Sam’s Club is seeing a changing of the guards. Latriece Watkins is the newly appointed president and CEO of Sam’s Club, the members-only wholesale chain owned by Walmart Inc..
For decades, she’s been in Walmart’s C-suite driving growth. Watkins started with Walmart as an intern in the real estate division in 1997. She then worked her way up in the company, leading merchandising across snacks, beverages, beauty, and more, as well as store operations over the years. She became its chief merchant in 2023, where she led choosing approximately $500 billion worth of products sold by the American brand annually.
“My team and I get to choose all the items that customers experience at Walmart. We consider ourselves their personal shoppers. We love to curate an assortment,” she said on Fast Company’s innovative companies podcast. Watkins — who studied political science at Spelman and studied law at University of Arkansas School of Law, Fayetteville — also succeeded in bringing in more shoppers from higher income households to Walmart, like those making $100,000 and up.
Just three years after becoming chief merchant, Watkins was promoted to CEO of Sam’s Club, a division of Walmart Inc. It’s proof her strategies on merchandising innovation have got the job done.
“We are focused on the customer. We start our conversations with the customer… with what’s important to them. What are they thinking about? How can we serve them? We do that across a number of things,” Watkins said of her thought process leading merchandising at Walmart. How she handled her previous duties offers just a hint at what Sam’s Club will look like under leadership.
There’s no doubt that innovation, especially with regards to technology, will be at the forefront of how she leads the wholesale membership club retail division. But Watkins will also be gunning for an increased market share of the industry, in competition with Costco, which currently dominates the area. Per Fast Company, that’ll likely involve continuing to develop Sam’s Club’s private label that generated about a third of its revenue. She’ll also be in competition with Amazon, especially on the e-commerce and convenience front.
“We’re an ‘and’ company. We are execution and innovation. We are people-led and tech-powered. We are really focused on quality and value. We want to make sure the access we give is available to anyone who wants to purchase the products that we have,” Watkins said of Walmart Inc.
Her appointment to the Sam’s Club top position will take effect February 1.
For Watkins, her career with Walmart has been personal. She revealed on the podcast, “I grew up in a town that had a Walmart, and it was where I went to shop, [there] and a couple of grocery stores. I learned to love retail, not knowing that that’s what it was.”