TeledyN: Wallop Wal*Mart

Wallop Wal*Mart

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Tom Peters has a checklist for keeping a stiff upper local lip in the impending enslaught of lumbering globalized juggernauts, and the good news is, if you're already in small business, it ain't nuthin you don't already know: Keep low, keep nimble, dig in, don't pee in your drinking water, and stay out of the Dinosaur's lunch path for starters, and a few other good advices for fleet-foot mammals ...

Can the small player compete in a world of Citigroups and Bank of Americas? I said it was a lark. And I more or less meant it. That is, among other things, giants%u2014 "new tech," CRM, etc notwithstanding%u2014 will always be clumsy and impersonal relative to an "intimate local" who is really out to make a dramatic difference. Here's my Wallop Walmart 16 list of "musts" if you are a "little guy" (one-person accountancy, restaurant, community bank, etc) out to eat the Big Guys' lunch
[ Beating Wal*Mart (Starbucks, etc) is a lark! ]

"So," I hear you ask, "does it work?" ....

Well, it really really does sound really warm and fuzzy, easier to say than to quantify and the sort of conference fodder that gets you speaker bookings, and I'm the first to tell you all right here and now that it is just basic science to say any checklist of N items is almost certainly missing N more that the observer couldn't see, and a further N minimum that he's too embarrassed to mention for fear of being labelled 'naive', but on the basic general question of whether it's worth your while to stay the course when there's a mega-box hurling in your direction, I say Tom has at least one very good point: London Drugs. QED, so far as that goes.

Unfortunately, back at the realities of the direct sense of What needs doing now?, any list of post-hoc anecdotal assertions and nebulous summations are never truly as compelling as just one control-group contrasted applied before/after case study, but thanks all the same Tom because that LD case in point does indeed tell us that glocalized competing is at least possible, and that's news worth noting.

Submitted by mrG on Sun, 2005-07-24 21:26.

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More tips on how to box with

Submitted by mrG on Sat, 2005-08-27 20:29.

More tips on how to box with the boxmalls can be found between the lines of Myles Spicer's debunking of the myth that Wal*Mart is somehow "good for the rural poor", and in his list of proofs, Myles points to alternative smaller players who are providing the same essential service, but doing so with a realistic eye to community values ...

Two (Minnesota) names come quickly to mind: Target and Best Buy. Both have far more enlightened policies. Both treat their employees better. Both have far better investor records (and pay a dividend to boot). And neither has encountered the severe anti-company community reaction that Wal-Mart has faced. (You might ask why Wal-Mart is so resisted when it announces a new store if it is so wonderful and helpful?)

No, the claim that Wal-Mart is "helping" the poor and rural America is almost totally without merit. And even if there is a small element of truth to that claim, the price, on balance, is too high to pay. Surely, building a new Wal-Mart in the poorer areas of North America does little or nothing to ameliorate the plight of low-income groups in those locations.
[ Myles Spicer: Defenders of Wal-Mart savings didn't pay attention to chain's costs ]

There is, however, one small point of order where I'm going to disagree with Myles in Wal*Mart's defense. By swarming in with a price-cut juggernaut that totally swamps out all competition for the mainstream humdrum and essentially low margin goods, Wal*Mart effectively slaps local retailers in the face with the stark truth: You don't want to play in that space anyway.

The data is piling up, and the net profit result appears to be that you are better off getting out of the mainstream and deep into the niche market

Two case studies from my adventures today:

We visited a grocers in the North Beach where there was one brand of everything splayed sparce on grey tattered shelves. Yes we bought and overpaid for a brand of spaghetti we didn't really want, but we didn't buy the sauce, and we didn't buy anything else, and we're not in any hurry to go back. When our local box-grocer stacks shelf after shelf with only the sponsor-corporation's pet corporate buddies, this local small shop has a golden opportunity to stock local goods, and in fact does stock some for which the shop is well known. I think they should learn from that.

Moral: stop trying to be the box-store, just be who you are.
Out on a walk, there's only a handful of places to get coffee here on the beach, and one of them charges exhorbitant prices, way above the trendy Toronto latte-chains ... and yet it is busy, oodles of people milling outside; the nearby shop with ordinary prices gets police-officer business, but not a whole lot else, and yet they are selling the same coffee, the difference is only in the presentation.

Moral: When people think they are getting something special, they'll happily pay extra for it.

Therein we learn that the hard lessons are taught by Wal*Mart: If you want to beat the box, do not strive to be mundane. It won't work, you can't compete with the box-stores, they have mundane wrapped up.

You have to be extrordinary.

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