Walmart Thinks Big

The world’s largest retailer likes to do things on a big scale. This week’s annual

shareholders meeting is one example on display in Northwest Arkansas. About 14,000 people will travel to the area for Friday’s 7 a.m. meeting.

Walmart also uses the time as a way to recognize employees worldwide. The company pays for more than 5,000 store employees to attend events throughout the week, said Mark Henneberger, vice president of shows and events for Walmart.

International employees start arriving today. Henneberger said by 5 p.m. Tuesday all invited associates will be in the area.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience for these folks,” he said.

The Bentonville-based retailer keeps attendees on a pretty tight schedule, but many find time to explore the area on their own.

Most of the out-of-town employees stay in dorms on the University of Arkansas campus, but many still find time to hit local restaurants, bars and shops.

The meeting also pulls in company leaders, stockholders and vendors who stay in local hotels.

The onslaught of people also requires an extensive support system from bus drivers to event personnel who need a place to stay.

Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, said this business tourism is invaluable. The International Congress and Convention Association defines business tourism as the use of facilities and services by people who attend professional meetings, congresses, exhibitions, business events or take part in incentive travel and corporate hospitality.

“For most of the world, Northwest Arkansas is really a blank slate,” Deck said. “Surveys show us we have a real opportunity to define what Northwest Arkansas is. Anytime you bring in folks from all over the world it gives us a chance to develop those impressions.”

Steve Clark, president of the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce, said the week’s events benefit the area financially and culturally.

“We are in one of those fly-over states. But when people land they go ‘Wow. I didn’t know this was here’,” he said. “You just can’t afford to buy all that awareness.”

Heather Schneller, associate director of conferences for University Housing, has a lot of one-on-one interaction with visitors staying on campus. She said her main goal is providing excellent customer service.

“For some people it is their first time to travel. For many it is their first time to Arkansas,” she said. “We have had some people leave notes that said they enjoyed their time here so much they were going to talk to their children about attending the University of Arkansas.”

Big Event

Walmart’s annual meeting has been a big event for many of the company’s 51 years in existence.

Company founder Sam Walton said in his biography “Made in America” he wanted the stockholders’ meetings to be an event.

“We figured we were already out of the way enough to discourage anybody from coming, but since we wanted to encourage folks to attend, we scheduled a whole weekend of events for them,” he wrote.

Early meetings included picnics at the Walton house, golf outings, fishing trips and even a float trip down Sugar Creek.

Today’s meetings are held at Bud Walton Arena on the University of Arkansas campus and pull in big names in the entertainment business. Walmart keeps the lineup under wraps, but last year’s meeting featured Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Lionel Richie and Celine Dion.

“We really like to keep it quiet and give associates that ‘wow’ moment,” Henneberger said.

Walmart officials announced earlier Elton John, Ed Sheeran and Luke Bryan will perform at this year’s pre-meeting concerts. Company employees were able to secure tickets from Ticketmaster.

Henneberger, in his seventh year planning the event, said his division meets shortly after the conclusion of the annual event to talk about what worked and potential changes for the next year. Planning begins in earnest after the first of the year. He said they develop a list of potential entertainers and work with movie studios and records labels to determine the best fit.

“Walmart has great relationships with these people and they see it in their best interests to be part of the event,” he said.

The scale of Walmart’s shareholders meeting is an anomaly. Most begin with a chief executive reading a scripted financial update followed by a quick re-election of the board of directors and a short question-and-answer period, said Matthew Illian, a wealth manager for Marotta Wealth Management based in Richmond, Va. Illian writes about the importance of attending shareholder meetings for financial websites.

“It’s rare to have a much larger show. In the end the cost of holding such an event is outweighed by the benefit the company receives,” he said referring to the positive feelings the event gives to workers.

Walmart will not say how much it spends on the annual meeting, but the company’s proxy statement states it paid the University of Arkansas $962,000 for facility use for the 2012 meeting.

Other companies do hold larger events, but even those pale in comparison to Walmart’s meeting.

Starbucks holds it annual meeting in the 2,900-seat McCraw Hall in the Seattle Center and has included performances by Sheryl Crow and the Canadian Tenors.

