I stopped shopping at Walmart

I stopped shopping at Walmart and got a Costco membership just because of Walmart's business practices.

I for one wish Costco didn't have people "demonstrating" products. They choke up the aisles and make it more difficult to shop. Are the PWD employees organized? Perhaps they need a union.

Mythology: BIG vs SMALL

I think the public is far too brainwashed re Big Box stores overall.

When Home Depot came into the BC market, there was a kneejerk response to shop there due to the perception of low prices. This may have been true at the beginning.

A colleague told me that these Big Box Stores have a pricing method, whereby they lowball and perhaps justify this "Low Price" perception...then slowly ratchet up the prices.

I tended to ignore a small building supply company which I used to patronize, as it was one of the larger stores prior to Home Depot opening .

I was looking for a specific item once and found the option at a Big Box store to be costly and of rather dubious quality. I went to the small store , and found a higher quality option and also cheaper. I tend to shop there much more now, having compared prices, and my colleague was right...if one shops and compares once the Big Box stores are in existence for a while.

The little guy survives, obviously because they CAN be competitive. The small building supply owner once said that apparently relatively smaller businesses like his sustain about a 30 % drop in business when these Big Box stores first open...but obviously that is part of the strategy in the short term but often not the case in the long term.

Caveat Emptor, " buyer beware " , as per usual.

Familiar but useful

This article is quite reminiscent of a similar piece done for Slate in 2004:

http://www.slate.com/id/2104988/

The message though is interesting -- that corporate America (or, Amerikkka, in tribute to Coyote) is not a monolith -- that employees can be treated relatively well by a successful business that simply chooses to do well by them.

PWD is non union

Perhaps PWD employees do need a union. Funny thing is Costco has no union. Costco has said they will treat some employees one way and accept the exploitation of contract employees.

As far as not likeling these people in the store because they block ailses, you should know that products that are demonstrated reflect in way higher sales for Costcoi, thats why they do it.

let me tell you a story about Costco....

A few years ago, a local Costco was selling carpets labelled made with "Legal Child Labour".

When I questioned the staff as what constitutes 'legal child labour", a manager came over and refused to answer the question. Finally, as others were listening, I was asked to leave the store.

Needless to say I have never been back and encourage other not to shop at Costco.

Costco enourages irresponsible consumerism. Their products are overpackaged and the so called bargins encourage people to buy things they had no intention on buying when they came into the store.

Costco's tend to be very had to get to if you don't have a car and the parking lots take up acres of land.

These so called bargains at Costco are at the expense of the environment and the product of exploitive labour practices.

southdeltawalker you have my backing

southdeltawalker, you have my backing ,I or my wife, have never been to Costco, or have ever received merchandise from them.

Two different animals

I must confess to being both a Costco and a Wal-Mart shoppper. The business models for the typical Costco and Wal-Mart store (not including Sams Club) are fundamentally different, so you can't really compare the two.

It's well documented that Costco's "target customer" is a middle-aged male with an annual income over $75,000. They're the ones who can drop $500 on a Saturday afternoon simply by pushing the buggy around the store.

Wal-Mart's target customer makes less than $30,000 per year and is female. She may not even have a bank account. She is time-streched and very price concious. She doesn't necessarily have lots of cupboard space that you need to store a Costco splurge.

I am neither of those two customers, but I do appreciate the values and customer choice that both those companies bring to consumers. Wal-Mart, for example, is responsible for *lowering* the cost of living for millions of low-income consumers -- the ones who really care about the price of everything. They do not have the luxury of shopping in expensive, quaint local hardware stores.

Finally, Wal-Mart did not become the most successful retailer in Canada (with a 55% market share) simply because they're big and can buy cheaply. The became big by giving customers the value they want and will pay for. And that, dear Tyee readers, is the beauty of the free market system. Freedom of choice.

Choose to shop there. Or choose not to. What a great freedom to have.

PS -- I hear that Costco's new downtown Vancouver store is a big flop. Apparently they never bothered to find out that Yaletown apartments can't fit anything that Costco sells. Nobody in Yaletown would ever want to buy 20 lbs of pickles, anyway.

"Pig stain on your fat chin."

