Wal-mart Deals

10-4 Over and Out.

Maybe next time we should discuss the inevitable struggle between good and evil

Maybe the best religion

And God forbid, Politics

I forgot, Thanks for the Heads up Cade

I have been following this thread and biting my lips. I have only one thing to add:

This last year, Walmart made the move to allow their employees wish customers a “Merry Christmas” rather than the politically correct “happy holiday”. Even with all the bad press that Walmart has had, I made the decision to forgive them all their transgressions and continue to frequent the sports section!

Dave, with your paternity situation you have enough problems to deal with

Walmart also has/had Diachi hooks on sale!!!!!! 6-pack for $0.10! Don’t bother looking for them in Hastings

Paternity situation??? you have me completely confused…

Look below your signature!

I forgot about that.

Reminds me of a resort owner near Rhinelander, WI. Walmart kept him and other employees on short hours so they won’t have to offer medical insurance.

Anyway, I prefer Fleet Farm.

I was gonna stop there on my way home, guess I will just keep moving then….

Just a few parting thoughts…

1- I personally can’t recall a time where I have seen chinese employees at Wal-mart?? And why should it matter? I go there probably once a month and have never seen anyone speaking in a language I do not understand…

2- Some of the guys in the fishing section actually know what they are talking about. They understand the sport and how things work. These guys live in La Crosse and a couple in particular are avid sportsmen.

3-Like wal-mart or not, I will still shop there. One of my hottest baits in the spring of ’06 came from a 99 cent bin…those little finesse worms Caught fish and I was disappointed when I bought them all out Bottom line is, I go where the deals are and where I can find quality equipment that suits my needs at a decent price. Doesn’t matter if you buy your gear at Wal-mart, BPS, ACE, Gander mtn, Cabela’s, Dick’s, etc., you probably are still going to be using it when you fish the Wal-Mart Flw Tour…..

I would still like to hear what they did to LEVI’s

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Look what they did to LEVI’s a couple years ago.

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I would also like to hear the LEVI’S story.

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Sometimes it’s worth the 5-10% premium on groceries at
hy-vee

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……. .If you only purchase Oscar Mayer and other Kraft items this may be true. Wallmart has the buying power to put a price image on name brand products, but like any other retailer, they make up for their loss by merchandising other brands of products, displaying them in high traffic areas at a very hefty profit margin. It’s all smoke and mirrors .

Buy all the same items at a Hy-vee Food Store, and the same items at your local Wallmart and you will be very surprised at the end result

The point I made was that sometimes it is worth paying the extra money to have a more enjoyably shopping experience. The premium is on the exact same product…because Walmart has the buying power. Believe me, I understand merchandising. Sorry I didn’t make myself clear.

Chris Low

Sorry for the delay. I’m busy this time of year..running my small business(They havent got me yet!) My sister in-law “made” me watch a program with her and the Mrs. last year on public TV(KTCA 2 MPLS)about Wmart and their business practices. I’ll try digging it up opn their web site.

Here is an article I found similar to the program I watched. The program was a bit more dramatic, but still good. I would read the whole article, its pretty interesting.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

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If you like to support the chinese economy there is nothing wrong with Walmart

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Dude, if it were not for the Chinese, we would not have the standard of living we enjoy today. Everything (including those fishing rods, reels, lures that ALL come from China) would cost so much we could only afford a small fraction of the conveniences we enjoy today.

The world is a much bigger, complex place than the simple generalizations being thrown around in this thread.

I buy everything from the local guys now. Being a small business owner I buy almost everything from the local bait shop unless they don’t carry it.
Blue Ribbon Bait shop is my favorite.

I don’t even shop at wally world anyways tried to buy a box of ammo 1 year back and it took me one hour to get someone who would walk me up to the counter so I could buy it.

Levi’s @ WallyWorld

But as Wal-Mart has grown in market reach and clout, even manufacturers known for nurturing premium brands may find themselves overpowered. This July, in a mating that had the relieved air of lovers who had too long resisted embracing, Levi Strauss rolled blue jeans into every Wal-Mart doorway in the United States: 2,864 stores. Wal-Mart, seeking to expand its clothing business with more fashionable brands, promoted the clothes on its in-store TV network and with banners slipped over the security-tag detectors at exit doors.

