Walmart v. the National Football League

flaja said:
When did the first Walmart open in your town? And just where could you be that you didn't have a JC Penny or a Kmart or a Sears before you had a Walmart? Towns haven't been that small or that remote in America (outside of maybe Alaska or Hawaii) in a good 70 years.

And just how many other stores have closed since Walmart came to your town?
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town is about 40,000. About 50% of the counties population.

Few stores linked to walmart have closed in town since wally world came to town. Wally world is now at it's second location btw. A super wally world, with a chain drug store on each end of it's lot and a super Krogers grocery about 1 mile down the road doing great business.

Only other business I can think of that closed was an A&P grocery. Not sure if they still exist or not.

KMart did all the small store closing before Wally World came to town.
 
flaja said:
And I still doubt that you are being completely truthful.
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And you are an idiot. There isn't one Sears or JC Penny in my county, there hasn't ever been one. Places like where I live are everywhere across the US even if you don't want to believe it.
 
uscitizen said:
town is about 40,000. About 50% of the counties population.

Few stores linked to walmart have closed in town since wally world came to town. Wally world is now at it's second location btw. A super wally world, with a chain drug store on each end of it's lot and a super Krogers grocery about 1 mile down the road doing great business.
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How long has the Walmart where you live been open? The loss of competing stores where I live didn't happen overnight. I don't know when the first Walmart opened in my part of the state, but you began seeing Walmart TV ads for the stores in the neighboring towns around 1985 or 1986 and the 1st Walmart opened here in 1987 (we now have at least 10 Walmarts now and a few years ago my local newspaper reported that Walmart’s stated goal was to have 1 store every 5 miles here). This was following Walmart's standard business practice at the time of opening in small towns before putting a store in a major city in the same area. Walmart opened here when the population within the city limits was around 700,000. The local 4 county region hit the million people mark in the mid-1990s. The local population has boomed and you would think this would have been good for retail trade. But since Walmart came to town we've lost as many retail stores as we have gained. I would venture that in the long run your community will follow the normal Walmart model- locally owned businesses will close while more and more people end up working for Walmart and their wages and employee benefits will decline accordingly.

KMart did all the small store closing before Wally World came to town.
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When you gave your list of stores that are open with Walmart in town, were you talking about stores that were already open before Walmart, or did any of them open after your first local Walmart did? Also, if your town is so small, have you considered any gain or loss of retail stores in surrounding areas? Where I live you can drive for an hour or more and still be within the city limits. I didn’t count any stores outside of the city limits in my list of lost stores.
 
Damocles said:
And you are an idiot. There isn't one Sears or JC Penny in my county, there hasn't ever been one. Places like where I live are everywhere across the US even if you don't want to believe it.
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What size population do you have? How close are you to a community of say, 50,000 people?
 
flaja said:
What size population do you have? How close are you to a community of say, 50,000 people?
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About 45 minutes to Parker. The closest town is Elizabeth with about 2500 people, that one is about 20 minutes from my house. The population of the entire county (covers a huge swath of land) is about 24K if you count kids. The nearest gas station is 10.5 miles from my house. People who live even further into the county have a much further drive than I have.
 
flaja said:
The few retail chains that are left where I live (a metropolitan area of over a million people) know that the most they have to do now is match Walmart in price, customer service and product selection because they know the consumer’s only other option is Walmart. More often than not if a particular product or a particular brand is not carried by Walmart you won’t buy it because nobody in town will have it.
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Then the retailers in your area are run by frapping morons. Carrying items that Walmart does not carry is EXACTLY how smaller businesses in my area compete, without having to necessarily match Walmart's large volume pricing. If Walmart does not carry an item, people who need it will go where it IS carried, and more often than not buy everything on their list at that place as long as they are not more than a few percent above Walmart in price. That was especially true last summer, as the higher gas prices go, the more people want to do their shopping at one store.
 
uscitizen said:
Our walmart has been open Over 12 years I think.

As I said it is now in it's second building.
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Did your town have anything that could be called a downtown before Walmart opened? If not, do any surrounding towns have downtown districts? In my part the country Walmarts usually opened along the interstate so they were not always located in a town as such. They were meant to draw customers from surrounding towns- devastating indigenous businesses in the process. You may not see the effects of Walmart in your town if your town didn’t have much local business to be harmed, but businesses in surrounding towns very likely were harmed by Walmart.

The first Walmart with groceries in my part of the state opened in a small town about 100 miles from here back in the mid-1990s. It drew customers from across the state line so the effects of Walmart are not confined to the area immediately surrounding a Walmart store.
 
uscitizen said:
As I said it is now in it's second building.
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Are you getting a second Walmart store, or a larger store in a new location? Walmart's practice here has been to open a store in a shopping center and then after a decade or so either take over the shopping center to expand or build a bigger store a few miles away- leaving the original shopping center to die.
 
