But Levis considers that new line of clothes they made for Wal-Mart a life saver, they were a dieing company before then. And they had other things to get in line besides price before they could get to Wal-Mart (like reliable delivery, they were a pretty disorganized company and Wal-Mart doesn't like doing business with disorganized companies) which has also helped them improve their bottom line dramatically. Using Levis as an example of the nasty things Wal-Mart does to suppliers doesn't work, they saved Levis.
The question is whether this is really saving Levis or simply delaying the inevitable. Levis is trading on a name that people associated with quality and if their new line lacks quality, they will destroy their reputation and ultimately fail.
Using Levis as an example of the nasty things Wal-Mart does to suppliers doesn't work, they saved Levis.
I'm using Levis as an example of the quality issue. Vlasic, and some of the other cases in that article, are examples of doing nasty things to suppliers. And I'm sure there are also examples, like perhaps Huffy, where everything works out fine for everyone. But you can't keep demanding cheaper, cheaper, cheaper from suppliers in every sector forever without some quality suffering. And from the comments I see here, people are noticing that it is suffering. So the issue is probably self-correcting. Every few years, retail seems to have a shake-out. Perhaps one of these years, Wal-Mart's number will also come up.