Went to Walmart the other night...

[Dennis S]

"There are always options to WM and if enough people realized this and shopped locally, we would all be better off."

Not in my town and within 60 miles unless you want to spend an extra $50 a week for groceries.

[john dough]

graylocks wrote:
there's a tendency to romanticize mom + Pop stores. remember, mom and pop may have done okay but they often did not employ hundreds of people, pay much more than minimum wage, or provide health insurance and other benefits.

Not romanticizing them, just saying that a big corporate business came in and shuttered a local company.

Directly.

Sure, they did not employ, hundreds of people (they did not need to, as the place was nowhere near the football sized field store that WM has), but the money stayed in the community, their produce was always fresh and the place was always clean.

Check these facts out:

- This year, everyone in the world will make an average of 1.1 purchases at a Walmart.

- An additional Walmart Supercenter per 100,000 residents increases average BMI by 0.25 units and the obesity rate by 2.4%.

http://www.businessinsider.com/16-walmar...z2a6d3fgbT

The more Walmarts that open, the more US jobs are lost.

http://www.epi.org/publication/ib235/

This was from 2006; I am sure it is not better now.



Ok, so mom + pop stores may not be perfect, yet I would rather be surrounded by locally-owned, locally-ran stores where I live (not saying that you would not).

[Numo]

Doesn't anyone have an Aldi grocery store in their area? Way cheaper and better quality food than my local chain grocery or Target.

I am thankful that I can afford (at least for now) to boycott Walmart.

[Octave Doctor]

Between Aldi's, Save-a-lot, and knowing the pull date markdowns at the closest two chain markets, I'm still probably ahead of shopping at WM. Although none of these places make it easy to shop for a single person.

[rgG]

Guess who's husband is quoted in that FastCompany story that John Dough linked. Here is the excerpt, just so you might understand my personal hatred toward WalMart.


As Mariotti says, Wal-Mart is tough as nails. But not every supplier agrees that the toughness is always accompanied by fairness. The Lovable Company was founded in 1926 by the grandfather of Frank Garson II, who was Lovable's last president. It did business with Wal-Mart, Garson says, from the earliest days of founder Sam Walton's first store in Bentonville, Arkansas. Lovable made bras and lingerie, supplying retailers that also included Sears and Victoria's Secret. At one point, it was the sixth-largest maker of intimate apparel in the United States, with 700 employees in this country and another 2,000 at eight factories in Central America.

Eventually Wal-Mart became Lovable's biggest customer. "Wal-Mart has a big pencil," says Garson. "They have such awesome purchasing power that they write their own ticket. If they don't like your prices, they'll go vertical and do it themselves--or they'll find someone that will meet their terms."

In the summer of 1995, Garson asserts, Wal-Mart did just that. "They had awarded us a contract, and in their wisdom, they changed the terms so dramatically that they really reneged." Garson, still worried about litigation, won't provide details. "But when you lose a customer that size, they are irreplaceable."

Lovable was already feeling intense cost pressure. Less than three years after Wal-Mart pulled its business, in its 72nd year, Lovable closed. "They leave a lot to be desired in the way they treat people," says Garson. "Their actions to pulverize people are unnecessary. Wal-Mart chewed us up and spit us out."

Edit: let me add that Lovable was a great company to work for. They treated their employees like family, provided great benefits, and had more people than you can imagine who had worked there for decades, some 50 years, or more. It was heartbreaking to see them close. They had done so much, for so many, and they were brought down by greed and unfair business practices.

And, as it says in the article, there were hundreds of people employed here in the states, and even more than that in Central America, so this was more than just a mom and pop brought down, and they are not the only company of this size, or larger, that has been damaged or destroyed.

[$tevie]

Again, I am not defending Walmart.

But I think that most of you don't realize that A&P and Acme and Woolworth's did the exact same thing. And Rite-Aid and CVS. And Barnes & Noble and Best Buy. And Macy's and Gimble's.

The "Mom & Pop" stores used to be just "the stores" and all of these companies had a hand in destroying a lot of them.


EDIT: unfortunate placement of my post makes it appear that I am addressing Rhonda's post which I was not. That is a terrible story and not what I was referring to; I was talking about the "put Mom and Pop stores out of business" aspect.

[$tevie]

How many of you bought your last TV at a locally owned appliance store? Just asking.

[freeradical]

$tevie wrote:
How many of you bought your last TV at a locally owned appliance store? Just asking.

Not me. I bought my last TV at Amazon. They're the good guys...or so say the denizens here...

Now Walmart...spawn of Beelzebub...

miley12:

[jdc]

More of the same kind of story rgG posted

http://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know

[freeradical]

jdc wrote:
More of the same kind of story rgG posted

http://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know

Interesting story about the pickles.

I saw the same huge gallon jar of pickles in my local Save Mart. The price was mind boggling cheap. I didn't buy it because I would have needed to get a bigger refrigerator...