Orvis + Wal-Mart = Angry local shopkeep

Greg Pavlov wrote:



I think that that is true in general: Walmart doesn't
create dislocation per se. It may accelerate them,
but they would happen eventually anyway.

....hmmm... i guess it depends on the rate of acceleration you find
acceptable. i mean, i suspect most folks would prefer a natural death
over being the victim of a murder, don't you?

wal-mart, home depot, barnes and noble, and the like, slaughtered the
existing mom and pop businesses here... it was about as per se as i've
observed...

"Jeff Miller" wrote...
Greg Pavlov wrote:

I think that that is true in general: Walmart doesn't
create dislocation per se. It may accelerate them,
but they would happen eventually anyway.

...hmmm... i guess it depends on the rate of acceleration you find
acceptable. i mean, i suspect most folks would prefer a natural death
over being the victim of a murder, don't you?

wal-mart, home depot, barnes and noble, and the like, slaughtered the
existing mom and pop businesses here... it was about as per se as i've
observed...

Don't you think the public deserves some of the blame for the slaughter? If the
shopping public had decided they were willing to support locally owned and
operated businesses regardless of price, the Wal-marts and Home Depots would
have dissolved rather than the local guy.

IMHO, Orvis has really shot themselves in the foot with this partnership. Their
niche has always been higher priced, quality merchandise sold in a boutique
fashion. What this move will do to that image will be determined soon.
--
TL,
Tim
http://css.sbcma.com/timj

If they are that big, they must be just as tough on the small merchants as
is Wal-Mart. Does anyone hate them too for providing one-stop shoping at
fantastic prices?

--


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"Greg Pavlov" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 21:42:58 -0700, "Sierra fisher"
wrote:

Wegmans and Tops must be fantastic stores.


I don't know about "fantastic," but they can be
quite big: Walmarts run in the 150K sq ft range,
a large Wegmans is in the neighborhood of 130K.




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"Tim J." wrote in message
newsCwic.14213$YP5.1053449@attbi_s02...

Don't you think the public deserves some of the blame for the slaughter?
If the
shopping public had decided they were willing to support locally owned and
operated businesses regardless of price, the Wal-marts and Home Depots
would
have dissolved rather than the local guy.

The funny thing is that the prices at WM are NOT always cheaper. But, the
advertising has lulled the sheep into a deep sleep. To add to the hypnosis,
many Wal Mart stores don't post unit pricing stickers on everything. In my
only two trips to the WM grocery department, I noticed that about half the
items didn't have unit prices displayed, or any price at all. After checking
out, I found that about 1/3 of the items were priced the same or above what
the nearby supermarket charged. I never went back. WM *expects* you to
blindly believe. Only fools do that.

What the hell are you talking about??? How did you get from my comment on
store comparisons, to "prejudiced" and "stupid"??? Explain exactly what you
read into my post, please.



"Mike Connor" wrote in message
...

"Doug Kanter" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...

You think its a game?

The main way to keep poor people poor is to keep them ignorant, and make
them pay more for basic essentials. The scheme works very well.

Which is why you are well off, even though you are not only prejudiced,
but
stupid to boot.

Don´t you think at all before you post?

TL
MC

Having everything cheap from a few major discounters, and at the
same time a flourishing economy, and reasonbale employment levels, are
eventually mutually exclusive. This is of course always realised too late,
although the patterns which cause it are always identical and foreseeable.
MC

While the pattern and the practice may be foreseeable, our heads of business
are doing every thing they can to change the nature of employment here. It
will be interesting when they've downsized and laid off sufficient numbers
of the work force that the demand for anything other than the necessities
for minimum standard living are no longer affordable by the remaining
workers and the unemployed.

--
Stev Lenon 91B20 '68-'69
Drowning flies to Dark Star

http://web.tampabay.rr.com/stevglo/i...age92kword.htm

"Sierra fisher" wrote in message
...
Wegmans and Tops must be fantastic stores. In our area, Wal-Mart is 5 to
40% cheaper than all three of our local supermarkets.

Like any other business, the quality of WM's groceries depends on the
management. Here, nobody seems to give a damn. The produce appears to have
been driven over. They charge .69 per pound for romaine lettuce. Wegman's
gets .79. But with the WM lettuce, you have to throw away the outer half of
the leaves. Now it costs 1.40 per pound in order to get the same number of
servings. The meat at WM is awful. Most of the time, they're out of
Tropicana OJ. The moment you have to shop at two stores, your savings is
gone as far as I'm concerned. I head over to Wegman's and everything's
perfect, even in the middle of a blizzard when much of the staff couldn't
get to work.

Another interesting story: Went into WM at 11:00 one night to pick up some
Rapalas. There were two registers open. One had a long line, so I picked the
other. I was #3 in line. #1 in line was a group of 4 women with a huge load
of groceries. When it came time to pay, one of them reached into her purse
and pulled out an envelope containing a 2" stack of credit cards. The first
few failed to get approval. Then, she found one that had 10 bucks available,
which clearly wasn't enough to cover the amount of stuff she'd bought. She
slowly continued trying cards. Then, one of her friends took over the
routine. Twenty minutes went by, when some pimple-faced dweeb strolled over
and asked what was going on. The cashier explained. The dweeb went and
leaned against the wall outside the registers. I motioned him over and he
came around to the back of the line. He told me he was the manager, and I
asked him if he knew how to operate a register. He said yes, so I asked why
he didn't open another register and handle the line of customers which had
now grown to about a dozen. He told me managers aren't supposed to run
registers.

Wegman's would've hustled the credit card scammers to the customer service
desk PRONTO, and let them play slot machine there, rather than make other
customers stand around forever. No more Wal Mart for me.

Other than little convenience stores, which always thrive, there ARE no
small full-line grocery stores in most American cities. The Red & White and
IGA type stores still do nicely in towns which are too small to support an
A&P, Wegman's, Kroger, Grand Union, Albertson's, etc. The change you're
referring to took place in the mid-1960s.

"Sierra fisher" wrote in message
...
If they are that big, they must be just as tough on the small merchants as
is Wal-Mart. Does anyone hate them too for providing one-stop shoping at
fantastic prices?

"Sierra fisher" wrote in message
...
Don't blame Wal-Mart for K-Mart and Rit-Aids problems. The entire chain
of
K-Mart went into bankruptcy because management didn't know what they
wanted
to do. Rit-Aid, eventhough it was started by two large drug companies,
continuously teeters on the edge of bankruptcy because drugs are a very
small part of their business, and they haven't yet firues out how to
compete
against Target, K-Mart and Wal-Mart with non-drug items. In many ways
they
are just a small Wal-Mart. and are competing with the locally owned drug
stores that were here for years.

Around here, the Rite-Aid stores now compete with gas stations, selling
every damned thing. And, the stores pop out of the ground like weeks.
Reminds me of two comedians' jokes about Starbucks. From one comedian whose
name I forget: "The 1300th Starbucks just opened in the bathroom of the
1299th Starbucks". And, from George Carlin: "There is now a Starbucks in my
pants!"

"Greg Pavlov" wrote in message
...
True, but a very large proportion of the population
clearly prefers to buy at Walmart, Best Buy, McDonalds,
BassPro, Barnes & Noble, etc, and our grand suburban/exurban
culture promotes them.

Imagine the changes when the gasoline runs out.