If Wal-Mart's a pig - then Costco's a pig wearing lipstick. Witness my splendour...

Hark!

Joy!

Keftedes!

What's the next attraction on the Costco "tunnel-of-love" ride at PR Berry Farm? Perhaps Lupé will be sent back to Mexico.

Hark!

Joy!

Build the wall higher!

Evil isn't a relative concept. Wal-Mart's corporate practices are irrelevant. Costco's knowingly exploiting a psychopathic, suicidal, and immoral system for the benefit of several priviledged individuals. All of this, at the expense of countless employees (more accurately, slaves). But wait, they make more than Wal-Mart's slaves?

Hark!

Joy!

Oink!

Costco's a stain on America's fat chin. A pig blindly consuming, hoarding, and growing without moral code or foresight.

Call me when the pig learns to fly.

And Wal-Mart is evil enough for me

-without even factoring Costco into the mix.

Wal-mart really lowers the cost of living of all the small family firms across the country who've been put out of business by their rapacious practices I guess. You should do a little study of what happens to communities when the Waltons come to town

Nice you appreciate the bargains and the choice though.

Got any thoughts about Wal-Mart's hiring and promotion policies? The role of women, for example...or prospective unions? Or don't those choices count?

Nice folks you patronize martin. Enjoy those prices! And don't worry at all about the folks who bring them to you

If you factor Walmart out of the mix

Just who is going to get hurt the most? Probably the less well-off people who can't afford the prices at the next retail level. I would venture to guess that more of them would be suffering financial hardship than all the people in the small family firms that get put out of business. Oddly enough though there are still lots of small family firms around.

There are a lot of suppliers around that just won't deal with Walmart any more because of the way they get treated. They are still in business though. Seems to me that a certain Swedish company uses similar tactics on it's suppliers. The suppliers who do get into trouble are the ones that put all their eggs in one basket.

I'm not a fan of Costco or Walmart but they do serve market niches that others don't, cost conscious people who are constantly in search of bargains if not quality.

If it wasn't Walmart it would be Value Village.

55% is not a niche

Get Real

john tierney of the new york

john tierney of the new york times contends that wal-mart should win a nobel prize for helping to reduce poverty in developing nations. in the honduras, for example 'the average apparel worker makes US13$/day (at a wal-mart supplier)while half the country's population makes less than $2/day.

Home depot pricing policy

Not long ago, I overheard the owner of an independent building supply company telling a friend about Home Depot's pricing strategy. Apparently, Home Depot moves into an area and prices aggressively until they meet a set target of market share. Then they start increasing prices. I overheard this fellow say he had to start raising prices to keep in line with HD.

i believe that. i just

i believe that. i just spent 3 years renovating my house and i can tell you there are no great deals at hd. they're competitive but not discount.

Wal Mart

John Tierney to the contrary, I think you should look at this Elliot (also from the New York Times)

March 25, 2006
The Factories of Lost Children
By KATHARINE WEBER
NINETY-FIVE years ago, March 25 also fell on a Saturday. At 4:40 p.m. on that sunny afternoon in 1911, only minutes before the end of the workday, a fire broke out on the eighth floor of the Asch Building, a block east of Washington Square in Manhattan.

The Triangle Waist Company occupied the top three floors of the 10-story building. There, some 600 workers were employed in the manufacture of ladies' shirtwaists, most of them teenage girls who spoke little English and were fresh off the boat from Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy. The fire, probably caused by a carelessly tossed match or cigarette butt (there were perhaps 100 men working at the Triangle), engulfed the premises in minutes.

The factory owners and the office staff on the 10th floor, all but one, escaped onto the roof and climbed to an adjacent building on Waverly Place. But on the eighth and ninth floors, the workers were trapped by a deadly combination of highly combustible materials, workrooms crowded by dense rows of table-mounted sewing machines, doors that were locked or opened inward, inadequate fire escapes, and the lack of any plan or instruction.

Before the first horse-drawn fire engines arrived at the scene, girls -- some holding hands, in twos and threes -- had already begun to jump from the windows. The hundred-foot drop to the cobbled street was not survivable. The firemen deployed their nets, but the force of gravity drove the bodies of the girls straight through to the pavement, and they died on impact.

