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I want to see how this brandnew world of retail power it changes the game for estabilished brand name manufactures. So I headed to Western Ohio, a small college town and long time

home to one of the America's best-known brands--- Rubbermaid, Maker of plastic pales garbage cans, and all kinds of containers. We were one of the best-known brand names in

America. Because we were in virtuely every home one way or another.
(Very impressive display. Well this is...)

Stanley Gault was CEO of Rubbermaid for the 1980s and early 1990s.Gault bet Rubbermaid's future on supplying big box discount changes like Wal-Mart. That you said you'd better

be a part of these growing new salemates. They provide a tremendous opportunaty for growth and for volume sales. And they can take a new product and make us successful overnight. One of Gault's rising nu-talents was Wolfgang.Schmitt who would later become CEO.W was a dramatic shift over. Over all it's been a short period time as we went from thousands of customers that we were selling to where 5 or 7 of our customers are representing 2/3 of our volume.

These big box retailers?

big box mass mergence. You have to have a very tihgt relationship with them and you have to be important to them.

No customer was more important to Gault than Wal-Mart. When I came to Rubbermaid, they did not sell Wal-Mart. They were selling Came-Mart but they wouldn't sell Wal-Mart. Well

within a short period of time, Wal-Mart read with no ear. They would like us just customer.(Tired of dragging a garbage to the end of drive? Then roll it, with a rough neck, we don't refuse to container from Rubbermaid. every duty construction and to...)

The Wal-Mart can not help fuel Rubbermaid's rapid growth. Sales and profits sored. (Rubbermaid, ideas that last.) Its products were so highly regarded for quality that Rubbermaid was voted nation's most admired company in 1994. It's really your peer group that other manufatures the world saying this is the company that is really doing it. They are doing all the things right,and they are doing the things that make them very admirable. Our brand name, our quality, our productive element. But behind the headlines,

Rubbermaid was struggling to maintain its ambitious growth targets. Then suddenly it found itself in a showdown with its biggest customer.
now the price of resents skyrocked and resent is a huge component of any plastic product that you make. And when we ...when now was the price increase cross the industry to all retailers. Saying our raw material costs have increased significantly we have to get a price increase for our products.Wal-Mart would not take that pice increase. They fled out, refused to take the price increase. Other mass retailers agreed to a price sike And Rubbermaid's CEO Flude Arkonsod asked Bill Field had Wal-Mart's stores to reconsider. They were very publicly known as you might recall as well a lot of retailers. About saying one of the advanges we as boxery dealers have is we can put the hammers do. The manufactures and we can give Americans consumers lower prices.

So did Fields put the hammer to you?

Oh in his own way certainly.

I thought it was a very different kind of meeting that said yes you may be Rubbermaid, and you big Rubbermaid, and you got the great name and all that but you are not to tell us what to do and we are not going to take your price increase and we would don't care what it does to you.

So what does it mean to you?

Do you lose sale space. Do you lose volume at the Wal-Mart at that point?

Sure you know when push comes to share of their way of discipline, the supplier is to show you know volume can be given or be taken.

And they dropped a number of our products for a coule years. Just dropped those products back into the company tremendously. To me, it was one of the first signs of the decline
of Rubbermaid.