The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast

Most brands are not losing because they lack hustle. They are losing because they mistake motion for strategy, then wonder why the shelf stays quiet. We’re joined by Allisha Watkins, founder and CEO of Paradox Retail Marketing Agency, for a grounded conversation about what it really takes to grow emerging and challenger CPG brands in today’s Walmart and Sam’s Club ecosystem. We talk about why the traditional retail “blueprint” is breaking down, how tactic-first planning leads to piecem...

Retail is hungry for fresh products, but getting from a beloved local item to a national shelf spot is a steep climb. We sit down with the University of Arkansas Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the team at Act Two to unveil the Ozark Retail Accelerator, an Arkansas-backed program built to help consumer packaged goods founders cross the retail chasm without wasting years on preventable mistakes. If you’ve sold at farmers markets or independents and you’re eyeing Walmart, Sam’s Cl...

What if your supply chain could both thrill customers and quietly kneecap competitors? We sit down with Rod Thomas, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management and former retail operator, to unpack how logistics design becomes a decisive competitive weapon. The conversation moves beyond cost cuts and into bold moves that reset expectations, accelerate growth, and force rivals into bad choices. We start with a standout story: Lowe’s reengineers distribution centers to handle major applianc...

The retail playbook just changed: shoppers still click and scan, but AI agents now browse, compare, and buy on our behalf. We brought together leaders from academia, CPG, platforms, and agencies to break down what that means for brands selling at Walmart and across the modern digital shelf. The big takeaway is simple and hard: trust wins. Trust between people and machines, and trust between models and your product data. Clean attributes, consistent claims, and verifiable signals across PDPs, ...

AI doesn’t win because it’s shiny; it wins because it shortens the path from data to decision. We sit down with Slalom’s Andrew Fano, Jack Rudelic, Erika Pflueger, and Marco Kilongkilong to dig into how generative AI is transforming retail and consumer goods, from product roadmaps and software delivery to supply chain and customer experience. The conversation starts with culture and outcomes, then moves quickly into the real levels: where to inject AI in existing workflows, how to accelerate ...

Big results come from simple rules practiced every day. We sit down with longtime Walmart leader Sam Dunn to unpack the principles from Don Soderquist’s "The Walmart Way" and trace how culture, vision, and speed transformed small ideas into system-wide advantages. From the four basic beliefs, respect for the individual, service to the customer, strive for excellence, and act with integrity, to the rituals that made them real, we share firsthand stories that reveal why these weren’t slogans bu...