The ladders on the fire trucks were raised quickly, but the New York City Fire Department of 1911 was not equipped to combat fires above six stories -- the limit of those ladders. The top floors of the Asch Building, a neo-Renaissance ''fireproof'' warehouse completed in 1901 in full compliance with building codes, burned relentlessly.

The workers trapped near the windows on the eighth and ninth floors made the fast and probably instinctive choice to jump instead of burning or suffocating in the smoke. The corpses of the jumpers, by some estimates as many as 70, could at least be identified. But the bodies of most of those who died inside the Triangle Waist Company -- trapped by the machinery, piled up on the wrong side of doors, heaped in the stairwells and elevator shafts -- were hideously charred, many beyond recognition.

Before 15 minutes had elapsed, some 140 workers had burned, fallen from the collapsing fire escapes, or jumped to their deaths. Several more, critically injured, died in the days that followed, putting the official death toll at 146.

But what happened to the children who were working at the Triangle Waist Company that afternoon?

By most contemporary accounts, it was common knowledge that children were usually on the premises. They were hidden from the occasional inspectors, but underage girls, as young as 9 or 10, worked in most New York garment factories, sewing buttons and trimming threads. Where were they on this particular Saturday afternoon?

There are no descriptions of children surviving the fire. Various lists of those who died 95 years ago today -- 140 named victims plus six who were never identified (were some of those charred remains children?) -- include one 11-year-old, two 14-year-olds, three 15-year-olds, 16 16- year-olds, and 14 17-year-olds. Were the ages of workers, living and dead, modified to finesse the habitual violation of child labor laws in 1911? How many children actually died that day? We will never know. And now 1911 is almost beyond living memory.

But we will also never know how many children were among the dead on May 10, 1993, in Thailand when the factory of the Kader Industrial Toy Company (a supplier to Hasbro and Fisher-Price) went up in flames. Most of the 188 workers who died were described as teenage girls.

We will never know with any certainty how many children died on Nov. 25, 2000, in a fire at the Chowdhury Knitwear and Garment factory near Dhaka, Bangladesh (most of the garments made in Bangladesh are contracted by American retailers, including Wal-Mart and the Gap), where at least 10 of the 52 trapped in the flames by locked doors and windows were 10 to 14 years old.

And we will never know how many children died just last month, on Feb. 23, in the KTS Composite Textile factory fire in Chittagong, Bangladesh. The official death toll has climbed into the 50's, but other sources report that at least 84 workers lost their lives. It's a familiar story: crowded and unsafe conditions, locked exits, hundreds of undocumented female workers as young as 12, a deadly fire. There may never be another tragic factory fire in America that takes the lives of children. We don't lock them into sweatshops any more. There are child labor laws, fire codes.

But as long as we don't question the source of the inexpensive clothing we wear, as long as we don't wonder about the children in those third world factories who make the inexpensive toys we buy for our own children, those fires will occur and young girls and boys will continue to die. They won't die because of natural catastrophes like monsoons and earthquakes; they will die because it has become our national habit to outsource, and these days we outsource our tragedies, too.

and this too:

http://www.asdawatch.org/docs/issues_suppliers.pdf

A big niche then

Alcibiades

I don't think its 55% locally. That's not to say it won't be at some point.

Who Cares?

I was responding to Martin, who wrote this:

and someone else who said Wal-Mart was a niche marketer.

Clear enough. I could care less whether its 50 or 55%; Wal-Mart is not a niche marketer and there’s nothing BEAUTIFUL about the way they do business, or the way they treat their suppliers and their employees.

Actually it is.

Niche marketing has nothing to do with size. You can argue otherwise but the definition still fits.

Baloney

A niche market is a focused, targetable portion (subset) of a market sector.

By definition, then, a business that focuses on a niche market is addressing a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers. A niche market may be thought of as a narrowly defined group of potential customers.

A distinct niche market usually evolves out of a market niche, where potential demand is not met by any supply.

Such ventures are profitable because of disinterest on the part of large businesses and/or lack of awareness on the part of other small companies. The key to capitalizing on a niche market is to find or develop a market niche that has customers who are accessible, that is growing fast enough, and that is not owned by one established vendor already.