Levi’s launch into Wal-Mart came the same summer the clothes maker celebrated its 150th birthday. For a century and a half, one of the most recognizable names in American commerce had survived without Wal-Mart. But in October 2002, when Levi Strauss and Wal-Mart announced their engagement, Levi was shrinking rapidly. The pressure on Levi goes back 25 years–well before Wal-Mart was an influence. Between 1981 and 1990, Levi closed 58 U.S. manufacturing plants, sending 25% of its sewing overseas.

Sales for Levi peaked in 1996 at $7.1 billion. By last year, they had spiraled down six years in a row, to $4.1 billion; through the first six months of 2003, sales dropped another 3%. This one account–selling jeans to Wal-Mart–could almost instantly revive Levi.

Last year, Wal-Mart sold more clothing than any other retailer in the country. It also sold more pairs of jeans than any other store. Wal-Mart’s own inexpensive house brand of jeans, Faded Glory, is estimated to do $3 billion in sales a year, a house brand nearly the size of Levi Strauss. Perhaps most revealing in terms of Levi’s strategic blunders: In 2002, half the jeans sold in the United States cost less than $20 a pair. That same year, Levi didn’t offer jeans for less than $30.

For much of the last decade, Levi couldn’t have qualified to sell to Wal-Mart. Its computer systems were antiquated, and it was notorious for delivering clothes late to retailers. Levi admitted its on-time delivery rate was 65%. When it announced the deal with Wal-Mart last year, one fashion-industry analyst bluntly predicted Levi would simply fail to deliver the jeans.

But Levi Strauss has taken to the Wal-Mart Way with the intensity of a near-death religious conversion–and Levi’s executives were happy to talk about their experience getting ready to sell at Wal-Mart. One hundred people at Levi’s headquarters are devoted to the new business; another 12 have set up in an office in Bentonville, near Wal-Mart’s headquarters, where the company has hired a respected veteran Wal-Mart sales account manager.

Getting ready for Wal-Mart has been like putting Levi on the Atkins diet. It has helped everything–customer focus, inventory management, speed to market. It has even helped other retailers that buy Levis, because Wal-Mart has forced the company to replenish stores within two days instead of Levi’s previous five-day cycle.

And so, Wal-Mart might rescue Levi Strauss. Except for one thing.

Levi didn’t actually have any clothes it could sell at Wal-Mart. Everything was too expensive. It had to develop a fresh line for mass retailers: the Levi Strauss Signature brand, featuring Levi Strauss’s name on the back of the jeans.

Two months after the launch, Levi basked in the honeymoon glow. Overall sales, after falling for the first six months of 2003, rose 6% in the third quarter; profits in the summer quarter nearly doubled. All, Levi’s CEO said, because of Signature.

“They are all very rational people. And they had a good point. Everyone was willing to pay more for a Master Lock. But how much more can they justify?” But the low-end business isn’t a business Levi is known for, or one it had been particularly interested in. It’s also a business in which Levi will find itself competing with lean, experienced players such as VF and Faded Glory. Levi’s makeover might so improve its performance with its non-Wal-Mart suppliers that its established business will thrive, too. It is just as likely that any gains will be offset by the competitive pressures already dissolving Levi’s premium brands, and by the cannibalization of its own sales. “It’s hard to see how this relationship will boost Levi’s higher-end business,” says Paul Farris, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. “It’s easy to see how this will hurt the higher-end business.”

If Levi clothing is a runaway hit at Wal-Mart, that may indeed rescue Levi as a business. But what will have been rescued? The Signature line–it includes clothing for girls, boys, men, and women–is an odd departure for a company whose brand has long been an American icon. Some of the jeans have the look, the fingertip feel, of pricier Levis. But much of the clothing has the look and feel it must have, given its price (around $23 for adult pants): cheap. Cheap and disappointing to find labeled with Levi Strauss’s name. And just five days before the cheery profit news, Levi had another announcement: It is closing its last two U.S. factories, both in San Antonio, and laying off more than 2,500 workers, or 21% of its workforce. A company that 22 years ago had 60 clothing plants in the United States–and that was known as one of the most socially reponsible corporations on the planet–will, by 2004, not make any clothes at all. It will just import them.

