It All Began in a Small Store in Arkansas…
March 14th, 2009Via: Guardian:
…in fact, anyone who lives in Bentonville probably shops in Wal-mart for food, clothes, furniture and electronics, banks at Arvest, and, until recently, read a Walton-owned paper. They can drive down Walton Boulevard to watch sport at the Walton Arena. They can wander around the Walton Arts Centre, or go to the Wal-Mart Museum, where old Sam’s office and pick-up are preserved exactly as they were the day he died. They can study at the Sam Walton business school, or fly from the Alice L Walton terminal of the airport.
The concern is, of course, that this approach has been extended to the rest of the world. Wal-Mart has made a speciality of moving into depressed areas where every saving a customer can make is welcome. This undercuts local businesses, and soon, because it sells everything from food to rifles, clothes to furniture, it’s the only game in town. Although they are called “associates”, employees work for little in the way of pay or benefits, and are discouraged from joining unions. The credit crunch means millions more people are dependent on finding the cheapest goods they can. It might have been tailor-made for the Waltons.
The ‘credit crunch’ clearly wasn’t ‘tailor-made for the Waltons,’ because once the dollar/yuan peg dies and the exchange rate shoots up, Wal-Mart will no longer be able to provide the cheap chinese goods which are its main competitive edge. Wal-Mart has, as of now, reached its zenith.