I hate WalMart but I bought my last serving of Mobil 1 there.

Waiting through the line was one of the most horrific experiences of my life.

 

Just mailorder Amsoil, may cost alittle more, but no lines and no walmart roaches to deal with and Amsoil > Mobil 1

 

i hate it,....hate even more to park my car in a walmart parking lot

 

here. next time your in walmart

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bd61LnxqSng

1:08 is when its in action

 

I don't shop there because it's just chaos. NY WalMarts are not like those in the middle states....they aren't THAT big. Walmart DOES have consumer appeal, but I agree, killing mom and pop stores hurts society.

 

ok, ok, so how many of you have ACTUALLY done business with walmart? and when i say done business i don't mean "yeah my company does business with them" or "yeah, my 2nd cousin is sort of the secret girlfriend of the store manager". i'm talking about dealing with the buyers direct, doing line reviews, planogram reviews, sales calls, and all the things that needs to be done as a direct walmart vendor.

if you haven't, and you're speaking as a consumer, count yourself lucky that a vulture like walmart exists. if it wasn't for walmart, you'd be paying thousands of dollars more per year on goods at any other non-national chain stores, including the oh so elusive mom & pop stores. i haven't seen one since 1985, by the way, and that was in oklahoma. for sure business people don't like walmart because it forces them to take drastic approaches to cost cutting, and that includes shipping workers (yesterday) and white collar jobs (today), and your jobs (tomorrow) to anywhere that's cheap. china has been for the past decade, next it'll be vietnam, then business people will have to start exploiting those poor africans whom, thanks to charity infomercials, tells the business community that "they can live on $2 a day" (or was that a week?).

sarcasm aside, i've been in 3 industries directly affected by walmart's business practices. and their pricing structure not only pushes down what you buy at WM, but it also pushes down that price everywhere else in the national & regional stores thanks to laws against vertical price fixing (and see what effects in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS had on the retail business by googling it).

would you pay $2000 or $3000 more for that HDTV from a mom & pop? i don't think so. and if you think anyone else in the industry has the clout to drive price compression the way WM does you're out of your mind. in many of the market segment WM competes in (from a retail shelf level) it controls anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of the TOTAL domestic market volume if not more.

i'm not defending WM - i'm simply stating facts from my experience in dealing with them directly. they're not the evil empire, their goals are to offer everyday low prices to their customers (if you're not 50% of the american population are), and every single company who makes products in the world (except apple, so i heard from the grapevine, who gives WM the finger whenever they want) scramble to please them because the volume they drive is incredible. and for factories, volume means leverage, and it means lower procurement costs, and it means higher turnover (sales or revenue) of cash, and it means abilities to expand beyond their original capacity, and it can kill them in the process.

don't knock walmart because of what you read. don't hate walmart because of the slobs that work there or the freaks that shop there. knock and hate walmart because it proved you're an incompetent manager, or it proved your company just simply couldn't compete in the retail world.

 

In a nutshell for the unwashed, ill-informed masses....Wal-Mart crushes its suppliers. By having achieved ginormous retailer status, by undercutting the retail competition in the areas they open in and sucking them dry and out of business, they then can tell suppliers who used to sell in those stores...this is the price we will pay for your goods...take it or leave it. Of course they take because then they will be out of business. Their profit margins smashed and barely existant if they keep their production in America....crushed so much so that the only way to survive as a business...since if you cant do business with wal-mart, you lose out on that market....they ship their business production overseas where they can make it for drastically less (i.e. China). There is a reason there is a star in Wal-Mart's symbol.

 

Wrong wrong wrong.


Look up the definition of predatory capitalism. If we had a functioning government...Wal-Mart wouldn't exist.

 

i disagree Mike. walmart got to its position today for giving what the consumers wanted, and that's pure capitalism. the casualties are everyday people like you and me. i have no love for them, and i shop there once in a blue moon (like when the HD DVD player went for $98 last november...), but it is capitalism that got them to where they are. it'll take a socialist government, or a more left leaning government, to regulate people like walmart. that's as far as i'll get here in the politics.

but how do you tell the difference from predatory or excessive price pressure vs. normal industry advances & cost cutting? that's a HUGE gray area.

i can't give you any solid examples or tell you what i know because i still have to deal with them daily, and if they read this the wrong way there would be hell to pay. however, just know that people have already told walmart "NO" - those with products that are not commoditized (iPOD for example, or some patented products nobody else can make), but man if you sold something like a radio price (and some brand equity) may be your only chances. if you don't sell to walmart, you're throwing away 30~40% of your total revenue for the year, would any sane, rational business manager do that? if we want to change, then all the MBA courses need to be re-written.

just saying: try and live my life for once and you'll know how painful it is to work with them, and how painful it is NOT to work with them. it's a double edged sword.

 

I'd gladly take increased prices if it meant increased economic health and monetary flow through local economies. Less movement of production and jobs overseas. More, better quality entry level jobs. The point being, Wal-Mart's effort to drive down prices just hurts more than helps the people that supposedly benefit from those prices. Anyway, when those people making $12/hr at the factory shop at Wal-Mart to save money, but their factory gets closed down because production is moved to Honduras to meet Wal-Mart's cost targets - you think they're HAPPY they were able to save a dollar on a freaking gallon jar of pickles at the expense of their jobs???

From the article I linked to earlier: