Jeff Clapper is the President & Owner of 8th & Walton and enjoys leading the company's mission to educate suppliers on becoming better partners with Walmart. His current company not only helps inform suppliers they also offer services to manage those aspects of your business for you. 8th & Walton tries to be the eyes and ears of the companies trying to grow their business through Walmart. They can do this by simply providing the most relevant and helpful information or by helping you walk through factory audits, item set-ups, new contracts, ad strategies, and demographic information. In addition, they try to help suppliers provide a better price to Walmart, passing that through to their customers.
Walmart is known for holding its suppliers to stringent standards, so I wanted to see how that is going in the wake of all the supply chain issues. Jeff said the bottom line is that if your product is not on the shelf, you're not going to be successful. They are seeing that products being shipped in from overseas can cost 10x what they did before. The port in LA is a mess, and some ships are being sent to NYC to unload their cargo, hopefully before the holiday season. Domestic production isn't much better with the current labor shortage, but Walmart still wants their suppliers to be "On Time In Full," and if they're not, be honest. "Know what’s coming through your business and be upfront about it. Bad news doesn’t get better with age." Tell them, “here’s what we’re seeing, and here’s what we’re doing about it. If you don't communicate, then you may get a call one day saying you didn’t fill our orders for too long, so you’re out.”
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