Business Matters

CROSSMARK center helps Wal-Mart, suppliers find common ground

Nearly 1,400 companies that serve as suppliers to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have people on the ground in Northwest Arkansas.

Those supplier teams have been critical to the growth of the region's population and helped drive millions of dollars in commercial real estate development. For all the square footage those companies occupy, plus the presence of Wal-Mart's headquarters, there is still a shortage of adequate meeting space.

That's what led CROSSMARK, a marketing and sales company that serves Wal-Mart and its suppliers, to invest nearly $8 million in building an 18,500-square-foot facility equipped with a test kitchen, nine conference rooms and two digital walls that can be used to simulate in-store or on-shelf experience. It opened in July.

Located at 607 SW F St. in Bentonville, the two-story center is within walking distance of the retailer's headquarters. It operates through sponsorships from supplier service companies Alteryx , Rockfish , Parker Insights, Field Agent and 8th & Walton.

Suppliers can purchase memberships to the center in blocks of 100, 200 or even 800 hours. There are case-by-case rentals as well for companies and nonprofit groups.

Mike Graen, vice president for collaboration at CROSSMARK, has worked on both sides of the supplier-buyer relationship. He spent 20-plus years with Procter & Gamble and another five with Wal-Mart, and we recently chatted to get a better understanding of why the center exists and the role it's playing in getting goods on the shelf at Wal-Mart.

• With all the offices and meeting space in Northwest Arkansas, why was there a need for a center like this?

Have you ever been to the Wal-Mart home office before? It has these vendor rooms that are very efficient. That is probably the best description. There are probably 40 or 50 of those rooms. People go in there and have discussions, and for initial conversations that works perfectly fine. The challenge is that often it isn't just a buyer and a seller, but a whole team of people. It's salespeople. It's the account managers. It's the team leaders. It's the replenishment analysts. It's the Retail Linkanalysts. It's the marketing people. All those people need room to work together. You don't have that over there.

• No room to meet and no fully functioning kitchen, right?

Right. If you're a food supplier and you're going to make a pitch to Wal-Mart, you have to literally bring crockpots, microwaves and toaster ovens and set them up before the buyer comes in. Over here, we have a presentation kitchen. Logistically, you could set some of these meetings up at a supplier office, but by the time you factor in travel time and parking, you could lose two hours.

• What other ways does the center allow for more efficient collaboration?

When you go into a Wal-Mart store and you're standing in front of the coffee aisle, somebody made a decision about what should go on the shelf, what order it should go on the shelf, the price point and so on. Somebody is making all those decisions. They don't make that decision one time. They can make that decision as many as 4,500 times for each of Wal-Mart's stores.

To figure out how to take all the data Wal-Mart has, all the data on the industry, and put it into a virtual way of looking at how an assortment makes sense in this store versus this store -- that's a lot of horsepower, a lot of analytics. You've got to be able to touch it and feel it as well. We have the technology to support the planning process. We have digital walls that that show how a store would look virtually, which is a lot more efficient than trying to physically set things up. Our touch screens are large enough that you can actually make it feel like you're in the store.

• What else can you tell me about the technology available and is there anything you're not equipped to do?

We have touch-screen technology on 8-by-16-feet walls. We have two of those. We also have a third, 85-inch screen. There was a lot of time spent looking at capabilities for the center. It's definitely an anchor point to this. I don't want to brag on the technology simply because of the technology. I brag because it allows better collaboration and it's easy to use. A lot of thought went into what we have available. It always kills me when somebody says, "I just need to be able to show a power point." We've got these great tools and all you want to do is show a power point (laughing)? We can do that too, of course.

SundayMonday Business on 03/29/2015

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