How to Get Your Product into Walmart (And Stay There) | Retail Strategy with James Harris
- Stanley Igboanugo
- Apr 1
- 19 min read
In this episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, Jon LaClare sits down with James Harris, founder and CEO of High Impact Analytics, to break down what it really takes to succeed in Walmart and Sam’s Club.
With nearly two decades of experience working with brands inside the Walmart ecosystem—including time at Unilever—James shares insider insights on how retail has evolved, why Walmart is becoming more open to emerging brands, and the biggest mistakes that can get your product pulled from shelves.
You’ll learn why getting into retail is only the beginning—and why execution, supply chain discipline, and operational excellence are what ultimately determine long-term success.
The conversation also explores how omnichannel retail is reshaping the customer journey, how Walmart is attracting higher-income shoppers, and why brands should start building relationships with retailers earlier than ever before.
If you’re an eCommerce brand thinking about retail—or already in retail and struggling to scale—this episode is packed with real-world strategies you can apply immediately.
In today’s episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we’ll cover:
How Walmart and Sam’s Club evaluate new and emerging brands
Why retail is becoming less risk-averse and more open to innovation
The shift to omnichannel—and how it impacts product distribution
What it really means to be “ready” for retail (it’s not just revenue)
Why supply chain, forecasting, and logistics matter more than marketing in retail
The biggest mistakes that cause brands to get kicked off the shelf
How to maintain strong relationships with buyers and build long-term trust
Why staying in stock is the # 1 driver of retail success
How Sam’s Club can be a powerful launchpad for new products
You can listen to the full interview on your desktop or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Or, click to watch the full video interview here!
If you’re planning to expand into retail, improve your in-store performance, or better understand how Walmart operates today, this episode delivers a practical, behind-the-scenes look at what works—and what doesn’t.
To learn more about James Harris and High Impact Analytics, visit highimpactanalytics.com or connect with James on LinkedIn.
Interested in launching or scaling your own product? Visit HarvestGrowth.com to book a free consultation and learn how our team has helped generate over $2 billion in product sales.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a review — and we’ll see you next time on the Harvest Growth Podcast.
Prefer reading instead of listening? Read the full transcript here!
[Jon LaClare]
If you're an e-commerce brand thinking about retail, this episode could change how you think about growth. I sat down with a Walmart expert with nearly two decades of experience helping brands get into Walmart and Sam's Club. We talked about how smaller brands are getting new opportunities in retail, what buyers are really looking for, and the critical mistakes that can get a product kicked off shelf.
If retail is on your roadmap, you'll want to hear this one.
[Announcer]
Harvest the growth potential of your product or service as we share stories and strategies that'll make your competitors nervous. Now, here's the host of the Harvest Growth Podcast, Jon LaClare.
[Jon LaClare]
Over the past 20 years, our team has helped launch and grow hundreds of consumer products, generating more than $2 billion in revenue for our clients. On this show, we break down what actually works in product marketing, real stories, real strategies, and lessons you can put to work in your business right away. Whether you're getting ready to launch or you're to scale what's already working, you're in the right place.
Let's jump in. Today's guest I'm really excited to share with you is James Harris. He's the founder and CEO of High Impact Analytics.
They specialize in helping brands succeed in Walmart and Sam's Club, among others, but that's the primary focus. If you're looking to potentially get into retail or perform better in retail, or maybe get to Walmart for the first time, this is an interview you're going to want to pay attention to. James, first of all, I want to welcome you to the show.
Thanks for joining today.
[James Harris]
Thank you, Jon. Happy to be here.
[Jon LaClare]
Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you went from working at Unilever back in the early days of your career to starting High Impact Analytics?
[James Harris]
Yeah. I was fortunate to grow up in an area that ended up having the world's largest retailer, at least for a little while. I believe Amazon might have taken that title a couple of months ago.
For all of my adult and career life so far, Walmart was in my backyard. My first job, really, I had an alternative path through college and worked nights there, went to school nights, weekends, that sort of thing. I've worked in this industry since I was 19, which would have been about 1999, and started out at Walmart in replenishment.
Learned a lot there. Did head off to college at some point to try to do the full-time thing. Didn't love it.
Went back to nights and weekends and started working in the supplier world connected to Walmart and Sam's. Spent about a year at a company, pretty small luggage camping importer, South Korea-based company produced mostly in China. Then from there, was able to work at Unilever.
I was there for about six years, half of that time here on the Walmart team and then half of that on Target in Minneapolis. Had a great run. I started in analytics, went into category, and then ended up in a sales position, which was my goal.
