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glowing-fish posted:
I work in manufacturing. Walmart/Cabelas/Targets go to suppliers and squeezes them till they die. https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know Imagine this with everything Walmart sells, 0 margin just push product make it cheaper. Once your at that scale your hooked, your CEO makes every sacrifice it can to keep the volumes high, then Walmart asks for more, you make concessions on your products materials, then on your staffs labor, then your outsourcing, then your outsourcing again to even lower wage labor. It's brutal. If you value your companies soul don't sell at big-box.
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Dec 6, 2016 01:18
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I mean, nobody is really arguing that massive retailers are going away, but I think a good argument can be made for the death of the big box store and its subsequent replacement with small shopping corridors filled with boutique shops stocked with difficult-to-find-online and small run production goods. Additionally, the benefit to the local cities and communities (financially and socially) is as good or better than what that city would net from the high-volume sales tax revenue that goes along with snagging a big box store. The employment gains (in number) are also superior or equal to shopping corridors.
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Dec 6, 2016 02:50
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Weimar Germany was an early adopter of department stores. Guess who banned them because they were allegedly putting honorable rural merchants out of business?
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Dec 6, 2016 02:53
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Man, I sure do wish that the people that grow and raise our food, mine our energy, and transport our goods all exploded into bloodmist because they vote for people I don't like and love in places I think are boring. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 6, 2016 03:15
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El Mero Mero posted:I mean, nobody is really arguing that massive retailers are going away, but I think a good argument can be made for the death of the big box store and its subsequent replacement with small shopping corridors filled with boutique shops stocked with difficult-to-find-online and small run production goods. Assuming you have a ready supply of poncy rich fuckers to shop at the boutique shops and their absurd markups and you don't mind everyone who needed to go to the big store for basic goods doing without, sure.
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Dec 6, 2016 05:14
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Star Man posted:Man, I sure do wish that the people that grow and raise our food, mine our energy, and transport our goods all exploded into bloodmist because they vote for people I don't like and love in places I think are boring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDt-3V0x0XE Gail Wynand posted:Weimar Germany was an early adopter of department stores. Guess who banned them because they were allegedly putting honorable rural merchants out of business? lol
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Dec 6, 2016 06:05
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OwlFancier posted:Assuming you have a ready supply of poncy rich fuckers to shop at the boutique shops and their absurd markups and you don't mind everyone who needed to go to the big store for basic goods doing without, sure. The argument is that on-demand, internet delivery, and small-square-footage "essentials" chains will handle the basics (walgreens and target have been doing this) and the volume (dispensing the need for big boxes.) Those who needed to go to the big store for basic things will still get those basic things, probably from the same big store - they just won't go there. Pretty much every single bulk goods store and big box store has been rolling out a delivery service of some sort and the demand is such that even the firms that aren't doing that themselves are seeing online concierge services that do that for people (instacart/google express). Since nearly all online revenue (something like 90%) and sales taxes don't get returned to the municipality, cities will have look elsewhere for that revenue. El Mero Mero fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 06:08
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I know I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to consumer research but the big reason I never go to big box stores is if I walk in looking for something it's usually like one choice per price bracket. I can't go "$x is my budget let me find out who makes the best thing for $x" like I can online and then just order it. Instead of having a dozen options to compare it's pretty much whichever product they decided to stock at that quality/price bracket.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:25
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Since I already brought up Best Buy shrinking the hell out of their music and movie sections, keep in mind that's another issue with specialty stores too: If the market turns against their specialty, they're dead, and then there's an empty storefront and a product category that you can't buy anywhere. Big box stores tend to be a bit better-defended against that because they can adjust to market shifts (including introducing new product categories) by just changing their floorplan.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:45
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Star Man posted:Man, I sure do wish that the people that grow and raise our food, mine our energy, and transport our goods all exploded into bloodmist because they vote for people I don't like and love in places I think are boring.
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Dec 6, 2016 12:25
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Paradoxish posted:This isn't actually new, for what it's worth. I used to go into B&N to just sit down at the cafe and read over a decade ago. Sure, if you are willing to absolutely trust Amazon's product descriptions to be 100% accurate. Being able to browse, and see an item in person before purchasing it, is exceedingly handy. Especially for things like books, where you can easily be misled by reviews or cover blurbs, or clothes. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 13:05
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El Mero Mero posted:The argument is that on-demand, internet delivery, and small-square-footage "essentials" chains will handle the basics (walgreens and target have been doing this) and the volume (dispensing the need for big boxes.) Those who needed to go to the big store for basic things will still get those basic things, probably from the same big store - they just won't go there. Pretty much every single bulk goods store and big box store has been rolling out a delivery service of some sort and the demand is such that even the firms that aren't doing that themselves are seeing online concierge services that do that for people (instacart/google express). Won't Trump killing the internet put a stop to this?
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Dec 6, 2016 13:10
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I need more ways to gently caress with Walmart. I used to work there and disliked it enough that I will go out of my way to avoid shopping there, but now I'm wondering if there's more I can do. There's worse hobbies to have. Maybe something to help the employees unionize?
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Dec 6, 2016 16:52
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Rockopolis posted:Maybe something to help the employees unionize? That's a good way to get the store shut down and everyone fired. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/union-walmart-shut-5-stores-over-labor-activism/
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Dec 6, 2016 16:56
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Plinkey posted:That's a good way to get the store shut down and everyone fired. Worse comes to worse, another Walmart closes. Still counts as loving with Walmart, right?
