we make a decision

Our Friday merchandising meeting is unique to retailing as far as I can tell. Here we have all these regional managers who have been out in the field all week long - they are the operations guys who direct the running of the stores. Then you have all your merchandising folks back in Bentonville - the people who buy for the stores. In retailing, there has always been a traditional, head-to-head confrontation between operations and merchandising. You know, the operations guys say, 'Why in the world would anybody buy this? It's a dog, and we'll never sell it.' Then the merchandising folks say, 'There's nothing wrong with that item. If you guys were smart enough to display it well and promote it properly, it would blow out the doors.' That's the way it is everywhere, including Wal-Mart. So we sit all these folks down together every Friday at the same table and just have at it.

We get into some of the doggonedest, knock-down drag-outs you have ever seen. But we have a rule. We never leave an item hanging. We will make a decision in that meeting even if it's wrong, and sometimes it is. But when the people come out of that room, you would be hard-pressed to tell which ones oppose it and which ones are for it. And once we've made that decision on Friday, we expect it to be acted on in all the stores on Saturday. What we guard against around here is people saying, 'Let's think about it.' We make a decision. Then we act on it."

David Glass

Sam Walton, Made in America by Sam Walton & John Huey. Bantam Books. 1992. p. 225, 226