Walmart Work Release?

[nofearfactor]

I sure don't see many local downtown retailers moving out the the out-parcel pads around any of the Walmarts I travel past (at least 35 states worth).

Chili's, Mickey D's and a raft of chain stores... yep... Benny's Family Hardware? -not so much.

Walmart typically leaves your small town downtown empty... JC Penny's ends up being a consigment junk store eventually after Walmart comes in... small grocery stores fold, drug stores close up...

Yea... Walmart helps the locals out... everyplace they go

It happened in Pawhuska. WalMart came in and the downtown shops all suffered. Walmart finally closed up and left. Now the building has an Alco or something in it but the downtown never came back to where it was before WalMart.

 

[vvvvvvv]

I sure don't see many local downtown retailers moving out the the out-parcel pads around any of the Walmarts I travel past (at least 35 states worth).

Chili's, Mickey D's and a raft of chain stores... yep... Benny's Family Hardware? -not so much.

Prime real estate.

The developer in in business to make a profit here.

Remember, Wal-Mart doesn't own many of their (and most of their new) stores. In fact, Wal-Mart was intent on being rightfully secretive about the new one in Weatherford until all the paperwork was finalized. But the developer posted a brochure on their website showing a map of the parcels in the area that were available with Wal-Mart (and the square footage) noted as the "anchor".

 

[MadDogs]

Lot of people bad mouth Walmart. Give me a business reason to not like Walmart and I will but so far (and I don't work for them) I can't come up with one.

You go to Walmart to make a presentation to sell your product; they ask you what you are doing to make the planet better and what you can do through product, price and promotion to make their customers happier. If they take your product, they will tell you up front that they do not want to represent more than 35% of your total business BECAUSE if something goes wrong, they don't want you to have all your eggs in their proverbial basket. When they take your product on, they will take a markup that is usually somewhere between 14%-25%. Other retailers? They charge you to put product on their shelves (Safeway charges up to $1m per item) AND then they mark it upwards of 40%-50%. If that wasn’t bad enough, to keep your product on the shelf you need to promote it and to do that, they will charge you ten grand for a two inch by two inch add in their weekly store ad.

Does Walmart put people out of business that competes with them? ONLY if the competition is not smart enough to compete with them.

 

[deja]

Lot of people bad mouth Walmart. Give me a business reason to not like Walmart and I will but so far (and I don't work for them) I can't come up with one.

You know, several people have posted several reasons in this thread. At least 3 I remember off the top of my head.

 

[Shooter77]

Hilarious. Sounds like a costume to me. Honest mistake.

 

[Danny Tanner]

I sure don't see many local downtown retailers moving out the the out-parcel pads around any of the Walmarts I travel past (at least 35 states worth).

Chili's, Mickey D's and a raft of chain stores... yep... Benny's Family Hardware? -not so much.

Walmart typically leaves your small town downtown empty... JC Penny's ends up being a consigment junk store eventually after Walmart comes in... small grocery stores fold, drug stores close up...

Yea... Walmart helps the locals out... everyplace they go

It happened in Pawhuska. WalMart came in and the downtown shops all suffered. Walmart finally closed up and left. Now the building has an Alco or something in it but the downtown never came back to where it was before WalMart.

I don't love Wal Mart by any means, so it's not that I'm jumping to their defense, but can they really be blamed for this? Or is it the community who decides they'd rather save $.09 on a pack of toilet paper instead of supporting local business?

 

[Shootin 4 Fun]

Wal-Mart's buying practices and unreasonable demands of suppliers is what killed manufacturing in the U.S.A. How many of you realize that if a Wal-Mart employee destroys merchandise that Wal-Mart bills the loss to the supplier?

Wal-Mart comes to small town America run Mom & Pop out of business and then themselves pull out to build a centrally located megastore.

Wal-Mart has cheap ammo, but for $10-$20 more per 1000 rounds of 9mm I'll support Sports World, OPS, another local business or even an internet business.

 

[Jefpainthorse]

I don't love Wal Mart by any means, so it's not that I'm jumping to their defense, but can they really be blamed for this? Or is it the community who decides they'd rather save $.09 on a pack of toilet paper instead of supporting local business?

Several cities, around the nation, have sucessfully kept WALMART out... saved the local business, etc, etc, et al.

If you shop carefully at WALMART... most of the actual lower prices are on the end-cap shelves. All and all... I don't find *most* of there prices lower... and on many goods--- they run about the same as anyone else.

 

[Perrone]

I miss KMart

 

[vvvvvvv]

How many of you realize that if a Wal-Mart employee destroys merchandise that Wal-Mart bills the loss to the supplier?

That's part of the negotiation process. The supplier agrees to a certain level of margin for Wal-Mart for a certain amount of space on a certain level shelf. When Wal-Mart accounts for a significant chunk of your revenue, you make concessions.

Other large chains like Target also engage in the same practice. Once a chain gets to a level where they can negotiate (as in it would be stupid for the vendor to walk away), they start acting a lot like Wal-Mart because they can and it works.

I used to cause trouble as a Department Manager because I would give vendors space on endcaps, on four-ways, on action alley features, etc. if I thought they'd move faster and if they had a higher margin than the corporate-mandated features. There was even a few times I'd let them put merchandise in a part of my grocery bin with a handshake agreement that they would work it more often than the one or two days they were scheduled to come it and their feature would be more than half empty and the items in the bin would be gone before their next scheduled day. It worked out great because that was merchandise I didn't have to work that was making a significant margin, and they were getting paid a commission on those sales, so they had an incentive to keep their handshake. Was it out of line with company policy? Yep. But discipline was avoided by way of profit margin sheets (i.e. each month consistently outranking many of the Supercenters in your district in sales while only having a Division-1 store).

But yeah, one thing I learned from the vendors was that when Wal-Mart ran a 4-for-$10 12-pack special, some of them lowered their prices to protect Wal-Mart's margin. When the Homeland and United grocery stores ran the same, the store took a loss.

ETA: Most of those agreements also require all parts to the item to be in the box. That's how my wife and I got our TV. Someone bought an $800 (on rollback) 32" Sanyo Vizon TV, took the included HDMI cable (going for $30 at the time), and returned the TV. The service desk associate didn't notice and gave the refund, but the claims associate did and couldn't send it back. We paid around $500 (store cost) for the TV.