Walmart executive celebrated for leadership role

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Latriece Watkins was named chief merchandising officer of Walmart U.S. last May. The achievement marked the next step in what has been a stellar career spanning nearly 25 years at the world’s largest retailer and Fortune magazine’s global No. 1 company.

Before moving into her current position, Watkins spent seven years leading the consumables team, the first four as senior vice president, followed by three as executive VP — promotions that occurred when her role expanded as a result of the consumables omni merchandising team becoming part of her responsibilities. Under her leadership, the division achieved sustained growth — a success accomplished during a period when business was anything but usual.

The merging of the omni and stores consumables teams took place in early 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Many of Watkins’ categories, particularly paper products, household cleaning and over-the-counter medications, were increasingly popular in stores and online due to panic buying. The team had to work very creatively to find solutions.

The fluid, rapidly changing situation demanded swift decisions and innovative approaches to working with suppliers in order to get products on the shelf.

In an interview later that year, she praised her team for their hard work and ability to quickly pivot and respond effectively to the upheaval in consumer behavior.

The pandemic also hastened the explosive growth of e-commerce, which required Walmart to rapidly scale its pickup and delivery network to accommodate customer demand for contactless shopping. “We knew our customer was already shopping both in-store and online and that they saw Walmart stores and Wal­mart online as just Walmart,” Watkins said at the time. “Bringing our teams together enabled us to serve those customers where they already were and accelerate our progress towards where we knew our customer was evolving.”

Focusing on the customer and accelerating progress to find new, innovative ways to serve them better is at the heart of the strategy she is now implementing as chief merchant. For her strategic focus, the editors of MMR are honoring Watkins as Merchant of the Year for 2023.

“Walmart is guided by a very clear purpose — it’s our “why” — and was stated by our founder, Sam Walton,” she said. “It’s to help people save money and live better.”

The company’s successful transition to becoming an omni retailer has been a key part of delivering that purpose. “I think from an omnichannel perspective, we continue to get better and better, both in our assortment and the structure of our online site. You can see it in the way we’re bringing products to life,” she said. “I think we’ve done a really nice job in making those shifts and continuing to evolve them every day.”

The growth of its e-commerce business has enabled Walmart to offer vastly more products than the 130,000 SKUs that are typically found in a Supercenter. In addition, Walmart’s Marketplace offers third-party sellers an online space in which they can sell a mind-boggling range of products — over 400 million and growing.

According to Watkins, the Marketplace plays an important role in supporting Walmart’s goal of being the customer’s first choice as a place to shop by enabling it seemingly to offer everything the shopper may want, whatever their need or mission.

While she, and the company more broadly, places great importance on technological innovation, they are quick to emphasize that people come first. It is a position underscored by Walmart chief executive officer Doug McMillon, who consistently describes Walmart as a company that is “people led and tech-powered.”

“I think the technology that is powering our merchants gives us the capability to make faster decisions and creates more flexibility in our ability to curate our assortment, Watkins says. “That technology empowers our merchants with tools to find great items and offer them at a great price.”

While its booming digital business has greatly expanded the way Walmart serves customers, Watkins considers Walmart U.S.’s 4,700-odd stores an “incredible asset.”

“Our stores and our digital offerings work together to help us serve our customers so we can have the right assortment, price and experience, and then build trust with them,” she says. “The combination of the physical footprint of our stores combined with our digital assets makes us the largest truly omnichannel retailer at scale.”

She adds that the stores function not only as in-store shopping resources and omnichannel fulfillment sites, but also as social hubs within their communities. She recalled that on a visit to her hometown last Thanksgiving, she was struck by the number of people in the local Walmart, enjoying their shopping and running into friends and acquaintances.

“In this town, it was a place where people could catch up with each other,” she said. “It was still a hub for people to see each other and spend time together. In so many communities across America, Walmart is the place where people go when they want to be with other people. We mean so much to the communities that we serve, I’d say stores are still a very important asset.”

While Watkins clearly relishes the role of merchant and customer advocate, her Walmart career began on a very different track. In 1997 she joined the company as a real estate intern while working on a law degree at the University of Arkansas. She eventually was promoted to senior director of real estate before deciding to join the Sam’s Club merchandising organization in 2008.

Two years later Watkins moved to Walmart U.S. as a senior category director for adult beverages. She was promoted to VP in 2012 and named senior VP of snacks and beverages two years later. After a year in HR Strategy and one with the store operations organization, both as senior VP, Watkins returned to the world of the merchants in 2017 as senior VP of merchandising, consumables and O-T-C.

Watkins is keenly aware of the support she has received from others in the course of an exceptionally successful career.

“Those of you who have worked with Latriece know she is a merchant at heart and has a talent and passion for developing future leaders,” John Furner, president and CEO of Walmart U.S., wrote in an internal memo announcing Watkins’ promotion to chief merchant. “Her enthusiasm, talent and deep experience helped establish the omni merchandising strategy we have today, and her focus on customers and members will only strengthen our position in the future.”

An important message that she emphasizes to those she mentors is the enduring value of Walmart’s purpose and very real difference it makes in the lives of so many people. She also stresses the important role that strong relationships and a network of supporters and mentors play in building a career.

For that reason, she has made fostering others’ development through mentoring an important priority. It is a role she takes almost as seriously as her position as CMO. As the first woman and the first person of color to serve as chief merchant at the retailer, she possesses a unique experience and perspective that she feels both a desire and duty to share with others.

“None of us achieve our successes on our own,” she said. “The people at Walmart have meant so much to me over the time that I’ve been here. They have been a part of really important accomplishments, and I have seen them support each other in hard times. I’m a customer person, and the fact that I get to do this job, and that my team gets to help do things that make our customers’ lives better is an honor.”