What I had seen just from those few jobs, Walmart interacting with suppliers, a smaller supplier that did a good job, and then a big supplier that did a really good job, a great job, you could say, how they positioned themselves to work with, in my case, I only worked with mass retailers, but how they positioned themselves to do that. From my Walmart perspective, also got to see how companies didn't do that, weren't aligned necessarily resource-wise or either enough people or the right people, so to speak, to really manage the business. The biggest part, honestly, about Walmart, it's not getting in, it's staying in.
It's much harder to deliver day in and day out in such a massive ecosystem where demand can all of a sudden just take off and exceed your expectations. All of a sudden, your factory that you thought you had ample supply, all of a sudden has zero supply. I wanted to start a company to become what we are today, a broker involved in product development, but that could support the business like the better CPGs.
I've always said Fortune 100 CPG performance for your team, whatever size that may be. We consider ourselves like a fractional consumer package goods team. We do sales.
We do have a strong analytics replenishment supply chain team, digital team, as well as our internal tech crew. Then we have a circle of partners that do things that we don't, that we really try to be a one-stop shop, if you will, for advancing Walmart. The idea was, I want to create a service for any size company, but assuming smaller and mid-size and emerging, that show up at Walmart like Unilever would in terms of expectations, in terms of servicing the business, shipping on time, shipping in full, staying ahead of issues, watching the forecast, adjusting the metrics, and so on.
When I started the company, it was initially just me. My idea was, I could either start the brokerage and be all of those things, or I can do all of those things except the sales and brokerage, which is where I landed. We started with high-impact analytics.
We were weekly reporting, digging into the data, telling stories, doing a great deal of replenishment and forecasting work, supply chain, fixing logistical issues. Essentially, our core focus back then was, if you can get past the issues of the current business in the first 30 seconds of a 30-minute meeting, we've done our job really well. It was really an out-of-sight, out-of-mind in terms of what our interaction with Walmart was at the time.
We were in some meetings and things like that, but our job was really to just execute the business. If you're going in for an annual line review, you don't necessarily bring your whole team. It's the salesperson, typically, and their product and their sales pitch.
We wanted to make that just the smoothest operation they can so that the salespeople could sell. We ran the business. I ran the business like that for a while.
We grew, added people. I eventually added somebody that already worked here, promoted them into chief operations. That's when I started pulling away from really orchestrating the day-to-day to driving business development and driving where I wanted to take this company, which is where I will never say we've arrived, but we've arrived at the starting point of where I want to really launch from.
The brokerage is the largest and fastest growing portion of our business, but we still support businesses that have their own sales team, but just need support in some other ways.
[Jon LaClare]
One of the reasons I was so excited for this interview is I see a lot of similarities in our businesses and our backgrounds. You mentioned Unilever and taking those learnings into helping smaller companies. Similar, my background is with Kraft Foods on the marketing side, not the sales side.
We approached Kraft Foods and then OxiClean many years ago, and then launching our company with the goal how do you market your product effectively with the learnings of the big companies, maybe without the massive and maybe too big or more than needed budgets at times. How do you do it effectively? The science behind it, et cetera.
I love your approach, very similar to what we believe as well. I call it being classically trained. There's a reason these companies are big and stay big.
It takes a lot to stay there. You can do a lot of that for smaller emerging or mid-sized brands as well. You've been running this business for almost two decades.
What are some of the biggest changes you've seen at retail over that time?
[James Harris]
Technology, one. Even before we get to digital or omni-channel, the technology of running a retail business has radically changed. When I was being trained on replenishment at Walmart in 1999, what we're doing today, it's an entirely different system.
It's much more sophisticated, of course. That certainly has changed. The technology of getting product from one point to another and then to the store, that's changed.
If you're a little nerdy like me, it's pretty fun to dig into. In terms of how the consumer interacts, part of it will never change. You're buying, let's stick with the core consumables.
You're buying food and household materials and things for your family so that everybody has what they need. Now, do you have to do that by waiting for the Sunday circular to come out and then you make your trips based on all that? That part's changed quite a bit.
We're not clipping quite as many coupons, but we are still fulfilling the same need. Now, you can have that journey on your phone, on your pad. At my house, we get a delivery every Sunday night about 9 o'clock.
That's our food for the rest of the week. Now, I personally, because of my work, I like to walk stores. If I'm cooking, I usually go through the store and we'll check out what else is going on in there and look at some new things.
