Walmart was a huge retailer when Amazon was an obscure online book store.
Walmart already had massive distribution centers and a logistics/supply chain supplying all their stores, including their own trucks, all while Amazon was slowed and hampered with having to develop their own infrustructure.
All Walmart had to do was push their online presence and invest develop their own delivery system and they’d have exploited a killer head start. That last part is no easy task, and it’s still a huge problem for Amazon, but Walmart dropped the ball a long time ago.
They failed to realize that the Internet was the future of retail, as did many others, Sears just being the latest victim of their own shortsighted management.
Our Sears is closing at the end of the month, and our K-Mart won’t be far behind.
We have lost so many stores over the years, Zayres, Radio Shack, Grant, TG&Y, plus some local department stores, all we have left is Walmart, Target and Pennys, and Target and Pennys are usually near empty...................
Walmart already had massive distribution centers and a logistics/supply
chain supplying all their stores, including their own trucks,
***********
Interesting, today I was at Walmart for a few items. They had
two 18 wheeler trailers parked in their lot with no tractor attached.
They are preparing for the winter storm expected along the east coast
is my guess.
***Walmart was a huge retailer when Amazon was an obscure online book store.***
We can also remember that SEARS, K-MART, PENNEYS, WARDS, WOOLWORTH’S were huge retailers when Walton’s was still a 5&10 cent store on the west side of the square in Bentonville, Arkan-saw.
My wife has ordered from Walmart online many times and had them sent to our local Walmart market. That avoids items being damaged or lost by USPS, UPS, Fedex or AMZL(Amazon shipper).
Walmart has much better service than Amazon ever imagined.
invest develop their own delivery system
That is what did Sears in. Sears had massive investment in warehousing and inventory and semis.
When Martinez took over from Brennan and sought to push the softer side of Sears suppliers like LEE and LEVI wanted to ship UPS direct from the Container off the boat to the retail store, bypassing the Sears warehousing monster.
Martinez and the tops, and us programmers writing replenishment code at the bottom were all for it. But many layers of middle management in the middle fought it and won. They didn’t understand real time replenishment. They insisted everything had to be ordered from the quarterly reports and shipped in large quantities to the monster warehouses. Then shipped from the large warehouses to the small warehouses and from the small warehouses to the retail stores.
“but Walmart dropped the ball a long time ago.”
Bzzzzt! Wrong answer. Walmart is beating your Washington Post fascist buddy Amazon in both price and shipping charge.