Wal-Mart doing more with less, and struggling, relatively speaking

That sounds awfully familiar.

 

Race to the bottom, won.

 

Oh no. They're always ready to run another leg of that relay race.

 

That's the story of every small town in America. Walmart came here in 1972, moved to a new building in 1994 or so and then built a new supercenter about five years ago. The first one is now a branch of a company that makes business forms (the grocery store once beside is is a parts distributor). The second one is a strip mall. Tractor Supply takes up a little less than half. The other half has been divided into six stores.

Downtown once had appliance stores, shoe stores, clothing stores; OTASCO, JCPenney and Ben Franklin. Now it's a bunch of antique stores.

 

I hope you make it a point to say this to the owner. Or at least email it.

 

Walmart struggles thoughout the day to stock shelves. Plenty of stockers in the grocery section during the day. Good luck finding the TV or Blu-Ray player you want in stock.

 

This is what happens when some hick inherits a bunch of money. He forces businesses to compete, and that's not the American way.

 

Shake those pom poms.

 

You have bigger problems than Wal-Mart.

 

Free market, right?

 

The thing is -- and I know this is going to be lampooned on the board -- as bad as some of y'all hate Walmart, their business practices have likely enriched you whether you shopped there or not. The furniture company referred to earlier ... just how damn good (at their core business of making and delivering furniture to retailers) do you think they got as a result of doing business with Walmart? They got damn good, because Walmart is an absolute bear to work with. But if you hang with them a while, you're gonna get good. And now that firm is selling to Target and Ikea and Costco and it's able to parlay that additional expertise into real value for those firms' customers. I met a marketer a year or so ago who worked at an electronics supplier to Walmart. He'd been way up in account management there, so he dealt with those folks for years. He said that multiple years after retiring, he still couldn't bring himself to shop there unless absolutely necessary. But he was very clear that he felt that his firm was light years more efficient and effective than it would have ever been had it not danced with that Walmart devil.

I like the fact that Walmart's not doing this stocking thing particularly well right now. That's room for some other firm to enrich us by showing us how to do Walmart one better. And the fact that these other retailers are starting to play Walmart straight up, I take that as fabulous news.

 

Bigger than that.