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BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Seventeen years into his career at Walmart, Jerrit Davis was handed oversight of one of the retail giant’s oldest and largest departments, Personal Care. “It’s iconic and legacy at the same time,” Davis says. “I get to work with some of the largest CPG companies in the world as well as medium, small and up-and-coming suppliers to help solve customer problems. It’s a great combination.”
Transitioning a legacy department into the digital era has been a priority since Davis assumed oversight of the department earlier this year. A centerpiece of his strategy involves bringing some of the excitement he experienced as a boy on visits to stores in the Ozark Mountain towns surrounding his southwest Missouri hometown.
“I grew up going to a small store in Berryville, Ark., when they would have Christmas decorations, a Santa Claus coming to town. The entire community would go to that store. Or they’d have someone there doing a signing. I remember one time Johnny Cash pulled up in his bus. That excitement that a store can bring, and what it can give back to the community! How do we do that online?”
Adds Davis, “Merchandising inspiration is something I’m really focused on.”
An early effort at capturing inspiration involved partnering with Procter & Gamble’s Gillette Venus brand on a limited-edition gold razor signed by Olympic gold medal swimmer Lydia Jacoby, who took gold in the 100-meter breaststroke at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. While in Indianapolis last June for the Team USA qualifying trials ahead of the Paris Olympics, Jacoby visited a Walmart store, where she greeted associates and shoppers, the first 50 of whom received a gold razor. Dozens of other customers were given a Walmart+ bag of goodies that included a beach towel and swim cap.
“We also put 50 of the signed razors online for the same price as any other [Venus] razor in stores or online,” says Davis. “It’s something that drives excitement.”
Davis also sees excitement coming from new brands offering fresh takes on personal care.
“When I took this job people would tell me, ‘You don’t launch at Walmart first. You launch direct to consumer, or you launch at specialty retail.’ I grew up in the food business, and that’s not how we operate,” Davis says. “We want to have a consistent market reputation for building and developing new or existing brands.”
Walmart last summer exclusively introduced W, a men’s personal care brand cofounded by boxer and YouTube personality Jake Paul, with a line of deodorants, sprays and washes that Paul expects to compete with legacy brands such as Unilever’s Axe and P&G’s Old Spice.
“Walmart’s done a great job inspiring companies to work with us,” Davis says. “We’ve got some of the most recognized and innovative brands in the world — Dove, Old Spice, Colgate. That’s great; we love brands. But how I balance that out with new, up-and-coming, smaller innovative brands led by entrepreneurs is something I’ve taken on as my mission.”
In pursuit of that mission, Davis was in Audubon, Pa., last month for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Cleanlogic, a maker of tools for skin care and bath that was able to bring production back to the United States, upgrade its assembly line and hire workers because of Walmart’s commitment to selling the brand’s luffas, exfoliating washcloths, back brushes and other items.
Walmart was motivated to enter the partnership because of Cleanlogic’s purpose, which is advancing the lives of people with disabilities. About 80% of production team members in Audubon are disabled due to autism, hearing loss, vision impairment or neurodivergence, a nonmedical term used to describe people whose brains develop and work differently from most people’s. Davis saw alignment in values between Walmart and Cleanlogic and felt it would also be something important to customers, many of whom want to support purpose-driven brands.
Davis credits his upbringing for his propensity to work hard, continuously learn and strive to get better every day. “Work ethic was something that was big for me growing up,” he says. “I loved playing sports. And deeper into that, I just loved being on a team. And later, I really loved leading a team. Seeing success through others, competition, being competitive, that’s something that I excelled at as a young kid.”
Davis’s father was an entrepreneur, with a construction business that built houses on Table Rock Lake, a reservoir with more than 800 miles of shoreline near Branson, Mo. Davis helped on weekends and summers.
“I went to college at College of the Ozarks. It’s called Hard Work U; you worked on campus 15 hours a week and that pays for your tuition. So, through those four years I worked and was able to graduate debt free. First year, I was in the construction department. They put me in the paint department. I had never painted, but it’s a skill that came in later in life when I built my first house in northwest Arkansas and I painted the entire house. Now I have built three houses here, just because I love the building process. First house I did a lot of the framing. The second house I did a little bit less, the third house even less, just naturally, now I have kids. I like construction; you see the progress of things you do every day.
“My second year of college I got into the purchasing department. We had a warehouse on campus. In my third year I was the manager of that, responsible for buying all the materials for the warehouse. Could be furniture or building supplies. We’d go out and get bids from suppliers. We tried to work with three or four different ones and find the one with the best deal. It’s interesting that my job today, 20 years later, is buying for Walmart.”
While in college Davis held an internship at a Walgreens in Nixa, Mo., that exposed him to retail. “I started to fall in love with the product, the customers and how much responsibility you got,” he says. “I remember in week two they told me I was going to close the store. I thought, ‘Really, you’re going to have me close the store?’ You get a lot of responsibility, and you either fail or succeed quickly across that.”
After graduating Davis decided to get his MBA from Missouri State University in Springfield. “I applied to be a graduate assistant in the finance department, working with the professors, grading papers, doing research, coming into the classroom to help them. I did that for 20 hours a week and that paid my entire tuition. The bonus was, they gave me $500 a month to live on. Rent was $495, and I had just gotten married to my wife, Kirstin; she was finishing up her degree in elementary education. So, I graduated — undergrad and grad school — debt free, just working on campus, the first in my family to attend college.”
Davis was one of two MBA students in his class hired by Walmart based on a recruitment visit to the campus. He went to Bentonville to join a leadership program in replenishment. Over the next eight years he worked in the food area, rotating between bakery, deli, snacks, beverages and adult beverages. He then worked on developing new ways of working for merchandise operations in replenishment and leading a product team. Davis later landed in the pharmacy division with responsibility for pricing and replenishment, and from there he went into the consumables business, arriving just before the Sars Co-V-2 virus upended consumables and just about everything else in Bentonville and beyond.
“I had responsibility for household paper and essentials. But when the pandemic hit, we were out of toilet paper, and we were out of cleaning materials. That’s when I got my first gray hair. But I learned so much. I had the opportunity to support Latriece Watkins, now our chief merchant, who at the time was leading consumables, working with her day in and day out — along with about every other executive at the company who would want to send you pictures of empty shelves. We’re a people-led company; everybody was there to help serve our customers.” •