In the end, of course, it is we as shoppers who have the power, and who have given that power to Wal-Mart. Part of Wal-Mart’s dominance, part of its insight, and part of its arrogance, is that it presumes to speak for American shoppers.

If Wal-Mart doesn’t like the pricing on something, says Andrew Whitman, who helped service Wal-Mart for years when he worked at General Foods and Kraft, they simply say, “At that price we no longer think it’s a good value to our shopper. Therefore, we don’t think we should carry it.”

Wal-Mart has also lulled shoppers into ignoring the difference between the price of something and the cost. Its unending focus on price underscores something that Americans are only starting to realize about globalization: Ever-cheaper prices have consequences. Says Steve Dobbins, president of thread maker Carolina Mills: “We want clean air, clear water, good living conditions, the best health care in the world–yet we aren’t willing to pay for anything manufactured under those restrictions.”

I did see that show on public TV, it shook me, transformed me, I will not step into Wally world again. To each their own, this is my choice. The last quarter of the show focused on the last T.V. manufacturer (us) RCA? can’t recall the name for sure, but how Wally needed a certain price point on their T.V.’s. They approaced RCA and told them to start producing cheep T.V.’s at “x” price and they would have some self space for them. As it turns out, there were no American suppliers selling just the glass for the screen at the price Wally wanted for the entire set. Long story, but The plant was closed, jobs shipped over seas, The high wage earners left town, the factory is vacant, and Wally just built a Supercenter across the street. Now some of the factory workers are stocking shelves for 25% of what they had been earning, for the company who put them out on the streets to begin with. Wally’s manufacturing starts way into China and other third world countries, good for them, bad for the “sweat shop” workers, keeps us happy because we don’t have pay $20 more for a TV.

How in the world is that Walmarts fault? RCA failed to keep up and went belly up.

And on the Levi story. Sounds like Walmart turned that company around. How can that be a bad thing?

People need a better understanding of the US economy and how it interacts with the world economy. Ignore it? Nope, not going away and I would suggest that companies who do ignore facts will be dust in the wind inside 10 years from now. That big and small companies alike.

-J.

I don’t have the time to read all the posts so maybe this is redundant but when it comes to China, do you guys realize how much American business you’re still supporting? China does tons of assembly, thus “Made in China”, but most of the parts their putting together is all stuff manufactured here at home!

As Americans, most of whom exist financially in the 8% richest people in the world income bracket (all you need is a house and a car to qualify this catagory, no matter the value), we have adopted this posh, self-deserved, “standard” of living. What the heck is that all about? Think about it, let’s continue.

We have immigrants and the elderly doing most of our manual labor because we want “better lives” and to achieve this, American Industry can’t afford American labor so they must depend on who is willing to do it. We, as Americans, cannot even meet our own manual labor demands yet we waste no time bashing anyone trying to keep their businesses alive by using foreign avenues! Wake up!

It’s not just mom and pop shops closing. Many big businesses are struggling to stay alive as well. And if you read the business section of the paper, you’ll find that many of those businesses have no connection to anything WalMart is doing. You know, WalMart was once a mom and pop shop too. Business is ever changing and ever competitive. If you’re not prepared to play big, you may not be able to play at all, and it’s mostly on the shoulders of the “American Standard of Living.”

I don’t agree with recent WalMart ethics but they’ve got investors and executive boards and a large group of extremely wealthy people to keep happy. This is job one because it’s the bottom line of commerce…….. profits. It’s the math. The print. The graph. All of which do not take much time, if any, to consider real life circumstance. If it helps the bottom line, these people who create retail employment and affordable commerce are going to do it.