The shopper really has their say. They get to shop the way that they want to. I'd say that's by far the most radical change in the shopping experience, at least in the Mass channel that I'm familiar with.
[Jon LaClare]
It's funny. I love walking Walmart store aisles still as well. When you're in the product world, there's no better place to see it all happen.
I love it. My wife hates going to Walmart with me, but I do the same thing on Saturdays. It's our typical thing and I stay longer than I should probably, but we're learning while we're there.
It's a lot of fun when you understand a lot of the behind the scenes stuff. Consumers obviously interact differently today with retailers, with buying products than they did 20 years ago. How does Walmart look at it?
If you think of Walmart and Sam's Club, the difference between brick and mortar and their online, Walmart.com or Sam's Club.com, how do they look at those two channels differently or are they similar?
[James Harris]
I mean, it's evolved. At first, there were the stores and we have a website. Now we're pushing more traffic to the website.
Then a few years ago, the big transformation really was the move to Omni. I think we were talking a little before the call, a person can buy one product but touch every channel or they could buy the same product multiple times. One time they buy it in the store, one time they buy it on the site and it's shipped to their house because their local store is out.
Another time it's delivered from the store right down the street or picked up in the parking lot. Walmart really sees their... One other thing that's changed in Walmart Sam's view is they had their distribution network and they had their stores.
Now there's a lot more blur between those two because you could receive a product from a warehouse, you could receive a product from a store. By the way, there's also a lot of stores that have fulfillment centers built into them. That's only going to become more and more and more to the point that I'd say in five, maybe less years, as much or at least a very large percentage of each store will be used as a fulfillment center, not just a shopping environment.
[Jon LaClare]
That's a big change. One of the things I love about Walmart also changing is not just the way they view the retail journey, but also the products that come into Walmart. I think back to 20, 25 years ago, Walmart and Sam's used to be a breeding ground for innovators.
Really, that's where Sam's Club was really the first big retailer that took OxyClean on back from MyHeritage and turned it into a massive brand. Walmart was closely behind it, of course, same company, and they grew like crazy. They would take on small ideas that we had really as a testing ground, but over time that changed.
Not so much for OxyClean because, of course, we were a bigger company and built a relationship with them, but they started working with fewer innovators, brand new products. It was harder to get into. I think that's changed.
You mentioned that too in our previous conversation. Can you talk a little bit about that? How is the world today for Walmart and Sam's different for newer product innovators than it might have been several years ago?
[James Harris]
It's far less risk averse. There's more of a willingness to take a swing than there was, say, 10 years ago, especially. I would say before, but not the whole way back.
To your point, Sam was a great innovator. Many of his initial merchants, they were looking for the new thing. Then there was a period there where it was just, we've got a core business here.
We're throwing up 350 stores a year. That's the bet we're making. We also don't need to have a product we bring in that fails.
Now that store growth, that dynamic has changed. Capital is going towards remodels now. The focus is, how do we get people coming in here more or shopping on our site more?
How do we build that loyalty? In terms of loyalty, how do we build loyalty with incomes, shoppers with incomes that are maybe higher than they were back in the 90s or even early 2000s? If you look at the last several quarters, Walmart's market share gains, 75% of them have come from households earning over $100,000.
In the way they break down income, they might internally have different metric for it, but 100 plus is the metric. That's the fastest growing part of their business. I say that because a lot of new or innovative products, they're not necessarily opening price point.
I've seen brands that have 20, 30 million in digital sales only, actually launch their brick and mortar business at Walmart. Now, that's the anomaly, but it can happen. A little bit safer bet.
One of my partners and I, we have a podcast as well called The Retail Journey. You mentioned the generic retail journey a minute ago. That's our podcast.
Every once in a while, I have the opportunity to interview somebody from Walmart. A year, year and a half ago, we interviewed a woman who at the time was vice president of breakfast, baking, and bread. I'll say that three times fast.
She's in a completely different role now of adult beverage SVP. Her comment was, in the past, we wanted companies to approach Walmart when they were 70% ready for us. Then we'll help with making an accommodation for scale, for where do we start and where do we grow from and that sort of thing.
Her comment was, we want you to come to us now when you're 30% ready for us. Let's walk along this journey for two years before. You don't have to come to us when you're ready for it to start shipping in a few months, come much sooner.
They've got resources where they can tell you what's worked in store and what hasn't worked in store. That's been a big change. If we shift over to Sam's Club, I actually had a conversation just today with the VP over OTC and wellness.
