Walmart CEO praises Amazon and reveals what he admires most about the tech giant as the companies go head-to-head with Prime Day sales (WMT)

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• Walmart CEO Doug McMillon on Monday praised Amazon as the companies battle over competing sales on Prime Day.
• McMillon also admitted that Walmart “fell behind” on e-commerce and has been “playing catch-up.”
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon praised Amazon on Monday, saying he admires the company for its “speed, innovation” and “customer centricity.”

McMillon made the remarks at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech, an annual technology summit, as Walmart held massive sales online coinciding with Amazon’s Prime Day, which is the tech giant’s second biggest annual sales event.

During his remarks, McMillon admitted that Walmart “fell behind” on e-commerce and has been “playing catch-up.”

“We’re not proud. We’re not egotistical,” McMillon said. “If somebody is doing better — something better — than we are, let’s copy and paste what we should and can. And in the case of Amazon and others, clearly customers are responding to convenience. Everybody loves saving time and something that’s easy.”

He said Walmart is learning to adjust its pace to help create a more seamless experience for customers across its stores and website.

Read more: Walmart US CEO says half his store visits make him ‘grumpy’ — and he’s turning up the heat on managers

He told a story about Walmart founder Sam Walton visiting a competing store that was a total mess, and finding one aspect where it was doing better than Walmart. 

“The store didn’t look very good,” McMillon said.

But when Walton exited the store he said, “Did you see the pantyhose rack? It was awesome. Like that was the best pantyhose rack I have ever seen. It conveyed the merchandise and the price. It was organized. It was in stock.

“Sam found the one thing in that competitive store that we needed to adopt to make Walmart better,” McMillon said. “So culturally, you know, that story represents how we think about competition.”

SEE ALSO: Walmart US CEO asked workers to email him their biggest complaints, and a surprising theme emerged from the deluge of 2,700 messages he got

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