Revisiting a great 2003 article on Wal-Mart

[gmoney]

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know
BY: CHARLES FISHMANDecember 1, 2003
The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?

(snip)
Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.

continued at link

[Sherman A1]

1. When a vendor first gets their product into Wal Mart

that is the highest price they will be able to get for it. Makes one wonder just why any company would want to sell to them?

I was always impressed by the story of Snapper Lawnmower Company who Wal Mart wanted in their store. The Snapper folks looked over the situation and said.... "No, Thanks we are doing fine".

I wish more vendors would tell them to just go fly a kite. Without products on the shelf.. Wal Mart ain't much..

The one nearest my house just converted to a Super Center and sent out $5.00 gift cards, so I went by to take advantage of their money and found this newly remodeled store to be a complete dump. I have no idea why people that have a choice would shop in one of those excuses for a store.