I still think it applies.

So what's your point. You can have small subsets and large subsets. Walmart has a specific target market. Niche still applies if you are using only the target and not the size of the target. They are different.

I like them!

"As far as not likeling these people in the store because they block ailses, you should know that products that are demonstrated reflect in way higher sales for Costcoi, thats why they do it."

I never said I didn't like them. They are great people I am sure. I just don't like how they are positioned to create a "choke" point in the aisles. Most of the time, you can't get by easily. Although they may increase sales for Costco, this particular customer doesn't like it. I, personally, have never tried the products they are "demonstrating."

Regardless of how organized the Costco employees are, it seems the PWD employees need a union to fight for a better contract. I wonder how much Costco is paying PWD for having them in the store? I would guess it is probably the same as many of those "security" firms that pay their employees $8-10 an hour and charge them out at $25.

double baloney

Wal-mart is not interested in a 'segment' of any market. It's interested in dominating the whole damn thing. If you knew anything about the firm you'd know they're also moving into banking. They are corporate monopolists - plain and simple. It has as its target the complete domination of the retail sector and the subjugation of employees to the status of serfs - whether they are contract employees in Asia or hourly wage slaves in Canada.

The fact a couple of Harvard economists have written facile treatises about how the employees in Asian sweat shops are better off because they get 17 cents an hour than they’d be on the street notwithstanding.

I'm not defending them.

G West

Why focus on silly semantics?

As in the real world what goes around comes around in the corporate world. Sooner or later they will have to change.

Why focus on semantics?

That's a question you should address yourself, snert. This all started with your comment about Wal-Mart serving market niches, remember?

The whole idea that Wal-Mart might be good for consumers and workers and communities is an important one. Wal-Mart and other big-box multinationals are sector killers, not sector savers.

Even the argument that the workers in a sweat-shop in Asia are better off with Wal-Mart as a major purchaser is nuts. The whole culture of sustainable agriculture in many of the same areas where foreign sponsored plantation cropping has forced locals to leave the land and migrate to the cities can't be ignored as the actual cause of dislocation. Spend a few hours researching the history of Indonesia and Malaysia, Micronesia and the Philippines and come back and tell me how, in the broader picture, catering to low-ball consumerism in the First world really helps anyone.

It's a tiny band-aid over a festering sore.

As a minister from the government of China said in the media a month or so ago, look at the balance sheets of the same multi-nationals who are 'really' profiting from cheap exploitative practices on both sides of the Pacific.

For some member of the Walton family to suggest that he's bringing positive revolutionary change to the people of wherever his purchasing policies have now moved his buying decisions is willful blindness.

Niche indeed. Let Wal-Mart settle with the women employees they've been taking advantage of for decades, as the US Courts have recently affirmed, then call me and we'll talk. Let them actually set up decent health-care plans for staff instead of fighting those states, where legislators have tried to force them to do so, in Court.

Let them learn that corporate responsibility is about more than the return to shareholders.

Then we'll talk.

if you're a lefty you MUST

if you're a lefty you MUST despise wal-mart b/c they're the corporate boogeyman your marxist daddy warned you about when you were just a little tyke. might be time to grow up.

I'll ask the question again

G West

Why focus on silly semantics? Whether or not Walmart serves niche markets has absolutely nothing to do with what you are talking about. You are just using it as an excuse to go on some kind of rant. Why bother talking to you anyhow as you have a interesting habit of changing the topic to suite your agenda. OK, That should give you another open for a further tirade.

Your argument is not with Walmart in any event. Hereis where the problem lies. The US is the entity that spawned it and allows it to continue the way it does.

Why do I have to keep bringing this up?

If you think that posting something from Wikipedia makes any contribution to a debate about the role of corporate monopolizers like Wal-Mart or the effect of variable federal minimum-wage legislation in the United States you know even less than I would have thought from the evidence of your average post.

If you think that the United States is the originator of the colonial materialist principle that says it is justifiable behavior to rob one group of people (who also happen to be the majority of the world's population) of both their resources and their labour in order to prop up the wasteful lifestyles of a tiny demographic of people who happen to possess an artificial commodity called capital then I have a whole shelf of books for you to read.

