The Fall of Wal-Mart...

Wahoo!!!! Hope Mexico follows suit!! (Yes, there's an old family grudge against Walmart!)

Hey, my family originated in Arkansas and we love Wal-Mart - - just as long as they don't open one in my little town in Oregon and ruin the town and kill all the little locally owned businesses . . . sob . . . I did not know this about myself.

First, Wal-Mart in Germany, then McDonald's in Paris. Soon the world with be free of the clutches of the evil Americans.

The article states that profit margins in German retailing are the lowest in Europe. That doesn't strike me as a good thing going forward for the German economy, but that's just IMHCPO (In My Humble Capitalist Pig Opinion )

As a former wal*mart employee and anti wal*mart fanatic, this makes me so happy.

I just wish the inevitable implosion and collapse of the bloated giant would hurry up.

Burn baby Burn!

and the city of Chicago passed a law last week that will make giants like Walmart pay their employees a living wage by the year 2010.

Walmart had their lawyers out full force - and lost.

So - what will they do? Close the stores in Walmart or pay their employees a fair wage?

If they choose the second option - other cities may follow suit.

BTW - funny story - yesterday I had no choice but to go to Walmart because I was looking for something I needed and couldn't find anyplace else (and I didn't find it there, either.)

I stopped at the deli to get my 9 year old a snack - and the boy working the counter had a hat on his face. A FREAKIN plastic cap over his beard.

I said "You know, if I were you ..........I consider shaving your beard, before I wore that contrapation."
He said "I only have one more week left, and I'll put up with all the humiliation they can give me."

It was so funny!

I asked him why Walmart didn't require a cap over eyebrows or eyelashes. And, she said that they don't even require a cap over a mustache - no matter how long it is .........but a closely shaven beard ........has to be covered.


What a spectical!

What I admired about the Germans in that article is the part about them spending less of their household income on retail than citizens in other nations. It's like an illness the way my fellow Americans and I fall for the idea that "stuff" is going to make our lives better -- all it really does is clutter up our homes and make us broker, thereby more dependent on the crummy salaries we get at our meaningless jobs. JA's right -- sounds like capitalism is not having as much success in Germany with its nefarious plot to make us all drones.

Interesting responses. Just as a point of fact, Aldi is not exactly a wishy-washy little company. It's worldwide, though it's revenue was only about a tenth of Wal-Mart's. Still, nothing to sneeze at. Do we want to burn it down, too?

Rob

So they are NOT immortal. We refuse to shop at wm, their practices are adominable. I do shop at Target and doubt it is much better

It never ceases to amaze me when I hear things like this. Wal-Mart is one of the greatest examples of American entrepreneurship ever. I guess people believe in the American Dream -- just so long as you're not TOO successful with it.

In fact, let's see, yeah, let's destroy Wal-Mart, and Microsoft, and hell, any other company that started at the bottom and became the biggest, most successful company in it's sector.

That'll show Americans how hard work and determination and innovation can lead to ultimate success -- destroy the businesses that showed us how to do it best.


You guys need to get off the victim mentality bus, and realize that there's a better way to defeat Wal-Mart. One that's inherently more American, better the for economy, and a turnip-truck more productive than wishing successful companies die;

make something better.

Wal-Mart does make a lot of money. They're successful at that. That's great for their stockholders.

If my achievements in life were to spread plastic geegaws, "food" full of high-fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, and products made at pitiful wages by children to all the consumers of the world, I couldn't consider myself "successful" no matter how much money I made.

Then clearly you should be in a different line of business.

Which you are! All good!

"Tear down the Wal!"

I love Wal-Mart. ( not the atmosphere, the people or the aisles) but the prices make sense for my pocketbook. I do not get involed in personal feelings about how the company is doing/not doing. I go there from sheer practicality. Any whining about the company or how they operate is just total ignorance.

Elizabeth Slick said:

Any whining about the company or how they operate is just total ignorance.

Click to expand...

Sorry -- I didn't understand this part. Ignorance on whose part?

I, on the other hand, refuse to shop there. I disapprove of their corporate strategy, their pricing methods, and the way they treat their employees.


And if that means I have to pay more somewhere else, preferably a mom-n-pop store, then so be it. And, even better, that means I don't buy some other worthless piece of junk that will just clutter up my apartment.


