Wal-Mart has been making the news again lately, although not in the usual way. This time they are announcing a dramatic slowdown in new superstore openings in the U.S. According to recent news articles Wal-Mart plans to cut over one third of their planned openings and focus instead on growing same store sales growth. From our perspective working with many Wal-Mart vendors this could present a great opportunity to grow your Wal-Mart business. Consider for a moment that Wal-Mart has approximately 3,600 U.S. stores and industry research tells us that out of stock's average 8 to 10% on most items. If you a vendor selling products at Wal-Mart there is a very good chance you are out of stock at over 300 stores right now. Plus, there is a very good chance you are at risk of an out of stock at a few hundred more stores. If Wal-Mart's strategy is to grow sales at existing stores and you can put a plan in place to reduce your out of stock's you are on the winning side of Wal-Mart's growth strategy. And naturally you are growing your sales and the same time.

So how do you go about reducing your out of stock at such a large retailer? Fortunately Wal-Mart provides vendors with a very robust set of data through Retail Link so getting a handle on your inventory position is as simple as creating the right reports and extracting the right insights. Of course you are going to need a robust tool for the analysis but as a Wal-Mart vendor you have the opportunity. We suspect that vendors who are able to create actionable reports and work hand-in-hand with their Wal-Mart buyers to drive higher same store sales are going to come out on top. Take action today. We offer a free stock out exposure analysis which would be a great place to start.

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