2015 U.S. Manufacturing: Michael Bender

July 08, 2015

Remarks as prepared for Michael Bender

Hello! I want to thank you for being here today, as Walmart takes stock of our $250 billion commitment to U.S. Manufacturing.

I can’t think of a more fitting place for us to meet this week, than right here in the great American town of Bentonville. Thanks again for coming.

Today, I want to talk about the eCommerce component of this initiative. U.S. manufacturing doesn’t just mean great new products on our shelves, it also means great new products on our customers’ screens.

Yesterday a team of our Walmart.com buyers participated in the Open Call. Some of you pitched your products to them, and discussed adding them to our website.

When an item goes up on Walmart.com, it becomes available to anyone with a computer, tablet or smartphone.

That’s incredible reach—and we’re also able to move very quickly.

It joins over 7 million other items for sale on Walmart.com. We call that an “endless aisle.”

But what I love even more than the selection, is the sortability and personalization. For example, Walmart.com has an “American Jobs microsite,” where you can see all of the U.S. products in one place. It’s a store-within-a-store.

You can view these products by category, and read descriptions about where they were made. Our algorithms recommend items, based on a customer’s past purchases and searches.

We are working to improve the listings and information. With 7 million items, it’s a big challenge -- and we know we can get better at it.

So we’re rebooting the process, and we want your help as we undertake a more extensive quality assurance review. Our customers want transparency and authenticity, and we’re going to give them that.

One important step I can flag now: we’re replacing our previous “Made in the USA” badge with a new logo that will help the items show up better in searches.

Another real advantage to our site is the interactivity. As you can see here, you can click an item, and actually watch a video that tells the story of where it was made.

We love to offer our customers that interactive content. Younger customers in particular respond well to it. So as Walmart suppliers, please keep that in mind. If you’ve got pictures or videos, send them our way, and we’ll tell your story together.

Now let me close by showing you our digital EDLP Catalogue, which is our “newspaper circular of the future.”

It too is interactive, and reaches a large amount of customers very quickly, including through our mobile App.

Check out last week’s edition, which highlighted U.S. Manufacturing on the back cover.