There weren't any data metrics shared, but she said, our members are looking for the new thing. That's a part of the excitement that causes them to pay a membership fee for the privilege of shopping there. We need our core staples.
We need the things that people have to have. Really, the excitement is generated with the things that are new. The people, oh, I've heard of that or I've never seen that before.
They have great trial numbers at Sam's Club. I would say, you might approach Walmart when you're 30% ready and you have a little bit of a road to walk before you actually start doing business there. You could very easily do a four to six-week rotation in a Sam's Club before you're ever in another brick and mortar environment.
[Jon LaClare]
It's good to think about. I think that's not where most people think of. If they're not familiar with the retail landscape, going to a club store, you think of it as being the bulk item store, buying bigger and more of the brands that you know and love.
You're right. It is very innovative. They're known.
The one thing people do realize is when you walk the aisles, especially on a weekend, it's the taste tests. You can touch and feel things, et cetera. They really are about true innovation.
It's a great place to just consider starting your journey. For any brands that might be listening that are successful, they've got a successful e-commerce business, or maybe they've got some retail presence, maybe not, but what are some signals that they should look for in their business that point to, okay, maybe I'm ready. Maybe I'm at 30% or 70% or whatever.
What does that mean in terms of being ready to pitch the big guys who went to Walmart or Sam's?
[James Harris]
Revenue is always relevant. Revenue shows that people want your product and other companies have carried it. That's obviously the kind of place to start.
But looking internally, when do I know that I'm ready or I'm getting ready? It's when you have scale potential or capacity potential that's exponentially higher than what you've got. That's the tricky part.
How do you make that jump from being, say, a $30 million online brand and I've got ambitions to get to 100 in X years? That's a tremendous amount more capacity that you have to have. So do you buy all of that at once or do you create an environment or find a scalable partner as a co-man?
There's a number of things on the back end to be ready for. And then just knowing that when you move to particularly, I'd say any mass retailer, Walmart and Sam's as well, but any of the large mass or even large grocery, you have to have a team that one knows how to interact with that retailer. And I'm not even referring to the relationship side.
I'm talking about how you receive orders, manipulate orders if you need to, manage the system, communicate problems. Not everything flows through the merchant. So do I have the right people that can align with the replenishment person that's going to be really watching the inventory flow?
Or if there's a problem, can I get in touch with logistics, et cetera. And then how to, how to interact with then assuming you're not a prepaid supplier and they're shipping, you know, FOB and the retailers pick it up. How do I work with that system?
How does my warehouse team work with that system? Yeah. So there's, you know, talk to, talk to people that have done it before.
The one thing I've found about founders is they love to tell their story. And, and the often they're more than willing to talk about, yeah, this is the thing. We stubbed our toe on this, and then we did this and fixed it.
And now here we are. Have as many of those conversations at conferences or whatever, as you can. But at the same time, don't try to get it all ready before you come in and say, here's who we are.
Right. There's, there's, it's perfect. Except we'll say, here's who we are.
Here's the excitement we're generating. Here's here, here's where we're going. I don't think we're quite ready for you all yet, but you're definitely on our roadmap.
What's your interest level, you know, and having, having some even tentative commitment could give you the collateral you need to go, you know, find that partner, find that scale that could, that you're going to need eventually to be able to produce, to be in there.
[Jon LaClare]
And then shifting gears a little bit. If we fast forward, let's talk about what it takes to stay on shelf. So even if we're considering getting in for the first time, it's good to have that vision of what, when I'm there, what do I need to do to make sure I'm successful enough that I stay on shelf.
It's great to make it to Walmart. The last thing I want to have happen though, is to get there and then not perform and be off shelf. Cause it's difficult to get that very difficult to get back on once you, once you don't make it, but if you can stay on there, you might be there for decades potentially.
So what are some things that really drive success in store to stay on shelf and whatever category it might be?
[James Harris]
Yeah, we tell, we tell all of our clients that are new to Walmart that getting in can be hard. Year two is harder and year three is the hardest. So it doesn't, it doesn't get easier right away.
And by hard, I just mean there's a lot more to do, right? And there's a lot more things to catch things that can go wrong. Number one, if the product isn't in stock, it can't sell and you've, you know, that's a failure right now.
If it's a one store out of 4,000, it's a small failure. But being able to consistently keep your product in stock, being able to, you know, identify, Hey, we're selling more than we thought we're outselling our forecast. That's a guaranteed recipe for running out of stock.
You know, that's, that's a big part of staying on top of that. Shipping compliance is boring and as unsexy as that is, is really important. You've got to ship on time.
