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This controversy is another case, I think, of a group of people believing for some reason that they're justentitled to take a piece of the action, no matter how little they contribute to the transaction or what itmeans to the customer. The argument is as simple as the small-town merchant controversy. If Americanbusiness is going to prevail, and be competitive, we're going to have to get accustomed to the idea thatbusiness conditions change, and that survivors have to adapt to those changing conditions. Business is acompetitive endeavor, and job security lasts only as long as the customer is satisfied. Nobody owesanybody else a living.

To understand Wal-Mart's point of view on middlemen, and our relationship with our vendors, you haveto look back to our beginnings in the discount business. In the early days of the industry, mostdiscounters were served entirely by middlemen, jobbers, or distributors who came in and said to thoseold promoters, "We'll keep your shelves filled for 15 percent of the gross." In other words, the price onevery item included a 15 percent commission to the jobber for supplying the merchandise. That's how thefast-buck promoters got into the business without even having to think much like merchants. They tookwhat the jobbers gave them, added on the 15 percent, and still under-priced the department stores by along shot.

But as I mentioned, we couldn't find anybody who wanted to run their trucks sixty or seventy miles outof the way into these little towns where we were operating. We were totally ignored by the distributorsand the jobbers. That's not only how we came to build our own distribution system, it's also how we gotused to beating the heck out of everybody on prices. We had a time getting good merchandise for ourstores back then, but our cost of acquiring the goods was rock bottombecause we sat out there withabsolutely no help from distributors. And because we got used to doing everything on our own, we havealways resented paying anyone just for the pleasure of doing business with him.

CLAUDE HARRIS:

"There's a difference between being tough and being obnoxious. But every buyer has to be tough. That'sthe job. I always told the buyers: 'You're not negotiating for Wal-Mart, you're negotiating for yourcustomer. And your customer deserves the best price you can get. Don't ever feel sorry for a vendor. Heknows what he can sell for, and we want his bottom price.'

"And that's what we did, and what Wal-Mart still does. We would tell the vendors, 'Don't leave in anyroom for a kickback because we don't do that here. And we don't want your advertising program oryour delivery program. Our truck will pick it up at your warehouse. Now what is your best price' And ifthey told me it's a dollar, I would say, 'Fine, I'll consider it, but I'm going to go to your competitor, and ifhe says 90 cents, he's going to get the business. So make sure a dollar is your best price.' If that's beinghard-nosed, then we ought to be as hard-nosed as we can be. You have to be fair and upfront andhonest, but you have to drive your bargain because you're dealing for millions and millions of customerswho expect the best price they can get. If you buy that thing for $1.25, you've just bought somebodyelse's inefficiency.

"We used to get in some terrific fights. You have to be just as tough as they are. You can't let them getby with anything because they are going to take care of themselves, and your job is to take care of thecustomer. I'd threaten Procter & Gamble with not carrying their merchandise, and they'd say, 'Oh, youcan't get by without carrying our merchandise.' And I'd say, 'You watch me put it on a side counter, andI'll put Colgate on the endcap at a penny less, and you just watch me.' They got offended and went toSam, and he said, 'Whatever Claude says, that's what it's going to be.' Well, now we have a real goodrelationship with Procter & Gamble. It's a model that everybody talks about. But let me tell you, onereason for that is that they learned to respect us. They learned that they couldn't bulldoze us likeeverybody else, and that when we said we were representing the customer, we were dead serious."In those days, of course, we desperately needed Procter & Gamble's product, whereas they could havegotten along just fine without us. Today, we are their largest customer. But it really wasn't until 1987 thatwe began to turn a basically adversarial vendor/retailer relationship into one that we like to think is thewave of the future: a win-win partnership between two big companies both trying to serve the samecustomer. Believe it or not, as big as we had become by then, I don't believe Wal-Mart had ever beencalled on by a corporate officer of P&G. We just let our buyers slug it out with their salesmen and bothsides lived with the results.

Then one day my close friend and longtime tennis buddy here in Bentonville, George Billingsley, calledme up and asked me to join him on a canoe trip down the Spring River. He said he was bringing along anold friend named Lou Pritchett, who was a vice president with P&G at the time, and who wanted to meetme and talk about some things relating to our two companies. So I went along, and it turned out to be themost productive float trip I ever took with George.

LOU PRITCHETT:

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