Posted on 11/27/2002 2:33:52 PM PST by Willie Green
Fifty years ago their was an independent grocery store on every corner. People spent a 25 percent of earnings on food. Today their are only huge supermarkets and we spend half what we used to on food. It improved our standard of living.
You need to go to Canada Willie. They have men working in lots of small grocery stores. Everything costs a lot more than here, youw would be poorer but happier. They do hte same with clothing, cars furniture. Everything you buy is done the old fashoned way... they feather bed.
In a free economy companies die all the time. Companies are born all the time. The strong ones live and the weak ones die. You of course seek security. That is only possilbe in a socialist model. Where companies are born and never die.
They "long for a greater power"???
I was under the impression that these Americans simply want to scratch out a stable life in Roxboro, North Carolina.
Methinks you suffer from the paranoia of arrogance, Tator.
NOT the point..when there is no competition they may charge what every they like..competition is GOOD
Wal Mart places it's stores with the intent of driving competition away
They want someone else to scratch out a stable life for them in Roxboro, North Carolina. That ain't the way the world works, Willie.
You labor under the delusion that others will provide you with security. I hate to tell you Willie, but people only provide for their own security. They will use you to get it. When they are done using you, they will thow you away. It is true in all economic systems. It is the nature of humans. That is what they call it human nature. I know it is a shock, but Santa Clause really is make believe.
I grew up in Pittsburgh...
north of the Mason-Dixon line...
That makes me a "Yankee".
I'm afraid my imagination isn't quite that creative.
Tell me about it.
If you want to play in this game, you must always give the customers something they want. Lower costs, better service or higher quality.
I live in a tiny town and the local businesses had to learn this lesson. Those that learned, survived and are doing just fine.
Bull crap. If walmart ever raised their prices they would have competition all over the place. The reason the local stores don't make it is they charge to much.
Sam Walton started out with one Store. With that store he ran other stores in that town out of business. It was pretty simple. He bought for less and he sold for less. If it takes a big operation how did Walton run people out of business when he only had two little stores in two different towns. Some of the store he ran out of business in that town had dozens of stores. But they couldn't compete with Sam. Before he had a successful store, sam had gone into business and failed. After his first store failed, he went back to work for J.C. Penny to get enough bucks to try it again. It took him a while but he finally figured it out.
That is alwasy the case. Henry Ford started 5 car companies. The first four went under or the investers kicked him out His 5th car company made it. Dave Thomas was working at a Kentuckey fried Chicken place when he got Jim Rhodes to get him the money to try the first Wendy's. Ray Krock had to con a Coke Distributor into loaning him a coke fountain to use in his first McDonalds . He didn't have the bucks to buy one. How many greasey spoons have Ray and Dave run out of business. Thomas was an orphan. He did not know who his mom or dad were. He was raised in the Columbus Ohio orphanage. It takes a hell of an orphan whose entire experience is cooking chicken at a KFC to talk his way into the governors office, sell the governor, and have the goveror find people to put up a quarter of a million dollars to do a hamburger place. But that is what dave did.
Walton Krock, and Thomas all, grew when they used the profits to open more stores. The day Sam Walton opened up his first store, the Kressge family owned Kmarts and had many millions to Sam Waltons borrowed thouands. Sam destroyed them by buying for less and selling for less. Every place WalMart gotes against KMart, Kmart loses.
It is the genius of Walton's bias for older workers who work harder and steal less, and an inventory control system that maximizes return on investment that is a lot of the WalMart success. The final piece of the puzzle is WalMart refuses to buy from distributers. They buy direct and sell for less.
My son started a pet store 5 years ago. He started it with 4 gand he had saved. Our local WalMart had a huge fish tank and sold fish and lots of other pet supplies. My son could not affort the fancy tank. He worked like heck and took very small margins and had many small fish tanks that took lots more labor. But he cut prices and sold a hell of a lot of fish and fish supplies at small margins. Two years ago the local WallMart manager called him. He wanted to know if my son would be intersted in buying the fixtures in the WalMart pet section. Walmart was dropping the local pet department. They were losing money on it. My son bought the fixtures including the fish tanks for 10 cents on the dollar. He ran the local WalMart out of the pet department business and bought their fancy fixtures for next to nothing. He is opening another store.
I did not finance my son at all. But he did prove you can beat an exiting WalWart in a line of business they had established. My son proved anyone with brains and ambitions can beat Walmart. It is hard to be big and efficient and Walmart sure is big.
It takes a hell of a lot of work to beat Walmart. But it took a hell of a lot of work for WalMart to get to where it is today.
The Local Walmart epanded the tools department. They added tools in the floor space that used to hold the pet stuff. I hear they are hurting the local Sears store on tool sales.
Don't bet your butt on it. I worked for Walmart for 4 years and was assistant department manager to the local Electronics department in our supercenter. That's a 3 plust million a year department. From personal experience, they staff to a skeleton crew level at all times. When I worked there, The staffing was so deplorable that the manager actually demanded one of the department people to walk around the store continually to make it look like there was someone there. I'm not kidding. The guy's job was threatened on the spot if he failed to do so. I was there when it happened and I could give the guy's name and the now ex-manager's name. I'd note he isn't an ex manager for that practice...
He was demoted and sent to classes on personal communications or sum such - basically exiled to assistant manager position in a smaller store. He then quit. I went in there to get groceries on a busy night last week and stood in line for 20 minutes waiting on a price check on a pair of boots because although they have thirty-some checkouts, they only had about 5 of them staffed and no help on the floor. If you can find help at a Walmart, in my experience both shopping and working there, it happens by accident or after a long wait. You have to walk a mile across the building to get to anything and by the time you get taken care of, you could have gone elsewhere and been home for half an hour before you get through the lines.
When I was there my last christmas, we had lines so long in the store waiting to get any help at all that many people left hundreds - even thousands of dollars in merchandise sitting in Carts and walked out. With all staff on registers, only half the registers in the store were open and running and there was no one to help anyone out in the store getting merchandise off high counters and such. And that's with managers helping run the checkouts on a friday night.
Walmart is a joke.
Specialty hardware (woodworking, etc.) is something that WalMart can't handle. Fish/pets is another good example. Managing a pet store takes skill, good knowledge of your stock (it doesn't just sit there like floor mats and cheap shirts), and LOTS of hard, devoted work.
No way some part-timer in the WalMart who looks in on the fish after dusting the Rubbermaid stuff and sweeping the floor is going to be able to keep those little finny fellows swimming upright (instead of doing the back float on the surface), let alone looking chipper and frisky in a nice clean tank that says, "Buy Me!"
We did tropicals for years and then branched out into salt water. Once we were living in a place that allowed cats, we switched to breeding and showing Siamese cats. Now we're doing obedience and agility with a Chocolate Lab. . . . WalMart can do none of the above.
But, many people would rather stand around for half an hour to save $.30.
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