If you don’t like ’em, don’t support ’em. But you’re still affecting American business and American economics in doing so. The bigger picture is that global economics have caught up to us and are now in a position to beat us at our own game.

Ever bought a pair of Levi’s lately? They are soo cheap! not like the ones 5-6 years ago. Split mine first time I stepped off the bumber of my truck, I even went one size larger! Regarding the TV manufacturer, they now opperate in another country, there now is only one US TV assembly plant left. We have become content here, we have the standard of living which puts those manufacturing nations to waste. I could only imagine working for $’s a day so someone can purchase a cheaper product. You are right, the global economy is more powerful than that of the US, just look at our trade deficit, not shrinking is it? Kind of scary when you see what natural resources the Chinese are destroying, the amount of energy consumption, and at their current growth, all natural resources in the World used for buildings will be used up. Yes the world. Look how the markets reacted yesterday when China’s markets adjusted. So you might be right when you talk about price being the main driver in our economy, and the world economy, but it comes at a huge price.

It’s been 5 years since I have ever made a purchase at a Wal-Mart and life has been just fine for me. Even if they have the “good deals” I will pay more at the local dealer or sports shop. Belive me there is life after Wal-Mart. Just try it, you will be happy.

Wal-Mart

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And on the Levi story. Sounds like Walmart turned that company around. How can that be a bad thing?

People need a better understanding of the US economy and how it interacts with the world economy. Ignore it? Nope, not going away and I would suggest that companies who do ignore facts will be dust in the wind inside 10 years from now. That big and small companies alike.

-J.

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Wmart did help Levis to cut the fat and get back on their feet financially, but at what cost? Thanks to Wmarts “low price law” They no longer manufacture a single pair of jeans in the US – after 150 years. Sure Levis sales were dipping, but look how the clothing trends change,(the jeans falling off your ) they would bounce back eventually. If Wmart would have agreed to sell the American made Levis at $27 a pair(Levi sold @ $30) instead of the $23 they demanded, the jeans would more than likely still be made here in the US(at least some). Other than a few suit & tie jobs, they don’t employ anyone in the US anymore.

I have no opinion on WalMart or Levi’s, I just seen Gary was asking about what happened with Levi’s. I go to WalMart about once a year, because I get caught on a shopping trip with the wife. She goes there maybe once a month, for household stuff mostly, no food or clothes. Everything I need is at Mills, Gander, Cabelas, or the real job killer, the internet. I get my clothes at Kohls, in fact, picked up 2 pairs of Levi’s last month for I think $32 a pair, which I thought was a bargain.

big g

when you are the tallest tree in the forest everyone is trying to chop you down.. i have worked for the retail giant for 13 years in the transportation dept and can tell all of you i couldnt be happier.im glad everyone has their own opinion on walmart.i have read all these posts and laughed at some and gritted my teeth at others.i think you need to look past all the entry level jobs at the stores,which is a small % of all the employees the company has because quite frankly there are some excellent paying jobs with this company,ive been in transportation 25 years and never had a better job….. and thats all im going to say about that ..have a great day!!!

Not wanting to get everyone fired up again but I don’t think this is a walmart problem at all. I work for a union who bashes walmart all the time for sending jobs overseas then see them buying foriegn things. As citizens maybe we should be looking for more american made things because they are not always more expensive as people think. For example the auto parts store I go into I always ask for the American made parts, one day when buying brake shoes the clerk told me that USA would probably be alot more I said I didn’t care, he looked them up and they were actually about 5 dollars cheaper. Another salesman at a tool fair here at work told me after asking him if the wrenches he was selling were made in america that no they were made in taiwan as pretty much every wrench today is. Well that lit a fire under me I told him do you want me to start naming american made wrenches and did, craftsman, snapon, mac, armstrong, proto, S&K, Martin, cornwell, bonney, wright. I think I irked him a little but oh well as americans we shouldn’t just be so easy to accept that everything is made in taiwan. Once again I’m not against walmart or the people who work there they are doing what they have to, i believe its us as purchasers who are to blame.

Sorry I’ll get of the box now.