HOW WE SEE IT: Retailer Seeks To Push Diversity

One of Sam Walton’s strategies as he started to build Walmart into a retailing behemoth was to visit competing stores to see how they were displaying and marketing their products.

If he saw something he liked, it wouldn’t take long before the idea worked its way into his own stores.

We were reminded of Mr. Walton’s approach recently when Walmart sponsored the Road to the Essence Festival at Bentonville’s Orchards Park. On its face, it was just an outstanding evening of music. But this event had its origins elsewhere.

The Essence Festival, named for the sponsoring monthly magazine designed for African-American women, has since its start in 1995 become the nation’s largest event celebrating African-American culture and music. It’s scheduled to start July 4 in New Orleans and run for four days. The festival will include performances by Beyonce, Maxwell, New Edition, Charlie Wilson, Brandy, Jill Scott, LL Cool J and Keyshia Cole as well as Trey Songz, Janelle Monae and dozens of others.

Walmart is a major sponsor of the New Orleans event. The interest in promoting a multicultural environment in Northwest Arkansas - vital to its efforts to hire a multicultural workforce at its headquarters - inspired the company to adopt the celebratory nature of the Essence Festival and give it a go in Bentonville.

So, in 2013, the Road to the Essence Festival was born. Sam Walton would be proud.

“Walmart is working hard to ensure that Northwest Arkansas is a great place to live and raise a family,” said Sharonda L. Britton, director of multicultural marketing for Walmart. “We are finding new ways to bring the kinds of entertainment and activities that we know our associates and their families want - right in their own backyard.”

And they did it with great success. The local show drew hundreds of concertgoers for a chance to see Grammy-winners Maxwell, Estelle and Hezekiah Walker, among others.

Northwest Arkansas has so much going for it, but one of its challenges has been a lack of diversity to the point that it represents a barrier to recruitment of employees for the multinational and national companies.

Particularly for African-Americans, moving into Northwest Arkansas can be a bit of a culture shock.

Area leaders also held the first Northwest Arkansas Diversity Summit last November to “promote racial, cultural, and ethnic diversity in Northwest Arkansas and support quality of life enhancements by developing amenities that appeal to a variety of demographic groups.” The idea is to foment inclusion and equality while recognizing barriers to those important goals.

This is no simple task. As recently as 1990, Northwest Arkansas was 95 percent white.

Since then, its racial and ethnic makeup has become more diverse, but it takes time for a culture to catch up.

Walmart as well as other business and government leaders deserve credit for their work to develop events promoting diversity and to pay attention to the issue. It’s good for them, but also good for Northwest Arkansas.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 06/27/2013

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