companies like TIMU.
E commerce behemoths like Amazon and retail competitors across the spectrum.
Walmart and McMillan have to face a few challenges. There's
keeping Walmart's workforce of over two million global employees happy,
pitching the brand to more upscale shoppers, and navigating a
(09:19):
complicated political environment. How McMillan is trying to do all
that after the break to keep Walmart on top, Doug
McMillan wants it to appeal to as broad an audience
as possible. That means expanding beyond the deal seekers and
(09:41):
trying to capture higher end shoppers. But Walmart has tried
this before and it didn't go so well the first
time around.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
In two thousand and five, they rolled out this line
of apparel aimed at urban women, which certainly wasn't their
core customers, called Metra seven, and they promoted it within
an event a New York Fashion Week with a big
apage spread in Vogue that kind of bound because the
clothing really didn't appeal to upscale buyers, then it was
too expensive for their core customer. They also embarked on
(10:13):
something not long after that called Project Impact, which was
an attempt to make the stores look and feel a
little more like Target, which traditionally appealed to a more
affluent demographic, and that didn't work out either. I mean
then they kind of widened dials and took items off
the shelf, and they kind of had to reverse a
lot of that. So now they're kind of doing that again.
They have two new clothing line, Scoop in Free Assembly
(10:35):
and Jay one and I went to a New York
Fashion Week show. Their creative directors Brandon Maxwell, who's you know,
the very well known fashion designers. Yeah, and you know,
done dresses for Michelle Obama. And at the same time
they've embarked on a big sort of rebooting of a
lot of their stores. They're sort of walking type broke,
(10:56):
and you walk around, you see fancier you know, Pete's
and things like that. At the same time you see
two dollars displays of belvi To cheese and things like that,
and they say it's work.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Walmart reports that more than seventy five percent of their
market share gain last fall came from customers with annual
incomes of over one hundred thousand dollars, and the company
is hoping it's e commerce business will extend those gains
because shoppers who wouldn't normally set foot in a Walmart's
store can buy from the retailer online, shoppers like Bethany
(11:28):
Frankel of Real Housewives of New York fame, who bought
a new bag on Walmart's website. Frankel posted a review
of that bag on TikTok. It's a knockoff of the
Ermez Birken bag, which some people call a work in.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
So here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
This is eighty five dollars. This is like twelve thousand.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
This is like flying Private, This is like flying Spirit
in the luggage compartment. While she said the work in
was Spirit Airlines quality compared to the real thing, she
still found plenty of things to complement and inside it
actually doesn't look all that different. The bag went viral
and then the company took it down after all, it
(12:07):
was a fake. It's worth noting even though it's sold
on the Walmart dot com marketplace, it's not something Walmart
makes Walmart dot Com now, just like Amazon sells third
party products.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Managing the customer experience in trying to build trust and
being responsible for things in a world where you don't
actually own all the inventory and make all the decisions
is more challenging.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
If managing a marketplace whose inventory it doesn't fully control
is one challenge, and even bigger one is managing a
company with Trump back in the White House. Every CEO
of Walmart for the past half century has worked with
the sitting US president. It's part of the job. But
during Trump's first term, McMillan made his criticisms of the
(12:51):
president known. In twenty seventeen, he condemned Trump's response to
a violent protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying, Trump this just
an opportunity to quote, bring the country together by unequivocally
rejecting the appalling actions of white supremacists, unquote. And even
before that, he'd weighed in occasionally on some hot button social.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Issues, doing things like lobbying state officials in Arkansas and
not to pass a bill that would have restricted GBT rights.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
It's not clear he'll be taking the same tack this
time around. In early January, McMillan traveled to Florida for
a meeting at Mara a Lago, and this is what
he said.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
He told Trump, We're here long term, We're a large employer,
we serve a lot of people. We want the country
to thrive. How can we be helpful?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Like many US based multinational companies, Walmart will be affected
by the president's protectionist policies. McMillan says he's not too concerned.
Walmart dealt with new tariffs during Trump's first term, but
Jaywan says the economic picture is different in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Another factor to take into account is years of historic inflation,
and there's a huge uncertainty around how that's going to
impact consumer spending. And Walmart, you know, they're used to
operating under this environment.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
And Devin says there are less obvious ways Trump's policies
could hit Walmart's bottom line.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Robert F. Kennedy Junior Health and Human Services Secretary, but
he doesn't think that food stamps should be used to
buy processed food and sugary.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Drinks, and Walmart receives about twenty six percent of SNAP
benefit spending. Walle McMillan tackles these challenges. He said that
at the top of his mind is the ordinary task
of being boss, recruiting and retaining good talent. When he
took over in twenty fourteen, Walmart faced dissatisfaction from some
employees who were trying to organize, McMillan raised the company's
(14:48):
starting wage and offered better benefits.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Everything we do wages, cash bonuses, equity, health care decisions.
We're trying to build a ladder that people want to
get on to build a career, not just come for
a job.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
For a or two.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Successful store managers can now make over six hundred thousand
dollars a year. The company also recruits employees from Google
and Amazon, and last year Walmart shares rows by seventy
two percent, and in the years ahead, McMillan's big bet
on Bentonville could test things. The company is closing some
satellite offices and asking many employees to relocate to the
(15:30):
new Arkansas headquarters. McMillan himself is also moving desks and
will soon say goodbye to Sam Walton's storied office in
the old HQ.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
It's still a hard sell even with all of this
quote unquote cooler stuff, and people are riding around in
knee bikes and fancy coworkingess centers and great cocktails.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Doug and the other executives are super focused on keeping
their momentum going, keeping up with competition and growing and
making sure that they don't fall behind again.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gora.
This episode is produced by Julia Press. It was edited
by Aaron Edwards and Danielle Sachs. It was mixed and
sound designed by Alex Sekura and fact checked by Adreana Tapia.
Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is
Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Meemster Boor. Sage
(16:29):
Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. If you liked this episode,
make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever
you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
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