I disapprove of giants like Walmart and Microsoft because they encourage complaciency. they get to the top, shut down all the competition, and then put out inferiour products. Why make an effort to improve what they hve when there's no one else to take away their customers?

Being retired military, I can shop at the base exchange and commisary of any military installation, but I find it less expensive to shop at WalMart. To top it off, WalMart pays a huge amount of state and local taxes, instead of being subsidized by the taxpayer, and unlike the government controlled stores, they also pay their stockholders a part of their earnings.

How can people demand more government assistance for the poor, and in the next breath curse WalMart? Take a look at the people shopping in a WalMart store some time. The vast majority are minorities, the elderly on fixed incomes, young families and oftentimes the mentally ill. These are the people with the lowest incomes, yet many of you are hoping they will be required to start shopping at higher priced stores.

Many of those from that same low-income group are the ones wearing the blue vests. They are Social Security recipients, young mothers working part time while the kids are in school, teens learning their first real job, college students working part time, and less attractive or less educated people who have difficulty getting past the hiring practices of many stores.

You don't see the wealthy shopping at WalMart, they are perfectly happy paying higher prices at Albertsons, Safeway and the specialty stores. If WalMart goes away, they won't suffer at all.

I'm sure those of you who won't shop at WalMart always buy cars made by GM, Ford and Chrysler, since they are the only ones paying union scale and offering huge fringe benefits to their employees. You wouldn't even think about buying a Toyota, or a Honda, since they are non-union and pay their employees about half the negotiated rates GM pays.

Sorry...while I understand the passion, I just don't understand the logic behind some ideas.

But complacieny leads to ruin. Ask Xerox. Or Woolworth. Or Amtrak. Or Prodigy (well, that was Sears' fault, but still).

Rob

P.S. What do you know about the business practices of a typical mom-and-pop? For all you know, they could be selling stolen goods, or Pop could be beating Mom with a broom handle everyday after closing.

I'll give the local response, seeing as I'm sitting at work in an office in Bentonville, Arkansas, about 3 miles from the Wal-Mart General Office. I don't work for them, never have, don't own any Wal-Mart stock, but, in the interest of full disclosure, the engineering company I work for gets about 25 percent of our business from Wal-Mart and its subsidiary companies. And, of course, some of the booming local development we engineer is a result of Wal-Mart growth.

Wal-Mart is successful because they sell an cheaper mousetrap at a great price. It does the job, and Americans learned there is no reason to buy a better mousetrap at a higher price. The mouse is just as dead, just as removed from the premises.

As for obselescence and complacency, Wal-Mart is very aware of how that killed other companies. They put a tremendous amount of effort into store design, store replacement, store modernization. They assess market trends down to the rat's whisker in a way you probably wouldn't believe. It is highly unlikely they will lose this drive any time soon.

Yes, they have had some problems with people issues, as any big company would. They seem to be addressing them fairly well, and as fast as any similar behemoth would. Their community involvement is way above most similar companies.

I'll give one example of a Wal-Mart success. For new store construction, they got hit with citations a few years ago for not controlling run-off, which in turn polluted local streams. The regulations were new, and I can tell you for a fact that no one was following them. But, since W-M had deep pockets, they got inspected first and got hit with the fines. They took to heart their obligation to not allow polluted run-off from their construction sites (OK, the possible bigger fines were a huge inducement), and now W-M construction practices are the model that all other construction follows. They are leading the nation in terms of controlling polluted run-off from their construction sites. Good for them.

NDG

Actually, I'm heading over to walmart here in a half hour or so to shop for groceries.

I'm of two minds....
the practical part of me loves the selection and the prices. I don't buy clothing there; I like the quality I get at Kohl's, but I like it for sundries and all the little things. There's not one near here, so I'm stuck with K-Mart because I won't waste the gas to drive all the way to the Wal-Mart for just one or two things.

The civic minded me hates that they pay so low and don't treat their employees well. I understand that they are a ratable, and in general lower the tax base of wherever they are, but they do kill local, smaller businesses, which are the life's blood of the people who work hard and own them.

Much like the big box bookstores have driven the indy bookshops out of business. I've discovered such a small shop in the town next to where I live, and I plan on sending them my book-buying business from now on. They're even closer to my house than the B&N.

So what do we do?

Walmart, KMart, what's the big hoopla? Ten years from now they will be crawling out of bankruptcy a shell of their glory days.