You've got to have the right dimensions in the system, the right weights. All of those things are really relevant and getting those things wrong, especially out of the gate. The first year or so puts a lot of doubt in a merchant's mind is okay.
I've given this, this company a test. You know, they've got one item in 500 stores. They want to roll to 4,000, but they're not delivering the 500 consistently.
They're, you know, they're, they're, they're at Walmart's called OTF on time and full. They're OTF is 60%. So why would I give them more?
If you have 40% of the time, I don't have product when and where I want it. That's kind of number one is fulfilling the business. Number two, I'd say, you don't, you don't want to just inundate your buyers.
They're busy. They get hundreds and hundreds of emails a day. But when there's a problem you need, you really need to let them know before it becomes their problem.
So think about a product that's, that's coming from China, right? There's this 14, 17 week lead time. If you know, in week one of 17 weeks that there's going to be an issue in 16 weeks, you need to be letting them know then so that they can, you know, make whatever decisions they need to for when that time gets there.
Rebuilding credibility and rebuilding trust after not doing something like that is very, very difficult. So just honest, transparent, and, you know, I don't generally use this term, just maniacally focused on execution.
[Jon LaClare]
And it's different. I think it's a different mindset. So e-commerce listeners and marketers, often when we say data and metrics, you know, our mind goes to click through rate, conversion rate, traffic levels, average order value, things like that.
And it's different. Like those matter to some extent, right? But the piece that is really important, if I'm hearing you right, is logistics, right?
Fulfillment, keeping stores stocked and full. So if it's going to work, it's going to sell well. But if it's not there, you lose that chance to even get in front of a consumer.
You lose revenue, but you might lose the chance to even stay on the shelf at the end of the day.
[James Harris]
You know, I always say being in stock and having your POs on time really does cover a multitude of sins. Things are going to go wrong. You know, sometimes you're not going to hit a hurdle, right?
Sometimes you are going to have a late truck arrive. You know, things happen. But if you're consistently delivering to expectation, then Walmart is more than fair in my experience of 20 years or so.
Hey, you're working hard. You're doing good. Stuff happens.
We'll overlook this. You know, it's when it becomes kind of a pattern or you're in that 60% OTIF range and it's not changing. That's when, you know, gosh, should we continue devoting our really valuable real estate to this product?
[Jon LaClare]
You can only fit so many things on the shelf at once. No matter how good your product is, it's got to be better than the other products in that category to be able to stay on or get on shelf in the first place. James, this interview has been super helpful.
Is there anything else that you'd like to share with our audience that maybe we missed in this interview that might be helpful to them?
[James Harris]
Yeah, that's a good question. I'd say I would probably the main thing would be especially if you're not like everybody's familiar with Walmart, right? It's I think 95% of America, if not more, can get something delivered to their house from Walmart within two hours, you know?
So we're all pretty familiar with the company, but we also have some maybe biases or experience in the past. Now, it's not a perfect organization. I don't think anybody there would even say it is, but a lot has changed and it is a different company to interact with.
And the shopper, the Walmart and Sam's Club shopper are different than they were. You really should, if you haven't been in one in a while and you kind of think of it as you would maybe in the late 90s, early 2000s, oh, it's just going to be cheap. They're going to kill my margin.
They're not carrying good quality. I would really suggest walking a store and seeing what's out there because even down to things like the quality and style of apparel is radically changed over the last five to seven years.
[Jon LaClare]
Yeah, no, absolutely. To our audience, I can't recommend James and his team more highly. If you have a question or a need to get into Walmart and want to learn more about the process and potentially might be a fit to either work with or ask some questions to James, James, what's the best way to get ahold of you or your organization?
[James Harris]
Yeah. Companies, High Impact Analytics, websites, highimpactanalytics.com. All of our email addresses are name at highimpactanalytics.com.
I'm James. Feel free to shoot an email. We're on LinkedIn.
We're on all the socials if you prefer that, but plenty of ways to get in touch with us.
[Jon LaClare]
Well, thank you again for your time. For our audience, if you're driving, as always, we've got links in the show notes. Go back later to YouTube, to our website, or to whatever podcast platform you might be listening on this.
You'll see a link to highimpactanalytics.com so you don't forget and be able to reach out to them and ask any questions you might have in your retail journey. Well, if you want to take the next step in growing your business, you can also visit harvestgrowth.com and connect with our team. Book a one-on-one conversation focused on your business.
Well, thanks for listening today and we'll see you in the next episode.
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