If you think dealing with realities and facts is ranting, well, you really are living in a very protected atmosphere.

And while you're at it, you might want to look at how corporate lobbyists manage to keep the same politicians in power in the United States in about 80% of elections. And why, even when the party with the reins does change – not much of any substance actually improves.

Here's a clue:
It's not necessarily because those fellas are doing a good job for their constituents.

You are ranting

G West

At no point have I said I support Wal-Mart. So why are you trying to convince me that I am wrong?

You are also selectively dealing with "realities and facts".

Wal-Mart's existence does benefit a significant number of people all over the world. You choose to ignore that fact because it might weaken your own rant.

Sure it can do better. No argument there.

Duh! Maybe a link to minimum wage by States might show where they are from.

I disagree

You might want to check out the top story on the site to see some further discussion on the issue.

I'm not going to re-post a bunch of material here that's already in place on that thread.

Wal-Mart is bad for everyone except the Walton family and other Wal-Mart shareholders.

To suggest that desperate people are better off as slaves for Wal-Mart's suppliers than they'd be without them is the worst kind of utilitarian sophistry turned on its head. It's about the same thing as saying organized crime is better than free-lance crime, in my view.

Added to the fact that Wal-Mart now wants to get into banking, it's evident to me that they are trying to become the 21st century equivalent of the company store.

As in, “I owe my soul to the company store….St Peter don’t you call me………’cause I can’t go.
I owe my soul to the company store….”

Moreover, if you’re not supporting Wal-Mart and the concept of a dehumanizing globalization of manufacturing , supply and retail connections established for the maximum benefit of the bottom line then you certainly fooled me.

I like Walmart, and my wife's shop goes nose

I like Walmart. I appreciate the fact that I can get a deal on a number of things, and unlike Costco, I don't get gouged $50 or so dollars for the privilage.
But while Walmart may seem like the boogeyman to many retailers, what they really are is a huge stick that forces competition.
My wife owns a lingerie store and we giggle when we roll through Wally world because she is going nose to nose with Walmart and has superior product at equivilent or better prices.
We are fairly certain that many small shops are hosing their customers. And I won't patronize thievery thank you.
Costco is okay if you have a small store in a remote area, or a family of growing boys to try and keep in groceries, but for me and the missus, nope. Packaging is tooooo big for us thanks.
The problem is that people are basically stupid. There is an unwillingness to understand corporate psycology. Balloons and banners don't mean bargains. Car lots to Costco flaunt there glitz in different ways, but it amounts to the same thing. Flashy store and the lure of supposed saving drags the ignorant consumer in to be relieved of much needed money.
Oh, and Walmart getting into personal banking? YEEE HAWWWW!!! I can hardly wait. The big chartered banks are dens of thieves that need to be shut down. I my mind, like oil and gas companies, banks are bilking us in every way imaginable. Come on Wally Bank!

Freebc and snert

Good points...

The uber bottom-line is we have an over-indulgent society vs a spectrum of choices by which to indulge from if one chooses.

I see more signs on things left on street curbs ie "FREE" that one could furnish a house.Or Value Village ....or Thrift Shops as other options. Garage sales ?

Yes, I agree , the Biggest Uber - Retailers are not always the best deals, its always shop and compare. Loss leaders abound, but are made up by other products in the given store.

We ourselves are past the Costco craze....not due to ideology but simply reality. A basic lifestyle change and no longer a need to buy in bulk....no sense buying cases of something we can't use up in 5 years.

Wal Mart ? , no boycott here, but we are not big time shoppers there either..there are only certain basic items we access there.

Food? deals abound if you watch the flyers...Also Ethnic markets can blow the big boys out of the water re looowwww prices.

I think the little guy/gal can survive if they are reasonably competitive in price and offer good service. Take auto repair, how many actually go to the dealerships ...vs a small owner operated repair shop.

My Dad's family is in the U.S. NYC area. Small Ma and Pa businesses abound...no real room for the big boys.

Otherwise.. " Viva la Competition " !!!!