On 8/6/2013 8:05 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 05 Aug 2013 20:45:58 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> No, they won't. Those corporations didn't just edge out small businesses
>> by selling non-local goods. Most local businesses, with the exception of
>> food providers, or other "immediate sale" types, ordered parts, or
>> goods,
>> had them shipped to them, in smaller, more expensive, volumes, or
>> special ordered them, and then you waited. The big corporations could do
>> "volume"
>> purchases, hire their own, lower paid shippers, then undercut the prices
>> of the local sellers, even selling the **exact identical items**.
>
> I spent about a decade working in the food & drug industry as an IT
> professional, and towards the end of the time, when my "Fortune 50"
> company was acquired by another Fortune 50 company, we had to take a
> course on "retail business basics".
>
> In that course, one of the things we talked about was the death of the
> "mom & pop" style grocery store.  Companies like ours were responsible
> for those smaller local shops going away for precisely the reasons you
> state, Patrick:  Volume purchases, the ability to sell some items at a
> loss (which is actually a sound strategy, because you lay the store out
> so you have more impulse purchases and drive the average sale up).
>
> But here was the interesting thing (and part of the reason that the
> combined larger company itself became an acquisition target - that and
> incompetent senior management, IMHO):  Walmart was (and is) doing the
> exact same thing to stores that focused on just food & drug.  Walmart
> leverages the welfare system in (IMHO) an unconscionable way to drive
> prices even lower than what food & drug retailers (who deal with unions
> in most states) can afford.  A not insignificant number of Walmart part
> time employees have to supplement their income with food stamps or other
> forms of welfare because they don't make a living wage (the ironic
> statement that "Walmart employees can't even afford to shop at Walmart"
> is sadly true in a lot of cases).
>
> So now the food & drug giants like Safeway, Albertson's, Supervalu, and
> so on are faced with being on the receiving end of what they did to the
> mom & pop grocery stores.  To say they're not liking it is an
> understatement.
>
> Jim
>
True, but, as I implied in another post farther up, there are two 
solutions to this:

1. Fix the problem from the only end that can - hint, its not the 
consumer, or the businesses who can do that, since one doesn't have the 
purchasing power to force a real change, and the other is the one 
getting its ass kicked.

2. Cave in, and do the same thing Walmart is doing, and either don't ask 
the government to do anything, or help elect the very people that 
*won't*, since.. after all, having picked this solution, if someone goes 
and fixes the damn thing... guess who else loses, besides Walmart.

Guess which one "some" of the other grocery stores have picked, along 
with other "Walmart competitors"...

Post a reply to this message