Wal Mart thread

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yeah, Sam's Club is pretty good, but you also have to pay like $35 to be a member . Though I prefer Costco of those kind of stores. They seem to have a better selection and lower prices than Sam's.

[mrmitchell]

Sam's Club is actually less clean than most Wal Marts. They always had birds flying around the inside when I went there.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Now I really know you are drinking that kool-aid!

Get into the rest of the country mrmitchell, not WalMart Central.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by mrmitchell
Che, this is called progress. The steam engine, the railroad, robotics, probably near every advance caused people to lose jobs at first.

There is a difference between people losing their jobs and/or income due to technological or organizational innovation and losing your job and/or income because some other company thinks you're being paid too much.

In your aforementioned examples, technological change allowed less people to produce more wealth. Wal-Mart doesn't do that. Instead it transfers wealth from those least able to afford it to others. No new wealth is being produced, no increase in productivity is being made.

People are just working longer and harder for less. This is not progress. This is regression to the way things were 100 years ago.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by JohnT


They're not as cluttered (more room in the aisles) and Target stores are designed to allow more sunlight in, than WM.

Also, and this might be a local thing, in Target all the guy stuff is located in the front (clothes, electronics) and all the chick/children stuff is in the back of the store (housewares, toys, womens clothing.) In WM, it's almost the opposite - womens clothes in front, electronics in back.

Now that you mention it, the aisles are extremley wide compared with Wal-Mart.

I can't stand being crowded, it makes me uncomfortable.

I'm very surpised they would give up that much retail space.

[mrmitchell]

There is a difference between people losing their jobs and/or income due to technological or organizational innovation and losing your job and/or income because some other company thinks you're being paid too much.

In your aforementioned examples, technological change allowed less people to produce more wealth. Wal-Mart doesn't do that. Instead it transfers wealth from those least able to afford it to others. No new wealth is being produced, no increase in productivity is being made.

People are just working longer and harder for less. This is not progress. This is regression to the way things were 100 years ago.

Wal Mart is an organizational innovation. It helps less people produce more wealth. Because of its insane cost controls, suppliers do everything they can to be leaner, more efficient, and ultimately more productive. For example, before Levi Strauss started selling jeans to Wal Mart, they only hit 65% of their delivery times to stores, and had an old information system, they couldn't easily track which pants sold, at which price, in which stores, in which states, etc.

But now, they are lean and mean, they hit nearly all of their delivery times, they now know how to track their sales.

People think the only way Wal Mart saves money is sending jobs to China, but it really saves at every step of the way, for example with their inventory tracking system, they can instantly tell how any product sells in any part of the store, in any part of the country, at any price, and then they make changes based on that, and it helps them keep the price low and the customers happy. IIRC their information technology system is second in size only to the Pentagon's. They spend a huge amount of money on it and it has paid off incredibly. It is probably the biggest reason why prices at Wal Mart are so low.

EDIT:

Walmart’s data are gathered item by item at the checkout aisle, then recorded, mapped and updated by store, by state, by region. Wal-Mart has 460 terabytes of data stored on Teradata mainframes, made by NCR, at its Bentonville headquarters. The Internet has less than half as much data.

http://www.jvsr.com/researchupdate/detail.asp?ID=868

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by mrmitchell

Wal Mart is an organizational innovation.

Do you have shares or are you on a retainer ?

[chequita guevara]

Wal-Mart is not an organizational innovation. It is just the same-old 19th Century work your employees to death mentality we had before labor became powerful. It can only do what it does because labor isn't powerful enough to stand up to it.

That it forces some suppliers to upgrade its equipment is one thing. That it forces its suppliers to crack down on pay and benefits is another.

Wal-mart does not create new wealth. Nor does it force its suppliers to become more productive by creating more wealth. It simply uses brute market force to extract more profit by lowering the living standards of its employees and those of its suppliers.

Justifying that by claiming it improves the lives of many by crushing the lives is like justifying slavery because it improved the lives of everyone but the slaves.

[JohnT]

mrmitchell is correct. WM has achieved its efficiencies and size because of its use of modern technologies and organizational methods. One doesn't have to have an MBA to realize that the retailer with the largest private satellite system in the world has a competitive advantage to those who wait on weekly or monthly paper reports to make their decisions.

[Ramo]

Yes, Wal Mart uses such organizational innovations as the police to crush any manufacturing unions in China, and legal intimidation to crush service unions in the US. Profit.

[molly bloom]

You can never be too thin or too rich.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Wal-Mart is not an organizational innovation. It is just the same-old 19th Century work your employees to death mentality we had before labor became powerful. It can only do what it does because labor isn't powerful enough to stand up to it.

That it forces some suppliers to upgrade its equipment is one thing. That it forces its suppliers to crack down on pay and benefits is another.

Wal-mart does not create new wealth. Nor does it force its suppliers to become more productive by creating more wealth. It simply uses brute market force to extract more profit by lowering the living standards of its employees and those of its suppliers.

Justifying that by claiming it improves the lives of many by crushing the lives is like justifying slavery because it improved the lives of everyone but the slaves.

Have you compared relative profitability ratios between WM and other retailers (like the Gap, Penneys, Sears)? As I noted in post 13, WM had a net retained earnings (after taxes, dividends, amortization, depreciation, etc) of just 2.7% of sales. Pre-dividend profit margins are just under 6% of sales, which isn't, to use a favored term, "excessive" by any stretch of the imagination. Would you jump at the chance to do $100,000 worth of work if it only netted you with a pre-tax $5,900?

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by mrmitchell
Apocalypse that reminds me of the one single bad thing about Wal mart:

They do not advertise in local papers. Ever. Not once. They used to back in the old days. No more. Not in my recent memory.

But to fix your problem:
The Rand McNally 50 states road map that Wal Mart sells has a list of all the Wal Mart (and Supercenter and Sams Club) locations in the USA.

Or, you could just assume every town over 7500 has a Walmart (a very good assumption).

What way did you drive back from VA to TX?

They advertise in the Houston paper. Its fun to see the big yellow smiley face and next to it 69 cent 2 liters of coke. Can't get deals like that are Kroger or Target anymore.

I drove back the 81/40/75/59/12/10 way.

[mrmitchell]

extract more profit

Wal Mart does not "extract profit", it passes on savings to the consumer. If it wanted to extract profit, it could have prices similar to Target or the mom & pops everyone acts like they miss.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Again, this deluded belief that Target is now Tiffany's!

And mrmitchell, Walmart is in it FOR PROFIT, not because they want everyone to have cheap goods!