Sam’s Club Wants To Give Its Small Business-Owning Customers Some Credit

Persistent unemployment nationwide is threatening to inhibit consumer spending.
Against this backdrop of uncertainty, retailers are taking bold steps. Sam’s Club, for one, is introducing a program in which it facilitates loans for shoppers of up to $25,000, backed by the Small Business Administration.

According to The New York Times, a little under half of Sam’s members are small-business customers, and they account for a little more than half of the revenue at the retailer. As its net sales began to slip last fall, Sam’s surveyed small-business customers and found that tight credit was partly to blame.
In the survey, said Catherine Corley, vice president for member services at Sam’s, a division of Wal-Mart, “fully one-third said ‘I didn’t buy what I needed to buy at Sam’s Club because I didn’t have the money.’ It really motivated us to say, ‘We’ve got to find some solutions.’ ”
“We’re not necessarily trying to be a bank, we’re just trying to bring to them, much as we do with products, the things they need,” Ms. Corley said.