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Old, but agile: Walmart stores can be found everywhere in the USA
Photo: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP
The most successful product of the American supermarket chain Walmart in 2020 is not toilet paper and certainly not any electronic gadgets.
It's bananas.
"We sell billions of bananas," said CEO Doug McMillon recently and raved about his visit to one of the company's own ripening rooms, where the fruits exude their intense aroma.
The CEO of the world's top-selling company sees the banana as a management task: The ripening process must be so controlled that the fruit arrives on the shelves of the 4,700 US branches at the optimal time, he explained.
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"God is Good": Doug McMillon is an avowed Christian and CEO of Walmart
Photo: Danny Johnston / AP
But the 54-year-old, who started his career at Walmart three decades ago as a student unloading trucks, only appears to be micromanaging at first glance.
In reality, McMillon has led his company into the really big battle: the one against Amazon.
It's about the survival of the chain founded 60 years ago in America's deep provinces.
Walmart invests billions in the digital future and does not afford one thing: sentimentality.
McMillon once said that when brick-and-mortar retailers no longer work, they will close the shops: "If customers don't want shops, we won't have any."
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