Poll: Would You Support Or Oppose Walmart Express Stores In The City Of St. Louis?
Retail giant Walmart is looking to reverse declining sales by opening smaller, more convenient, stores:
Express stores are less than one-tenth the size of Wal-Mart supercenters and offer groceries, general merchandise like tools, and pharmacies. Neighborhood Markets are more than twice the size of Express stores and offer perishable food, household supplies and beauty aids as well as a pharmacy. (USAtoday.com)
The new Walmart Express format is just under 15,000 square feet in size, a fraction of Walmart’s other formats:
- Supercenter: 185,000 square feet
- Discount stores: 108,000 square feet
- Neighborhood Markets: 42,000 square feet (source)
Their Neighborhood Markets format is a grocery store, not seen in St. Louis but already dominant in some markets, like Oklahoma City. The Walmart Express will give other retailers strong competition:
Dollar-store chains have expanded quickly in recent years and pose intense competition to Walmart. They open stores closer to customers’ homes, a big advantage in times of high gas prices. According to a Credit Suisse analyst, the average round-trip to a dollar store is six miles vs. 30 miles for a typical Walmart trip. These stores have enjoyed strong revenue growth as they’ve lured more shoppers with bargain prices and wider selections. (source)
My concern is these national retailers with generic store designs will continue buying up every corner they can, making our city less urban every year, rather than more urban.
The poll this week wants your reaction to the idea of Walmart Express stores popping up in our neighborhoods near Family Dollar and Walgreens locations. The poll is the right sidebar, mobile users switch to the full site to vote.
— Steve Patterson
If you don’t like a store’s policies, or what its management chooses to support or not support, you have a vote, just like every other customer – JUST DON’T SHOP THERE! It doesn’t matter if it’s Walmart, Chick-fil-a, Domino’s, Trader Joe’s or A-B, all they want is your money! If you and everyone else don’t show up, guess what, they won’t stick around very long! The reason mom-and-pop stores “lose” business when Walmart comes to town is that their customers CHOOSE to shop somewhere else. It doesn’t matter if it’s individual stores or whole chains (Borders, Venture, Saturn, Mercury, Oldsmobile), if you don’t make a profit, you don’t survive, the customer is king. And, low prices are just one part of the equation, merchandise quality, customer service, and being able to find stuff quickly are all part of the overall shopping experience. Blaming your competitors (because they’re better at “playing the game”) ignores the reality that you simply haven’t been meeting your customers’ needs!
As for your design concerns, many dollar stores, unlike big box chains, are the hermit crabs of retail – they occupy vacant, older spaces, many times in older, obsolete grocery stores or fading strip centers. I’d expect the Walmart Express stores to follow a similar format – standard, corporate signage on an existing commercial structure combined with standard corporate detailing on the inside. (And, from a design standpoint, the Dollar Tree at River Des Peres and Morgan Ford is actually not badly done, building on its mid-century modern roots.) While these structures themselves aren’t paradigms of urban design, they have both been parts of their neighborhoods for decades and their parking lots are much smaller and manageable than most newer, bigger boxes. It boils down to balancing economic realities, green design and providing enough parking.
The idea that “If you don’t like a store’s policies, or what its management chooses to support or not support, you have a vote, just like every other customer – JUST DON’T SHOP THERE!” does not acknowledge a lot of things. Not everyone has the choice. Whether its about the prices (Walmart is cheap!), or about the location (they’re everywhere!), some people have to shop where they shop. They don’t have the privilege or option to “shop around” where they use the best practices or treat their workers the kindest. I am not trying to discount anything you are saying about how the economy works and the fact that they could not survive without customers, but the idea that everyone has a choice is leaving out many that do not.
Walmart is not “everywhere”, especially in urban areas. And in many cases, Walmart has direct competitors less than a mile away, meaning that 99% of their customers DO have a choice, actually many choices. Look at the map of where Walmart is around the area – https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=walmart&fb=1&gl=us&hq=walmart&hnear=0x87d8b4a9faed8ef9:0xbe39eaca22bbe05b,St.+Louis,+MO&ei=8BZ8UNz5Ac7q2wWs4IHYBA&sqi=2&ved=0CK0BEMgT – every location is near a Target and a Walgreen’s, and not very far from one or more major supermarkets. If you can make it to Wally World, you can make it next door (Kirkwood) or across the street (Gravois Bluffs) to Target. If you have (access to) a car, you have many choices. If you don’t, and you rely on walking or the bus, then yes, you have fewer choices, but I’m guessing that Walmart won’t be one of them; Walgreens or the gas station mini-mart will be more the universe you’re stuck with (and yes, that’s not great).
Steve…sometimes I look at your polls and don’t like the language you use as it could be ‘leading’, but in Walmart’s case….Opposed, Walmart is a horrible company is RIGHT ON. NO NO NO NO I will not support Walmart.
And JZ…while what you post is true in most circumstances regarding retail, the BIG difference between Walmart is their bullying techniques on producers..produce your product this way, package it this way, and sell it to us at this price or we will not put it in our stores. THAT kind of power and minipulation the mom &pop stores and even larger chains such as Schunck’s do not have. Walmart has warped this basic supply and demand.
And one last sad commentary….I pity individuals who go to Walmart because of their ‘low prices’, but then complain that America has no jobs and our economy is in the toilet. And I’m not even going to touch the fact that Walmart has more employees on their payroll that also recieve state aid of some type because they are paid less than a living wage or less than full time.
