Wal-Mart to spend $US20bn buying from women-owned businesses – could the idea work here?

Experts say Wal-Mart’s increased commitment to women-run businesses could trickle down to Australian female entrepreneurs.

Wal-Mart, which once had US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on its board and is working with First Lady Michelle Obama to promote healthy eating, announced this week that it plans to spend $20 billion on products from women-owned businesses locally over the next five years, an increase of $7.5 billion on existing spending.

It also says it wants to double what it buys from women-owned businesses across the globe by 2016.

The retailer also pledged $100 million in donations for women’s economic development, to support training of women in suppliers’ factories and farms, and reaffirmed its call for suppliers to boost gender and minority representation for its accounts.

Leslie A. Dach, executive vice president of corporate affairs for Wal-Mart, is quoted as saying it makes “complete sense” for the company to help women suppliers succeed, particularly given most of its customers are women.

So if Wal-Mart sneezes and the rest of the US economy catches a cold, can we expect Wal-Mart’s commitment to trickle down to Australia, particularly for its entrepreneurs?

Brand expert Michel Hogan says, “Wal-Mart doesn’t do anything that’s not calculated; they are really deliberate.”

“I put this a little bit in the camp of when they started adopting sustainability principles and going into the organic space.”

“There’s a huge PR spin to that, but on the flipside, they’re so huge they also send a message to bigger markets and to other big retailers and can help influence things in a similar way.”

“By virtue of their size, it sends a message that this is something people should look at.”

“If people hadn’t been paying attention to the growth of women-owned businesses over the past five years, they just haven’t been paying attention.”

But don’t expect Wal-Mart to take their eye off the bottom line.

“The underlying driver of everything they do is still about reducing cost, that’s their reason for existing.”

The announcement has prompted some scepticism, given Wal-Mart lost an embarrassing court battle with some of its female employees, who argued they were paid less than men doing the same role, and had been overlooked in promotions.

If the class action had succeeded, it would have been the biggest class action in US history.