Archive for the ‘risk aversion’ tag

The Risk of Being Left Behind – Walmart, Maybe it’s not your bag?

Good business strategy helps you know who you don’t want as customers as well as who is your ideal client.  So you’ve decided you don’t have any interest in being a supplier to Walmart.  You’re not alone.

Most businesses have other sales channels to sell their products.  However not being prepared to do business with Walmart is taking a risk that only you can decide if it is low or high.

Do you know if any of your customers are interested in Walmart’s business?  If yes, you may find yourself in what is becoming an “audicious supply chain” related to sustainability and social impact. You may never need to have Walmart in your sales channel but your customer might and now so do you.

Yesterday, Walmart announced a new tool to assess the quality of their suppliers.  If you sell a product you are taking the risk of being left behind if you ignore Walmart’s influence.

What you can do:

Take a deep breath and think about who you need to bring together to help you assess your business risk related to sustainability and social influences.  Or not and risk being left behind?

We think of risk as what we are doing but in this case it just might be what you have yet to do!  If you are ready to give this some attention I’m here to help you set the table to evaluate opportunities and risk in your business: (310) 372-0591 or fay@123safety.com

Walmart Sustainability Summit 2009:

Products will be evaluated via a Life Cycle Assessment, this traces products from their raw materials through production, transportation, consumption and disposal.   This intent of the assessment is to cover not just the environmental impact of a product but also its social impact:

“Measurements of sustainability will be holistic and account for both environmental and social imperatives throughout the entire life cycle of the product including manufacture, distribution, consumer use, and post-use. These measurements will be derived from four areas: energy and climate, material efficiency, natural resources, and people and community.”