Around the world, Walmart connects people to the things they need. Millions of items to billions of people.
If you stick around long enough, you’ll inevitably hear someone say that every item has a story. And if you stick around longer, you’ll realize they’re right – everything comes from somewhere, and all of it has something to teach you.
For the past 10 years, Walmart has been using its immense available physical and digital shelf space to highlight a subsection of these products: the ones owned or produced by women. Each has a tale, often marked by the entrepreneurial spirit, or a problem that needed solving. And each bears a simple logo reading ‘Women-Owned.’
Like the items it adorns, the Women-Owned logo has a story. And Walmart is at its center.
Walmart and the Women-Owned logo: 10 years of impact
The Women-Owned logo started, like so many pioneering things, with a question: What if we could bring the world’s biggest businesses together to talk with women about how to get their products on shelves?
Walmart, it just so happens, was a perfect place to go with this question.
Elizabeth Vazquez is the CEO of WEConnect International, a global nonprofit dedicated to connecting women-owned businesses to qualified buyers. She says early conversations with Walmart, in collaboration with the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), were key to bringing the concept to retail.
“We brainstormed with Walmart and WBENC on a way to help businesses owned by women stand out,” Elizabeth said. “But first we needed evidence that a women-owned logo would be helpful to all our stakeholders.”
And so, it was evidence they sought.
“Walmart conducted a series of focus groups with their customers, and when they were presented with two products that looked almost identical, but one said it was made by women, the Walmart customers almost always selected the products made by women,” Elizabeth explained. “When they were asked why, the customers just said they assumed the product made by women was of high quality.”
With the concept proven, the official Women-Owned logo went to press.
Ten years in, and it’s transformed into a globally recognized symbol. The logo ensures businesses displaying it have been independently vetted as at least 51% women-owned, operated and controlled. The logo has been translated into multiple languages, is used in dozens of countries, and featured on countless products and materials – which now transcend the physical. You can find the logo on websites, business cards and, of course, Walmart.com. With time and energy, many of these brands grow and evolve. Today, we have space for brands that aren’t just women-owned, but also women-founded or women-led.
Walmart’s work to develop the logo is in line with something at the core of the company’s mission: transitioning local opportunity to the global stage.
“Building inclusive global value chains that represent the end users is not charity. It is simply good business for Walmart, and all companies, to have access to all of the world’s best suppliers,” Elizabeth said. “We need to be more proactive in encouraging the women of the world to compete for these exciting opportunities, and the Women-Owned logo is one of those important tools that can really help!”
The suppliers setting the example
Around the world, Walmart empowers local women-owned businesses, which often grow well past their humble beginnings.
In Canada, LouLou Lollipop is certified as women owned. In Mexico, a family-run business called Sweet Life proudly supplies Walmart with an artificial sweetener. The story? A family history with diabetes drove Sweet Life to innovate. And in India, Nectar Fresh is creating and exporting health and wellness products to the world. Women owned? Indeed. Good business? Obviously.
The U.S. market is full of such examples. One of them is Frey Farms, whose owner, Sarah Frey, started a family business in agricultural production that she parlayed into a nationally distributed produce business.
Her history with Walmart is a rich one. Sarah started doing business with Walmart as a teenager and was the first produce supplier to be featured in a national TV commercial. The relationship remains strong, because with Walmart’s partnership, Frey Farms is still innovating.
“We’re in the fresh produce commodity business, and as Sarah would say, ‘There’s only so much you can do to make a watermelon sexy,’” said Hilary Long, the vice president of sales and marketing for Frey Farms. “But we were the first to bring personal-sized watermelons to Walmart; the first to offer Autumn CouleurTM heirloom pumpkins to the industry, and with Walmart as our partner we continue to have a lot of firsts. Walmart helps us scale new initiatives with speed – something that is unique in our industry.”
Hilary, who’s part of the Frey family, said the organization is proud of its founder & CEO, and the good the business does in partnership with Walmart.
“The Women-Owned logo and Walmart’s initiative have literally spiderwebbed through the food industry,” she said. “In produce, in CPG, in the stores, people do care – and when women are telling their story, that’s a great thing to have out there.”
