Posted on 02/25/2014 1:20:12 PM PST by Starman417
The first time I ever saw a Wal-Mart I was a grad student getting my MBA down in Tallahassee, FL. One opened up down the road from my apartment and I was immediately taken by the big bright stores with lots of stuff and what seemed to be pretty low prices. In class I learned the secrets to Wal-Mart’s success in its niche of “Always low prices”. It demanded efficiencies from its suppliers. It became fanatical about using information technology to optimize its sourcing and distribution channels. It paid its employees the community average or sometimes slightly more, but never significantly so. And of course the company benefited tremendously from scale. At the end of the day Wal-Mart became a spectacular success because it provided the goods people wanted at the lowest prices possible.
Thus began a two decade long love affair with Wal-Mart. For most of the last twenty years I’ve spent most of my shopping dollars, particularly food, but other items as well, at Wal-Mart. It helped that, as I hate to shop, I could go there and get pretty much everything I needed in one place, from apple juice to socks to those little trees you put in your car to make it smell good.
I remember around 2003 when a friend of mine got married in Key West. I went to Wal-Mart and purchased a pair of those mesh shoes with the rubber sole that you could wear in the ocean. They cost about $7.95. I remember how amazed I was that they could manufacture that pair of shoes in China, label them, ship them across the ocean, transport them to my store where people would receive them, inventory them, display them and eventually charge me for them, and do so at a profit! Even if they paid their workers in China a penny a day I still didn’t see how they could do all of those things and still make a profit.
When my love affair with Wal-Mart began the company had 1,500 stores mostly serving rural communities across the country and generated about $25 billion a year in sales. Today they have 10,000 stores around the world and generate half a trillion dollars in revenue annually.
Like it or not, Wal-Mart has changed the face of American retail. By using the best of the free market the company has saved Americans hundreds of billions of dollars over its lifetime, savings that they might have used to can use to provide more food to their children, to give to charity to buy their kid a computer for college, or just buy another flat screen TV. By any definition Wal-Mart is an American success story.
Unfortunately however, my love affair with Wal-Mart is fading… and fast. The first injury to the relationship was when the company supported ObamaCare in an effort to increase pressure on its smaller competitors. The second was when they supported the taxing of online sales. Since those two events I’ve reduced the money I spend in Wal-Mart by well over 50%. Now I’m beginning to wonder if I need to redirect most of what’s left. According to Bloomberg, the company is considering supporting the Obama administration’s move to raise the minimum wage. While Wal-Mart knows that it would incur higher wage costs, it also knows that because of its size and efficiency it can better weather the increase than most of its competitors.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
Big Business can manage the minimum wage increase. Their smaller competitors can’t. The same with Obamacare.
Interesting. The Wal-mart haters here don’t sound any different than the Democrat and union Wal-mart critics.
We ought to price those Chinese slave labor goods out of our market.
Just visited an ALDI for the first time last week. I was surprised at the low pricing.
Everything except meats was significantly less. Even milk was 40 cents / gal less than WM.
It’s not convenient to us to go there but may be worthwhile a couple times per month. I have to subtract the $3.50 gas cost for the trip from my savings, LOL.
In a little town where I shop there is this combo at an intersection, one across the street from the other.
That is the way my closest 2 are. I saw construction going on in another part of town. Walgreens on one side and CVS on the other side. It is like one can not exist without the other one.
“We bought a box of cereal from Walmart yesterday, the box said 23 ounces, we took it home, placed it next to an older box, THAT box said 25 ounces, even though it was the same size!”
Unbelievable.
Were the prices the same and were they bought at different stores?
.
Years ago, there was a thread on Wal-Mart here. I followed a link, and someone had actually done a study on this and there were several interesting conclusions.
1. When Wal-Mart comes to town, the for most of the people there it is like everyone got a 10% raise. Even if you don’t shop at Wal-Mart you benefit because other stores try to match prices.
2. The number of mom and pop operations in the town actually increases. The type changes. If you own the corner pharmacy, you are going to be in trouble—Wal-Mart is lower priced. If you own Frank’s Custom Mufflers you are going to do better than you were. Wal-Mart will bring more traffic, and they don’t compete with you. All kinds of specialty stores thrive with Wal-Mart next door. The common feature is that they are selling something Wal-Mart doesn’t.
Well slap a 10% import tariff on the incoming cheap crap then things look a little different. A tariff could offset income taxes and promote domestic competition and production. A win-win. Most Free trades love the status quo of sky high income taxes, low(or no tariffs) and high unemployment.
Personally I hate Free Traders. The best scare tactic of the Free Trader is to claim a $1.00 screwdriver made in China and sold at Wally World would cost $10,20,30(pick an outrageous number) Dollars if made in the USA. It is a lie and BS.
THIS! In pursuit of slightly cheaper consumer products, Americans have financed their enemies and dealt with Communist slave-masters.
Consumer greed is the root of the Walmart (or any other big chain store you want to blame) problem. Consumers want more stuff for their dollar primarily, quality secondarily, and a strong America lastly and leastly.
Lee Iacocca insisted that the management types at Chrysler had to dump their Caddies and drive Chrysler products to work or find work elsewhere. An example set to self preserve their industry. If American manufacturing workers and the communities that relied on that manufacturing purchased their own products, they would still have jobs.
Yes we have done all this in search or as some might put it “coveting more stuff,” purchased at low prices.
Yup...same size, different stores, but the Walmart one was a bit cheaper.
Ed
walmart did NOT kill the mom and pop stores..
NO ONE forced Walmart customers to shop there.
They are the ones to blame, not walmart.
That’s like blaming KIA for the death of GM (don’t kid yourself. GM is dead) because they sold cars cheaper.
I don’t trust anything from Walmart...
why? did they lie to you about the contents of the box?
or did you fail to look at it?
Most of what they sell Is the same as other stores
I don’t trust them because the box looks exactly the same as the box that earlier had more content, obviously meant to deceive people.
It’s as if your spaghetti that you bought for years and years was suddenly made of sawdust.
I know you’re saying we should scrutinize every box to see if they’ve subtly changed the contents while retaining the appearance, but do we really want our grocers to act like forgers and grifters, changing contents, sizes, etc., whilst keeping the appearance exactly the same, hoping to deceive consumers?
That’s not capitalism, that’s fraud, make legal by fine print and consumer’s assumptions that they’re dealing with honest businessmen.
Ed
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