Damocles said:
About 45 minutes to Parker. The closest town is Elizabeth with about 2500 people, that one is about 20 minutes from my house. The population of the entire county (covers a huge swath of land) is about 24K if you count kids. The nearest gas station is 10.5 miles from my house. People who live even further into the county have a much further drive than I have.
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A 45 minute drive where I live would just barely get you to the other side of town. Do you know what kind of radius your new Walmart will draw customers from? The ill-effects of Walmart will not be felt only in your little town.
 
flaja said:
Did your town have anything that could be called a downtown before Walmart opened? If not, do any surrounding towns have downtown districts? In my part the country Walmarts usually opened along the interstate so they were not always located in a town as such. They were meant to draw customers from surrounding towns- devastating indigenous businesses in the process. You may not see the effects of Walmart in your town if your town didn’t have much local business to be harmed, but businesses in surrounding towns very likely were harmed by Walmart.

The first Walmart with groceries in my part of the state opened in a small town about 100 miles from here back in the mid-1990s. It drew customers from across the state line so the effects of Walmart are not confined to the area immediately surrounding a Walmart store.
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Yes, but the traditional retail stores in the older downtown (Benjamin Franklin, Western Auto, etc) had already gone out due to other super stores. ie KMart, Roses, Super Mart, Maloneys, etc.
Many of those had also gone away by the time Wally world came about.

You blame Wal mart far too much.
The suburbanization of American cities had already pretty much wiped out the retail businesses in downtown long before Wally world came into existence.
 
flaja said:
A 45 minute drive where I live would just barely get you to the other side of town. Do you know what kind of radius your new Walmart will draw customers from? The ill-effects of Walmart will not be felt only in your little town.
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It will probably draw from the entire county and some from the one down south. The county north of us is rich with population and stores and likely wouldn't come up to our Walmart. It will effect nearly every business in the county, and it might even draw from those west of us because of the low taxes in our county. I expect Big R will be out of business within months, which will suck we get most of our livestock medication from Big R. I'm not really looking forward to it.
 
It is called competition Damo.

Stores come and they go. Just because wally world is the big one now does not mean it will stay that way.

Just wait till Bejing Mart shows up ;)

for now China is satisfied to let WalMart be their outlet. For now.
 
Damocles said:
It will probably draw from the entire county and some from the one down south. The county north of us is rich with population and stores and likely wouldn't come up to our Walmart. It will effect nearly every business in the county, and it might even draw from those west of us because of the low taxes in our county. I expect Big R will be out of business within months, which will suck we get most of our livestock medication from Big R. I'm not really looking forward to it.
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Walmart has been here for 12 years now, and our Big R survived just fine. They adjusted their inventory a little bit, but still carry everything I go to Big R for. There was a big to-do here when Walmart first proposed ccoming in - all kinds of rhetoric about small businesses being shut out, etc. But the fears were way overblown. No businesses have failed that can be attributed to Walmart. The same was said about local grocers when the Walmart expanded into a Super Walmart. And again, contrary to the warning, local grocers and and other chain grocers are doing just fine 5 years later.

In short, it's not the big deal anti-walmart rhetoric is making it out to be. If a general store wants to try to take on Walmart head-to-head, stocking the same stuff as Walmart, then they will have trouble. But since Walmart does not carry anything they cannot buy by the train load, there are all kinds of ways to offer what Walmart does not, such as livestock supplies and fencing, bolts, nuts and screws in bulk, etc. (talking Big R here for specific example) to draw people in, then sell them specialty items as well as items Walmart DOES carry because few people want to waste time shopping at two stores.
 
Good Luck said:
Walmart has been here for 12 years now, and our Big R survived just fine. They adjusted their inventory a little bit, but still carry everything I go to Big R for. There was a big to-do here when Walmart first proposed ccoming in - all kinds of rhetoric about small businesses being shut out, etc. But the fears were way overblown. No businesses have failed that can be attributed to Walmart. The same was said about local grocers when the Walmart expanded into a Super Walmart. And again, contrary to the warning, local grocers and and other chain grocers are doing just fine 5 years later.

In short, it's not the big deal anti-walmart rhetoric is making it out to be. If a general store wants to try to take on Walmart head-to-head, stocking the same stuff as Walmart, then they will have trouble. But since Walmart does not carry anything they cannot buy by the train load, there are all kinds of ways to offer what Walmart does not, such as livestock supplies and fencing, bolts, nuts and screws in bulk, etc. (talking Big R here for specific example) to draw people in, then sell them specialty items as well as items Walmart DOES carry because few people want to waste time shopping at two stores.
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I hope so. I don't want to buy from the Feed Store, they are incredibly proud of their medications and hay. Grass hay went for $10 a bale there, insane.
 
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