How to Win with the New Walmart: An Insider’s View

What’s changing inside Walmart’s buying office? A former SVP of Merchandising sits down with Storesight’s Henry Ho to tell Walmart suppliers what they need to know now.

The conversation most Walmart supplier teams want to have — the one that happens on the other side of the desk — rarely makes it into the room. In this candid morning session presented by Storesight, Creighton T. Kiper (Co-Founder of SERVED, and most recently Senior Vice President of Home for Walmart U.S.) sits down with Henry Ho (Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer of Storesight) for a direct look at how Walmart merchandising works in 2026 — and what it takes to win with the new Walmart. Creighton spent 17 years inside Walmart’s merchandising organization across Beauty, Health & Wellness, U.S. Merchandising Transformation, and Home, working under three CEOs as the company rebuilt its talent, fulfillment network, and digital infrastructure.

Creighton’s core message for supplier teams: the mental model has to shift. The question isn’t “am I in 3,000 stores” — it’s “am I positioned in the network so 98% of customers can access my assortment, and what percentage of that is 30-minute or less delivery?” Fill rate is the dominant operational KPI under the new CEO. Retail execution is pass/fail — A or F, never B-minus. And the seven-year window for brands to train muscle memory inside agentic commerce is already three years in. For KAMs, category managers, and brand leads sitting across from Walmart merchants, this conversation reframes line review prep, channel and trade strategy, and what “great” looks like in a Walmart meeting today.

In this conversation, you’ll learn:

• Why the “3,000 stores” mental model is the wrong question — and what merchants are being asked to optimize for
• How Walmart’s new CEO is reshaping which operational KPIs matter most to the merchant organization
• What separates line review meetings that produce wins from the ones that don’t
• Why every member of a supplier team — not just the digital lead — now needs to speak the digital language
• How continual merchandising and agentic commerce are changing innovation calendars, supply chains, and trade strategy
• Why “pass/fail” is the only honest grade for retail execution, and what that means for in-store accountability
• How assortment, pricing, and merchandising decisions get made — and who else shapes the call
• What “schedule your schedule” and “the gift of no” look like for leaders managing a Walmart account

Rather than treating “winning with Walmart” as a posture or a pitch, this conversation reframes it as a working knowledge of how the buying office thinks, what the merchant is accountable for, and where the next three to seven years of retail muscle memory will be built.

About Storesight
Storesight is the AI-powered retail intelligence platform built on Field Agent and Shelfgram, helping Walmart suppliers see what’s happening in stores — on the shelf, on the planogram, and in the path of the shopper. Storesight gives supplier teams the in-store visibility they need to walk into line reviews prepared, hold retail execution accountable, and turn what they see in the aisle into what they say across the desk. The platform convenes the kind of candid, practitioner-to-practitioner conversations Walmart supplier teams need to navigate what’s changing — and what’s coming next.

Learn more about Storesight: https://storesight.com/
Learn more about SERVED (Creighton’s current venture): mentioned in episode — agentic commerce for the kitchen

Winning With Walmart

Winning With Walmart is an independent platform for suppliers, sellers, solution providers, and industry experts.

Articles are developed by staff editors, contributing experts, and trusted partners.

Some are researched and drafted with the assistance of AI tools and are reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by Winning With Walmart editors before publication.

Editorial judgment, sourcing decisions, and final approval rest with the publication's human editors in every case.

We are committed to accuracy and fairness. If you believe this article contains an error, we welcome your feedback.