Meridian business Decalcomania aims for Walmart featuring 

Idaho’s own Decalcomania has moved a step forward to being on Walmart shelves.

This year marks the eighth iteration of Walmart’s Open Call program that gives businesses across the country an opportunity to sell their products in Walmart and Sam’s Club stores nationwide. Of the more than 900 small businesses that participated in the program, just 160 will be advancing to the next stage of the selection process, with Idaho seeing local representation through the involvement of the Meridian-based decal company Decalcomania.

Business integration through the Open Call program can range from products being promoted on a smaller scale through select stores in a local market to hundreds of Walmart and Sam’s Clubs stores stocking the product in their physical and online stores.

According to a press release, Walmart announced earlier this year that they would be committing $350 billion to items “made, grown or assembled in the United States” over the next 10 years in a move the company estimates “will support more than 750,00 new jobs in the United States. This commitment will allow the ongoing Open Call program to continue to operate and bring local businesses from across the United States to a broader, national marketplace.

Decalcomania first started 15 years ago when it entered the market capitalizing on the popularity of family car sticker decals, bringing the product line to more than 5,000 stores nationwide. Since then, the business has worked to continually expand and diversify its decal offering.

“As that trend started to die, we’ve redesigned and came up with new trendy decals to keep ourselves alive in those brick-and-mortar stores,” said Brett McKenna, vice president of sales and marketing for Decalcomania.

The most recent development for Decalcomania began in 2016 with the integration of augmented reality into its wall decals. In 2018, a partnership was made with Disney, Marvel and Nickelodeon to allow for augmented reality to be added to each character. McKenna said that thus far, the new decals have been a resounding success, thanks in part to the steps taken to allow the average consumer to be able to easily enjoy the relatively new technology.

“We’re not trying to create augmented reality products because as a whole that’s very overwhelming for most consumers,” McKenna said. “So what we’ve done is use popular character wall decals and added augmented reality for additional interaction. It’s just adding some innovation to an age-old product.”

McKenna said that while Decalcomania is already moving products online through Amazon, Walmart and Target online stores, being able to expand its physical store foothold through a partnership with Walmart would help move the new augmented reality products.

“The main part of this for us and our company to progress forward is the brick and mortar,” McKenna said. “Being in the store is a huge component for us because it increases (the) volume and visibility of our product line.”

Beyond the work being done to consistently innovate in the decal field, McKenna also highlighted the role that the business’s efforts to maintain U.S.-based manufacturing has helped solidify Decalcomania’s success.

“We’ve had some huge success in the last couple of years due to some of the supply shortages overseas,” McKenna said. “Since some of the other overseas suppliers of decals have not been able to supply the brick-and-mortar stores, we’ve been able to step in and be that made-in-the-USA partner for them.”

McKenna also reflected on what it means to himself, as well as everyone involved in the company, to be representing the state of Idaho through Walmart’s Open Call program.

“Whenever we (get) to meet with (larger stores), we introduce ourselves and tell them where we’re from,” McKenna said. “We always get some pretty strange looks when we tell them we’re from Idaho. Very rarely are people supplying the big box stores and (are) not centrally located, so it always a proud feeling to support Idaho.”