They Are Guessing
Walmart shuts 269 stores worldwide:
On Friday, Walmart announced it will close 269 stores globally as it struggles to compete with online retailers like Amazon.
The news came as US retail figures showed lower than expected holiday sales figures across the market.
Sales rose just 3% in November and December, falling short of the expected 3.7% growth according to the National Retail Federation.
The Walmart closures will affect 10,000 US workers and 16,000 worldwide.
All of the casinos (stocks, bonds, commodities) are dropping like bricks, and the ‘economics pundits’ continue to claim that they have reached bottom and will be climbing shortly.
Chinese banks have a load of uncollectable debt caused by over-building real estate, which has stopped, causing greatly diminished demand for commodities.
The big problem is how the talking heads are going to convince people that they might know what’s going on…
6 comments
Uhm, the 269 stores are the failed “Walmart Marketplace” concept stores, which are about the size of a Walgreens drugstore and struggled to find a business model that would actually make them competitive in any sector at all, since they lacked the size to stock the large inventory of a traditional Walmart but lacked the ability to specialize that a place like Walgreens has. They might have managed to make it work if they’d turned those stores into Dollar General clones, but the stores were located in the wrong places for that — they would have had to place the stores into depressed areas rather than into strip malls in middle class suburbs, which is where they put them.
Basically what this proves is not that the economy is in the dumps, but, rather, that Walmart occasionally f**ks up with the wrong stores in the wrong places — and with their deep pockets, it takes them a long time and a *lot* of money to realize they f**ked up and pull the plug.
I didn’t know that MalWart had anything other than the ‘Super-sized Store’ that the tenant who works there notes has less diversity than the original stores. I know their pet food aisle doesn’t have the diversity of my local Publix supermarket which is the smallest store they have in the area. Publix even has a cooler in the pet aisle for fresh gourmet pet food.
The original WalMart [Sam was still in charge] had more variety in a smaller footprint, albeit without the food section.
Don’t knock big-box stores selling groceries, Bryan. I often buy groceries at a local Target, and I’ve long since switched all my prescriptions to their pharmacy, and have been pleased with both that pharmacy’s product and their staff’s attitude. Indeed, when I go to Target, I tell Stella that I’m going for some FDA. What? Oh… for some food and drug administration; that’s what I buy there!
In fairness, Target has always been a more customer-friendly business than MalWart. I’ve given up on the latter well more than a decade ago, ever since they burned some night employees (literally burned them up, not a figure of speech) by locking their doors against being open from the inside.
I have nothing against Target, but it isn’t very convenient for me down here. They have some nice things but I go for specific items because it isn’t on the way to anywhere I want to go. I don’t object to stores stocking whatever they want, except when they expand to the point they need driving lanes instead of aisles.
I have a Target across the street from me, but they definitely are more of a soft goods / woman type store. They’re a nice place to buy cookware or towels (or women’s handbags) but they don’t have any real sporting goods, tool, or automotive sections like Walmart does. So I end up making the 10 mile trek to the nearest Walmart when I need motor oil, because the automotive stores mark up a $21 5-quart jug of oil to $42. Uhm, no.
The biggest problem with our local Walmarts is that they are a mess because they don’t hire enough workers to keep the inventory properly shelved. I realize that the Walmartians picking things up and leaving them at random places doesn’t help, but that’s a problem all stores have (albeit Walmartians — the peculiar denizens of Walmart made famous by the “People of Walmart” blog — take it to a higher level due to their lower IQ) and they manage. All in all, I think Walmart is not being very well managed right now, Bentonville seems either oblivious to the problems on the ground or don’t care, either of which should be sending “sell” signals to anybody who owns Walmart stock.
I take some people to MalWart for bulk cat food purchases, but you can only go on certain days of the week in the afternoon if you expect to actually find what you want. My Mother was in retail for more than 40 years and she would get upset by the lack of stocking on the shelves.