Harbus

Issue date: 9/15/08 Section: News

Over the course of the summer it became clear that Sustainability represented a domain where even Walmart - famed for its heavy-handed approach with suppliers - would work more collaboratively to "co-innovate" sustainable product solutions. In mid-July, this evolving approach became very apparent when Walmart hosted a Sustainability Milestone Meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas, for select suppliers. The retailer made it clear to suppliers that developing and successfully commercializing sustainable products would not be a "black box" process and, in fact, called on its key suppliers to show "one ounce of leadership" in coming up with solutions that demonstrated authentic Sustainability-based progress. It was at this point that Walmart described its massively successful collaboration with GE to develop the compact florescent light bulb (CFL), the spiral-shaped bulb that burns longer and more efficiently…and saves consumers money as a result. The development of the CFL was a project that had long been underway at GE, but Walmart's support proved instrumental in solidifying the business case. Apparently, Walmart had asked GE how many bulbs it would need to sell in order to generate an attractive return. GE threw out the bogey of 100 million light bulbs. Walmart execs, so taken by this "game-changing" Sustainability-based innovation, agreed that they could make this happen across Walmart's footprint of 3,600 stores in the U.S. Over the next year, Walmart sold 137 million GE CFL light bulbs.

At this meeting, Walmart also made it very clear how it would start taking Sustainability "to the consumer" with a month-long promotion in April 2009 that featured hundreds of sustainable products from its supplier base. During this promotion - "Earth Month" - Walmart would heavily promote products that were making a difference. Suppliers knew well what this meant: huge sales volume lifts enabled by Walmart's strong backing for selected products. Moreover, Walmart told us that they wanted these product submissions back in four weeks!

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