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Bentonville’s Transformation Subject of Ad Age Spotlight

2 min read

Bentonville finds itself in the Advertising Age spotlight Tuesday.

Ad Age has a look at how Bentonville — aka Vendorville — and the region have been transformed by the growth of Wal-Mart and its cache of vendors on the ground in northwest Arkansas.

It even calls Bentonville “hip and urban.” Anyone who’s visited recently would have to agree.

Here’s a sample from the piece, “City Spotlight: Walton Wealth Creates Booming Arts, Marketing Tech Hub in Bentonville“:

If Sam Walton were alive, he might have trouble recognizing the hub of the empire he created.

Downtown Bentonville, home to the original Walton’s 5 and 10, has been transformed in recent years thanks to the success of his business and the largess of his heirs. His original store still stands, around the corner from the Walmart vendor outpost of DreamWorks. Down the road is the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the first major art museum to open in the U.S. since 1974, thanks to more than $300 million invested by his daughter, Alice Walton. There are tony, if reasonably priced, restaurants such as Table Mesa and the Hive, the latter located at 21c Museum Hotel, a boutique hotel and art museum. Bentonville has also lured young professional residents and even, some say, hipsters.

The story quotes John Andrews of Collective Bias, Lisa Bridgers of Rockfish and Henry Ho of Innovate Arkansas firm Field Agent:

While getting people into Northwest Arkansas can be a tough sell, frequently they stay a long time. Take Henry Ho, a Chinese-American New Yorker and die-hard Yankees fan, who was among the first “feet on the ground” from Procter & Gamble when its top sales executive, Lou Pritchett, agreed with Mr. Walton to locate the first vendor enclave in Fayetteville — 20 miles from Bentonville — in 1989. The idea was that the distance would prevent fraternization among vendor and retailer executives, a notion discarded long ago.

At the time, it was jokingly dubbed “Fayette-Nam,” Mr. Ho recalls. Yet he fell in love with the area. After a tour of duty that saw him become VP of P&G’s Hong Kong division, he opted to return to Northwest Arkansas rather than Geneva or Cincinnati when he accepted a P&G global e-commerce assignment in 2000. In 2009, he became co-founder of Field Agent, which operates a mobile-phone-based panel of consumers for shopper and marketing research.

Read the full story here

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