Walmart's global success has been vital to job growth in Northwest Arkansas.
Roughly 6,000 Northwest Arkansas residents work for Walmart suppliers, and an untold number work for firms providing services to the vendor community in addition to the nearly 16,000 people working directly for the retail behemoth.
Supplier growth in the area peaked between the late 1990s and early 2002.
"When they write the story of the economic boom in Northwest Arkansas, it will say it was ignited by the supplier community," said Cameron Smith, president and founder of executive recruitment firm Cameron Smith & Associates in Rogers. Smith said 1,484 Walmart suppliers have offices staffing between one and 200 people.
Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, said growth in the vendor community will be small in the future.
"What we are going to see going forward are more business-to-business and ancillary services that both Walmart and the vendors need," she said.
Smith said there are more than 400 third-party suppliers in the area offering services ranging from social media and marketing to supplier education and data analysis. Some firms are homegrown ventures such as Collective Bias and 8th & Walton. Others are satellite offices of national firms such as Nielsen.
"We couldn't even imagine this type of growth a decade ago," Deck said of the emergence social media jobs.
She called the concentration of suppliers and related services in Northwest Arkansas unique.
"I don't think anywhere else the country has the mix we have here," she said.
Carol Spieckerman, president and chief executive officer of newmarketbuilders, said the only comparable community might be Minneapolis, home of Target headquarters. Newmarketbuilders is a Bentonville-based retail consulting firm.
"But it isn't quite the same dynamic. In the bigger cities there are other companies competing for that focus," she said. "In most of these other retail hubs, suppliers have not been encouraged to set up shop there."
Spieckerman said Walmart never mandated suppliers to open offices near the home office, but many have opened a Northwest Arkansas site after the retailer strongly encouraged it.
Procter & Gamble opened the first vendor office in 1989. The company's Fayetteville office has about 200 employees serving the Walmart account. Procter & Gamble is a consumer goods company headquartered in Cincinnati. Its products range from Tide and Charmin to Crest and Duracell.
Mike Harvey, chief operating officer of the Northwest Arkansas Council, said growth in the supplier and vendor servicing arena creates the need for additional offerings the whole community uses, such as retail and entertainment.
"Every one of those jobs creates an additional two jobs," he said.
Serving Suppliers
Smith started Cameron Smith & Associates in 1994 when there were only 50 vendor offices in the area. His recruitment efforts now extend beyond Bentonville and into Minneapolis and Seattle where he has satellite offices that serve suppliers for several major retailers including Target and Costco.
He had 105 job openings in Northwest Arkansas in early February, up from his 80-plus monthly average.
The company is filling more of its jobs with people already living in the area and is placing more entry level positions as businesses expand social media teams, he said. Smith said digital and social media are employment growth areas.
"It's a paradigm shift, and the market needs the young millennials working alongside the old guard," he said. Millennials refers to the generation of people born between the early 1980s and the early 2002. The age group is also known as Generation Y.
Spieckerman said growth in these areas is good for the region because it provides opportunities for graduates and helps retain talent. Newmarketbuilders is not solely focused on Walmart, but Northwest Arkansas is a good home base, Spieckerman said.
"We are located here because there are so many high-level executives here. No supplier just has Walmart as its only account," she said.
Collective Bias is one local company taking advantage of retails' growing dependence on the social network. The social shopper media company started in 2009 and has several satellite offices including San Francisco, Minneapolis and New York. The Bentonville-based company also has a presence in Canada and the United Kingdom.
The company publishes user-generated content across many social platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, that connects shoppers with companies and products they use. Collective Bias uses this content to help a company build consumer interaction and brand loyalty.
Forbes last year named Amy Callahan, Collective Bias co-founder and chief operating officer, as one of the top 11 women who started amazing companies.
Supplier development firm 8th & Walton is growing its services, but remaining focused on Walmart suppliers, said Jeff Clapper, chief executive officer.
"We have kind of just grown into a position where we are the unofficial association for Walmart suppliers," he said. "We are becoming a resource for suppliers on many fronts."
The company started in 2006 with four employees and now has six full-time workers and another 25 on contract as facilitators.
"Some of those people also work full-time for a supplier," Clapper said.
The company offers classes at its office near Walmart's headquarters. It also has online offerings and will take classes to suppliers. He said about 8,000 have taken classes since the company's inception.
In mid-2013, 8th & Walton launched an online show focused on all things retail called "Saturday Morning Meeting." The show went live on local NBC affiliate KNWA in January. The business also provides Walmart news on its website and distributes an email of Top 10 Walmart headlines.
Suppliers have other educational opportunities throughout the year through programs called Doing Business in Bentonville and WalStreet.
Smith was one of the founders of Doing Business in Bentonville, a speaker series that held its first meeting in January 2005. Between 150 and 300 people attend each meeting.
WalStreet is also a speakers program and is organized by the Bentonville Bella Vista Chamber of Commerce.
Both programs bring in Walmart executives and other retail experts to talk to the supplier community.
"There is a real retail culture here, and we need to continue to capitalize on it," Harvey said.
NW News on 03/23/2014