{"id":262519,"date":"2025-11-04T18:26:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T18:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/262519\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T18:26:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T18:26:31","slug":"miles-stephens-and-bill-dillard-iii-talk-strategy-and-innovation-at-onward-fx-panel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/262519\/","title":{"rendered":"Miles Stephens and Bill Dillard III Talk Strategy and Innovation at Onward FX Panel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMiles Stephens and Bill Dillard III participated in a panel, moderated by Serafina Lalany, at a recent Onward FX event in Little Rock. (Provided)\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Leaders from two of Arkansas\u2019 largest companies discussed how they are balancing tradition and innovation during a panel discussion at a recent Onward FX event at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock. FX stands for Founder\/Funder Exchange.<\/p>\n

Both Bill Dillard III, senior vice president of Dillard\u2019s Inc., and Miles Stephens, co-CEO of Stephens Inc.<\/a>, made an appearance at the venture capital event to share their thoughts on entrepreneurship and investment across the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am bullish on the state,\u201d Stephens said during the panel, which was moderated by Serafina Lalany, executive director of StartupNWA, the Northwest Arkansas Council\u2019s entrepreneurial network<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the policy apparatus that we have in the state is business friendly, and I just think that we\u2019re going to continue to see good growth and hopefully attract good businesses,\u201d Stephens said.<\/p>\n

Some pros the panelists discussed for the state were a low cost of living, high quality of life and small degrees of separation.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou heard everybody use the term six degrees of separation. This is a one degree of separation,\u201d Dillard said of Arkansas. \u201cThere\u2019s a willingness to help and relational equity and just a general friendliness that I think is pretty unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as investing in new businesses, Stephens said he always keeps in mind that someone has to be the first to believe in a company.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always that first big win that somebody needs to have the credibility,\u201d he said. \u201cThey need that one person or group to believe in them. And we certainly want to see companies in Arkansas do well. With that mindset, I think we can be helpful in facilitating their growth, and then kind of having that startup mindset ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Business Strategy<\/p>\n

Dillard and Stephens both mentioned several business strategies their respective companies have taken to stay successful.<\/p>\n

Dillard\u2019s, which has been shattering stock records<\/a> recently, still does most of its business in stores, Dillard said. Though the company does do a \u201cnice percentage\u201d of its sales online.<\/p>\n

And the company is not trying to compete with low-price options, Dillard said.<\/p>\n

\"\"The panel was moderated by Serafina Lalany, executive director of StartupNWA, the Northwest Arkansas Council\u2019s entrepreneurial network. (Provided)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not selling on somebody who\u2019s particularly price driven,\u201d he said during the panel. \u201cWe tend to sell a level of product that helps people express themselves the way they want to express themselves, the way they want to present themselves in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said the company is in 17 of the 20 fastest-growing markets in the United States, and is \u201cgenerally\u201d a market leader in those areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we\u2019re in a lot of secondary markets,\u201d he added, mentioning Little Rock along with Knoxville, Tennessee, and Amarillo, Texas, specifically. \u201cPlaces that are wonderful places, and there\u2019s lots of disposable income, and there\u2019s very little competition. I mean, there\u2019s really nobody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Dillard said the pandemic was really a turning-point for the company. It didn\u2019t offer work from home options, because it was an \u201call hands on deck\u201d time period, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUp to that point, we were probably chasing market share for the sake of market share,\u201d he said. So the company aimed to conserve cash, get inventory down, and improve regular selling by having fewer associates, \u201cbut the right associates.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company raised associate pay to more than $50,000 a year, plus commission.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had six individuals selling a million dollars a year before the pandemic, and now that\u2019s over 100,\u201d Dillard said. \u201cWe\u2019ve gone to a relational model of selling rather than just parking or transacting.\u201d<\/p>\n

For growth at Stephens, one focus is finding the right people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something that my brother and I have been focused on, and it\u2019s really manifested itself just through simplifying and making clear our compensation structure and having clear incentives out there for everybody,\u201d Stephens said. \u201cIf you\u2019re productive, then you can make more money here than anywhere else. And that\u2019s hard to argue with.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Stephens is a \u201cpeople business,\u201d dependent on having employees that can sell the company and themselves to get hired by a corporation or a family. And he added that the company runs a \u201cdecentralized\u201d model, giving people freedom to manage their own business lines rather than imposing top-down directives.<\/p>\n

As far as innovation, Dillard said a lot of retailers have \u201cshipwrecked themselves by chasing shiny objects.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that innovation and trying to do things isn\u2019t important, but it means that it never will take the place of fundamentals,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen we\u2019re deploying technology and trying to figure out where to go, it\u2019s always in service of either improving our products, increasing customer service or improving the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Miles Stephens and Bill Dillard III participated in a panel, moderated by Serafina Lalany, at a recent Onward…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[64,63,99,198],"class_list":{"0":"post-262519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-entrepreneurship"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}