Walmart can only “bully” because they have the customers, many, many of them. Sam Walton started, like many other entreprenuers, with a single store in northwestern Arkansas, and grew it into the behemouth we see today. What did he do that was so different? Anyone that is a big customer of their suppliers is going to get special consideration, not just the evil Walmart. (And no, I’m no big fan of shopping there, I just have a big problem with “government” trying to decide these outcomes. If I don’t shop there and you don’t shop there and most of our friends don’t shop there, who does?) The biggest problem I see is that Walmart has become very, very adept at “playing” local governments to fund their expansion plans. If Walmart Express comes in and rents existing, vacant, storefronts without any TIF’s or other special government assistance, what’s the problem? They can succeed or fail just like Dollar Tree or Family Dollar or Save-A-Lot. The real problem is that a new retailer comes to town, gets a subsidized new facility, while all the existing businesses get absolutely no help, the precise definition of an uneven playing field. And that’s why I respect what the Crestwood City Council did last week, in considering the redevelopment proposal for he Crestwood Mall.
What did he do? He died.
Then the family decided to go public and the greed of mutual funds took over…always chasing the profit instead of balancing profit. While I agree that most Tiffs are not needed, what Crestwood did was stupid. But back to Walmart…they do not give the suppliers ‘special’ consideration…they bully the suppliers. And since they are the biggest market, the supplier has no choice. And comparing them to Dollar Tree and the like is like comparing apples and oranges.
Too big to fail? Heck, Walmart is too big and should fail. It will do a lot more good for all of us.
Does Walmart “bully” their suppliers? I have no doubt that they do. But it’s a two-way street, and any of their suppliers can choose not to do business with them, if the terms are too onerous. (How many Coach bags or Apple computers do you see them selling?) The same goes for any customer. “We” expect the lowest price available, wait for sales, shop the brick-and-mortar stores, then buy online to save a few bucks. No supplier (in their right mind) is going to enter into a money-losing contract, with any company, if they expect to stay in business for very long. It’s a choice, no retailer is going to tell a vendor, (and no customer is going to tell a retailer) “Hey, your prices are too low, we’re going to pay you 10% more”. It’s up to the vendor to decide if taking less profit on each item, but selling more, makes sense. At some point it doesn’t/won’t, but it should be left up to the vendor to decide, not the government.
The bigger issue, as a consumer, is that many local, non-Walmart stores are little better than the evil Walmart, on the basics of retailing. I’ve been in local auto parts stores where the customer service sucked, my local pharmacy has inconvenient hours and tough parking and my local hardware stores don’t have nearly the selection as Home Depot or Lowe’s (price is not the issue at any of these). Comparing Walmart (Express) to Dollar Tree is exactly the point of this post and this week’s poll. You seem to view profit as some bad thing, I don’t. And I’m not quite sure what you mean by “balancing profit”. Walmart, KMart and Target play in the same pool, sell the same stuff from China and pay their workers the same poor wages, yet only Walmart ends up vilified and made the poster child of everything that’s wrong with retailing.
I’ll repeat, if you don’t shop there and I rarely shop there and none of our friends and relatives (admit to) shop(ping) there, how in the hell does Walmart stay in business, much less continue to expand?! And if the local businesses are doing such a great job on customer service, and we’re spending nearly all of our hard-earned money there, why are they struggling? Retail is Darwinian – look at Famous-Barr, Woolworth’s, Venture, Hollywood Video and Border’s, to name a few. IF Walmart is destined to fail, if their customers find better options, trust me, they will fail. But if they continue to keep their finger on the pulse of the consumer, they’ll continue to exist. They may get bigger, they may get smaller, but like any other business, they need to make a profit to stay in business, and the only way to do that in retail is to keep the customers coming back for more!
And just like electing politicians that will work against their interests, people will shop at Walmart. No, Walmart does not tell the supplier to move overseas, they just make sure that arrows and neon signs are pointing the way. Compare Costco and Sams….one pays decent wages, one doesnt. Compare Target and Walmart…one pays decent wages and benefits, one doesnt.
There was a time when Walmart meant Made In America, and Sam Walton would never sell something from overseas even if that meant a higher price for an American-made product. I am not against profit by any means, I am in management and know the ins and outs of a balance sheet, but there is a way to balance profit with social good (decent pay, benefits, suppliers, etc). I just choose not to put profit as the end-all, do-all.
I’ll give you that at the end of the day the customer does decide who succeeds and who doens’t, but it doens’t mean the customer is smart. And we are all guilty of wanting more and wanting cheaper…a deadly combination.
Good reading material for the topic:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/10/what-urban-big-box-store-should-look/3578/
http://investorplace.com/2012/07/big-box-retailers-take-to-the-city/
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/16156/are-urban-big-box-stores-good-or-bad/
If we should oppose Walmart, it is because of their employment policies.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/29/1113871/-Walmart-abuses-aren-t-just-a-problem-for-workers-They-re-a-problem-for-the-rule-of-law
“My concern is these national retailers with generic store designs
will continue buying up every corner they can, making our city less
urban every year, rather than more urban.”
What’s wrong with generic? I don’t think you would object if every building in the city were 4 stories high, brick faced, with ground level retail and housing above it. The long blank walls that these stores typically have are non-urban, but they don’t have to be built that way…