Wal-Mart offers logo for products to boost women-owned firms

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is highlighting its efforts to promote women-owned businesses with a special in-store and online designation for certain products.

A “Women Owned” logo will be featured on items produced by suppliers that are at least 51 percent owned by women. Wal-Mart selected six specific products for recognition this month, which has been designated in the U.S. as Women’s History Month.

Introduction of the logo is part of a larger Global Women’s Economic Empowerment initiative by Wal-Mart and the Walmart Foundation that started in 2011. Wal-Mart committed then to $20 billion in purchases from womenowned suppliers for its U.S. operations by 2016.

Suppliers are free to use the logo on packaging for goods sold outside Wal-Mart, said Kathleen McLaughlin, president of the Walmart Foundation and senior vice president regarding sustainability. WalMart assisted in the design of the logo, working with the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, WEConnect International and Rouge24, a women-owned graphics agency.

“It ’s not our logo,” McLaughlin said. “It’s a public good. We want any womanowned business to verify and use this to sell through whomever they want. It’s not just Wal-Mart. Our social mission is to elevate women in business.”

Wal-Mart features about 3,000 products online sold by women-owned businesses

and picked six products to feature this month in stores: Milo’s Tea, Jelmar CLR Remover, HMS Mfg. Co Hefty Wastebaskets, Goldbug Inc. Carter’s Newborn Shoes, Ariela and Associates Smart & Sexy Bra, and Ziegenfelder’s Budget Saver Pops.

Decisions on where and how to display the six products are being made at the store level.

Ziegenfelder’s has been a Wal-Mart supplier for about 20 years and currently employs 300 at facilities in West Virginia, Colorado and California. Lisa Allen took over majority ownership of the family-owned company 10 years ago and recently applied for a womenowned designation through the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council.

Allen said she is hopeful that the recognition from WalMart will serve as inspiration to other women who are contemplating buying or starting a business.

“Business opportunities are available anywhere we look,” Allen said. “People are often hesitant to take a leap and try something new or different. If our company can provide some courage to women to try something unique, we’re all about being placed out there as an example of how it can work.”

An American Express survey placed the number of women-owned businesses in the United States at 8.6 million. Those companies generate more than $1.3 trillion in sales and employ nearly 8 million people.

Growth among womenowned businesses the past 16 years “exceeds the growth rates of all but the very largest, publicly traded corporations in the country,” according to the survey.

Highlighting womenowned businesses is not a new concept. It’s something retailers have been doing for years, but it is the scale of Wal-Mart and its other initiatives to help women in business that makes the effort notable, said Claudia Mobley, director of the Sam M. Walton College of Business Center for Retailing Excellence at the University of Arkansas.

Wal-Mart’s broader efforts include training for women, help with securing capital for women-owned businesses and conversations with suppliers on the number of women they have in leadership positions.

“I think the fact Wal-Mart is willing to use its scale … is notable,” Mobley said. “It’s also bringing an awareness in general that women-owned business are important to our economy.”

McLaughlin noted that the online and in-store designation are just part of the company’s commitment to women in business. Women make up 25 percent of Wal-Mart’s board of directors, and about 31 percent of the company’s officers are women. Wal-Mart’s store management is about 44 percent female.

All of those numbers are higher than Wal-Mart’s peers, McLaughlin said.

“Investing in women is the right thing to do if you want to grow economies and families and help people,” McLaughlin said.