The Green Bay Packers periodically sells shares directly to the public, but is not publicly traded. The team’s annual meeting drew just under 12,500 shareholders to Lambeau Field earlier this year with an additional 21,000 people logging in to the exclusive online web cast of the meeting. The Packers’ largest attendance for its meeting was 18,707 in 1998.

Warren Buffet draws several thousand people to Omaha, Neb., each year for Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholder meeting. Nearly 35,000 shareholders attended this year.

Walmart fills Bud Walton with 14,000 and streams the event live at corporate.walmart.com. Henneberger said more than 20,000 people watched the meeting online last year and he expects that number to continue growing as technology improves.

This year’s webcast will not just be streamed live but will feature additional commentary by a select group of store workers, he said.

Dianna Gee, Walmart spokeswoman, said the meeting is a chance for the company to honor its employees. Walmart has 2.2 million workers around the world. Stores worldwide have a chance every other year to send a representative to the week’s events.

“Stores get to nominate someone and they are then selected by their peers to represent their store,” she said.

Henneberger said workers living within 10 hours of Bentonville are bused in. They rest fly in to either Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport or Tulsa. Walmart picks up the tab for invited workers.

“This week is really about the associates,” he said. “One of the things we are really emphasizing is showing our appreciation for the store workers. It’s great to remind folks how much they mean to the company.”

Local Impact

The University of Arkansas is the biggest direct beneficiary of the annual meeting. Steve Voorhies, the university’s manager of media relations, said Walmart is slated to pay $459,116 for housing and $500,000 for dining services over the week. The University of Arkansas Police Department is slated to earn an additional $84,0000 during the event.

Walmart has booked 4,609 beds on campus and Voorhies said the average length of stay is three nights for U.S. employees and five nights for international guests.

Schneller said her staff is busy cleaning and performing maintenance on the dorms that were recently vacated by students.

“The conferences team will be making up all the beds Walmart has reserved and we are getting ready for check-in,” she said.

When they get off campus they are not only buying food and beverages, but souvenirs, Clark said.

“They will buy memorabilia from places like the Botanical Gardens and Mount Sequoyah,” he said.

One stop Walmart plans for visitors is the Walmart Visitor Center on the Bentonville square, former home of Walton’s Five and Dime, Sam Walton’s first store.

Daniel Hintz, executive director of Downtown Bentonville, said the shareholders meeting gives people an opportunity to reconnect with the downtown experience.

“The big part of the Bentonville story right now is the element of surprise. People who haven’t been downtown for a while can see it and feel compelled to come back,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for Northwest Arkansas to show off.”

Cecil Turner has owned the Station Cafe since 1997. The restaurant is just two doors down from the Visitor Center.

“As always we anticipate sales should be substantially up that week,” he said. “People find time to get a drink or grab a sandwich to go while on the square.”

Turner said the Walmart employees who are bused around don’t always have a lot of time to spend in Bentonville, but he enjoys the 10 percent to 15 percent bump in business.

Emmanuel Gardinier, general manager of 21c Museum Hotel in Bentonville, is preparing for the hotel’s first shareholders meeting. The hotel opened in February.

He said the hotel has some shareholder business, but many of the meeting’s visitors stay closer to the Fayetteville site.

“Not being opened last year, we don’t know quite what to expect,” he said.

The Chancellor Hotel in downtown Fayetteville is full, said Alex Jerde, the hotel’s general manager.

“It’s not just the people who come to attend this, it’s also the support staff from transportation to vendors,” he said. “When you look at the sheer volume of bodies that are going to be in Fayetteville, there are just not enough hotel rooms and business spills over into other towns.”

Walmart uses more than 30 buses to move people around during the week.

Henneberger said Walmart staff does much of the work during the week, but said it hires outside companies for some duties.

“It just doesn’t make sense for Walmart to have someone on staff to do some of these things once a year,” he said.

A production company comes in and sets up the meeting stage and hires some local stagehands, Henneberger said.

Roger Davis, general manager for Springdale’s Holiday Inn and Hampton Inn, said his hotels are in the perfect spot along the Northwest Arkansas corridor.

“We are in an ideal position. It’s one of the busiest weeks of the year,” he said.

The Holiday Inn also has a convention center that provides ample parking for the large number of buses used during the event, Davis said.

“We are lucky we can house that kind of business,” he said. “Sometimes I wish I had another 300 rooms to fill.”