There is a great big-butt Walmart in Baie d’Urfé, in the West Island suburban area of Montreal, which thank gods I don’t live there.
Word to Canadians: Run for your life! They’re taking over!
I live in a largish city. We’ve got two WalMarts, four Meijer’s, and I think four KMarts. We’ve also got the Sam’s Club that comes along with WalMart, and a BigK, the new-style KMart. My city (Flint, MI) is also right between two of the hugest outlet shopping centers in the universe. We’ve got two Targets here too. I shop at Meijer’s & Target. I’ve tried WalMart, but they just don’t impress me at all. The Preven thing, though, got my attention. Quadell, you are not alone in your fight, believe me. A freind of mine, who is a WalMart junkie, told me that it seemed to her that there were less & less customers shopping at our WalMarts since this happened. Keep it up. It just might work.
This thread is absurd, but I’m posting anyway. Wal-Mart is tacky, refuses to carry certain items, and puts local merchants out of business. Assuming the last point is true, why don’t the small, local merchants sell Preven and 2Live Crew CDs (or whatever, please don’t bother flaming me for forgetting), and they’d have a hell of a little store, eh? Maybe some sex toys thrown in, and where’s the competition from Wal-Mart?
Those who don’t like Wal-Mart, don’t shop there. It is tacky. Here in Hickville, it’s open 24 hours, which makes it pretty hip.
Amazing how a thread loses its raison d’etre at the very beginning, and gets hijacked into something totally different!
Quadell wanted to boycott Wal-Mart because they were refusing to stock a product (Preven) for reasons that didn’t make logical sense, to wit: it doesn’t cause an abortion (the fertilized egg hasn’t attached to the wall of the uterus), so it isn’t an abortion pill and shouldn’t be treated as such. But, as was pointed out in only one response, most ‘Christian’ groups who are opposed to abortion are opposed because they believe that a soul is created at the moment the sperm manages to meld with the egg, creating a full complement of chromosomes and initating the cell-division process. IF that is your definition of the beginning of human life, then banning Preven makes logical sense.
As for the remainder of the responses…
Capitalism is simple. You buy what you want from who you want. You sell what you want to those willing to buy. First amendment isn’t relevant (PLEASE read the Constitution). Boycotts sometimes work, sometimes don’t. Wal-Mart isn’t evil, but if you don’t like their marketing tactics, don’t shop there.
Now if we can apply capitalism to farm subsidies…
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- I do not find anything objectionable about what Wal-Mart does. They strong-arm suppliers and often get favorable development financing packages to help build stores, but the suppliers put up with this willingly to get their products onto Wal-Mart’s shelves and the civic financial assistance is handed to them by local politicians.
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- For those of you that don’t like Wal-Mart anyway, a friend of mine late this year will begin to receive a settlement from Wal-Mart for an injury on the job - $200,000 every two weeks for a year. (It may go higher than this amount, but it won’t be lower.) When the injury occurred, they denied all coverage claiming the person responsible wasn’t a store employee (which was incorrect) and terminated him (my friend) before the 1 year medical leave clause (anyone on medical leave for more than one year is automatically terminated; somebody screwed up and canned him early).
- I wasn’t sure if I should put this in the “Do You Have A Lot Of Money” thread or here. - MC
Kmart is basically the same store as Wal-Mart, but has been around longer. Was there this much resistance to new Kmarts raping downtown and closing the mom & pops back then?
Well, I live in a moderately-sized town in northwest Michigan, and I can tell you, the local WalMart is often the only place you can find some items. The K-Mart we have is a joke—it doesn’t stock anything, and the local non-chain stores are all geared towards the fudgies (that’s North MichiganSpeak for tourists, BTW) and their prices are through the roof.
As for boycotts, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t; usually if I need something and the store’s got it, I’ll buy it because I need it, and to hell with their policies. They just broke ground a few days ago on a brand-new Meijer’s up here, and we are overjoyed. At last there’ll be some competition for the only two other grocery stores in town (not to mention bringing in 600 new jobs to the community). But Meijer’s can be snooty too. I used to date a girl who worked for Meijer’s, and we’d laugh about their goofy policies. "It’s all the fault of poor old Fred (Meijer). Poor guy, I hear he actually has to drive last year’s Cadillac now, gasp!!!"
Bunny: you wouldn’t think that Grand Rapids is such a great place to visit in about six months; they’re going to completely close the 131 S-curve for two years and attempt to straighten it out. Traffic is supposed to be re-routed throught downtown, off Ann, down Division, and back on at Burton. My God, I can’t even imagine the unholy mess THAT’S going to cause! Remind me to avoid G.R. like the plague until 2004 or so; if I need to do city shopping, I’ll go either to Muskegon or Traverse City.
I’ve also been silently boycotting Walmart because they have current lawsuits against them for being unfriendly to breastfeeding mothers. The Preven issue just strengthened my resolve.
BTW…Three cheers for the straightening of the GR S-curve…that thing was almost impossible to navigate while drunk. Rahrahrah!
I do not believe that anyone addressed the issue of special services/items (except for some pills&CD’s). - When WallMart puts the “small guy” out of business, it is possible to lose a great resource. If one is in to, say bikes, WallMart may have a larger selection of kids bikes, but if one requried some special parts or advice =SOL. The person who started the bike shop in your town was probably an enthusiast and could be relied on for expert advice, but the expert’s shop will not likely survive based on expert advice (probably free - and not available at WallMart, no$$$ in it) and a selection of extra ordinary parts. WallMart is lowering the standard. And censorship sucks - don’t mater if is only done by a retailer
I grew up in a small city in Upstate New York. My home was 1/2 mile exactly from the spot where a young clerk named Frank decided to try what we’d now call remaindering some items that had not sold in his boss’s store. The experiment worked well, and Frank went into business for himself as a low-price/(eventually) high-volume retailer. His last name was Woolworth.
In the early 1900’s Woolworths drove a lot of small retailers out of business (including his erstwhile boss, whom he bought out and then made an officer of his own company). And there was a bunch of fuss then.
Sam Walton started out much the same way, in another small city, this time in Arkansas. And of the two men, Sam seems to have had a much better business philosophy, in terms of what he owed his clientele, his employees, and the communities where he did business.
In addition to which, I inadvertently learned how S. Robson, Sam’s son, handled a major family crisis, and while I have no intention of bringing out his dirty laundry here, can I state that it was handled with a lot of human compassion and common sense, and that he used his money to intervene in behalf of a friend of his son’s who was “burned” by the situation.
Good small retailers will survive by offering what WalMart doesn’t and cannot: personalized service. I owned a bookstore that competed satisfactorily against WaldenBooks for some years by my knowing the taste of my clientele. People will also buy from local merchants who reinvest in the community (charitably or in desired additional business ventures) in preference to chains that do not. And if the local merchant refuses to (a) match mega-retailer prices, (b) offer personal service, or © reinvest in the community, he deserves to go under.
Note: I have no interest in the WalMart chain other than the remote possibility that one of my 401(K) retirement plan’s mutual fund investments may possibly own a few shares of WalMart Stores - it does not to my knowledge do so, but I don’t know all of what it has invested in. We are talking fractions of cents here, anyway.