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Dec 6, 2016 17:26
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Liquid Communism posted:Sure, if you are willing to absolutely trust Amazon's product descriptions to be 100% accurate. I will probably never pay bookstore prices for books again in my life, but I would definitely be wary of buying clothes online.
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Dec 6, 2016 18:02
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Liquid Communism posted:Sure, if you are willing to absolutely trust Amazon's product descriptions to be 100% accurate. I'm not sure that this argument works for books. You can easily make a chapter or two of an ebook available to try, and that's about as much information as you're going to get from just quickly skimming through something in the store. The point I was making was that I wasn't really a "good" B&N customer - I'd buy a coffee or two and basically treat the store like a library. Now I don't go into B&N at all, because I can just take my phone or iPad to a coffee shop and read there.
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Dec 6, 2016 18:07
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BarbarianElephant posted:"Now instead of giving your list to the grocer and chilling while he got your goods for you from the shelves behind him, you have to trail round this huge cavernous store with a wheeled trolley picking things up yourself, then having them scanned one by one at the door. Sounds like a nightmare!"
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Dec 6, 2016 18:16
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Inferior Third Season posted:Making lists and having others fetch the things I want instead of getting them myself is the type of thing I'd do if I somehow became obscenely wealthy. So, yes, having to shop is a nightmare. This already exists depending where you live. I think it costs an extra like 4 95 per 'order' 16.95 per month and 99.95 a year where I shop. You basically go through their website add what you want to a list it totals it all for you, hit submit and charges your card. You get an email when it's ready and pull up to what are basically special 'to-go' parking spots load all your groceries and you're on your way. I really need to start using it more because I hate grocery shopping.
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Dec 6, 2016 18:39
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In the UK, most supermarkets deliver. You go to the website, select the goods you want and a delivery timeslot, and a van turns up with all your groceries. It works great. Some US cities have similar services.
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Dec 6, 2016 18:43
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Walmart offers important services like cheap glasses or low cost check cashing for the unbanked, stuff like that. They're even slowly rolling out low cost medical clinics. Seriously Walmart does a lot for actual poor people in this country. But I'm sure dingy, cramped, expensive mom and pop shops that were only open 4 hours a day and didn't serve black people or unwed mothers had so much more dignity.
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Dec 6, 2016 18:51
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Inferior Third Season posted:Making lists and having others fetch the things I want instead of getting them myself
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Dec 6, 2016 18:59
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Cicero posted:You literally just described delivery, did you not notice that? You don't even have to be obscenely wealthy to take advantage of it, y'know! A lot of delivery services here are either quite expensive, have a terrible/incomplete selection of products, or rely on you being at home at an arbitrary time to accept the delivery.
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Dec 6, 2016 19:01
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Liquid Communism posted:Sure, if you are willing to absolutely trust Amazon's product descriptions to be 100% accurate. As a manufacturer that also sells on Amazon, gently caress Amazon. They nickle and dime you to death through their logistics chain and expect you not to try and fight it. I have a guy who spends 5-10 hours a week just fighting/documenting bullshit Amazon non-compliance complaints. They do the same logistics squeeze that Walmat does, just with more passive-aggressive nerd fuckery. "Oh you complained about our bullshit, well we are going to make you pack/ship/document 20 of your lowest margin cheapest item to send to all of our warehouses, thereby creating 20 more places we can gently caress with you."
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Dec 6, 2016 20:06
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PT6A posted:A lot of delivery services here are either quite expensive, have a terrible/incomplete selection of products, or rely on you being at home at an arbitrary time to accept the delivery. Delivery services in the UK are the opposite of this from my experience. You pay a small fee (£4 or so) and then get to pick a delivery slot window (usually 2 hours) in which the items will be delivered. The available of windows is huge though; any time from 8am to 10pm, so its easy to fit into a schedule to be home for it. And every item in the store is online - even down to fresh bakery products. It seems to work reasonably well because almost ever major supermarket chain I'm aware of offers it.
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Dec 6, 2016 21:18
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Back in the day, your typical Norman Rockwell small-town shops worked because they were, for all intents and purposes, the 'Wal-Mart' of that era: a family could drive their truck into town, park on main street, go around to each store to buy what they needed, and then head home. This is the exact same function that Wal-Mart, big box power-centres and malls fulfill today. However, there are two big, fundamental differences now: 1. Logistic chains, sophisticated inventory systems, the sheer size and scope of their operations driving down costs, and overseas manufacturing has allowed big-box retailers to leave traditional retailers in the dust. Mom 'n Pop shop, even if they managed to expand into a chain, were simply incapable of competing with the ability of big-box chains to aggressively drive down costs. 2. Everyone drives and we have only been building car-dependent communities for the past sixty years. Not only does this mean that if you live in the suburbs you have to rely on your car to get around, it also means that even if you live in a more 'traditional' built environment, it is more convenient to use your car to get around simply because it has been privileged above all other forms of transportation. Let me expand on point 2. Where retailers tend to physically locate is essentially sociological-economic-geography science (in particular, if you've ever wondered why gas stations and banks always seem to cluster around the same intersection, the reasoning is pretty fascinating). However, to simplify it, in the ecosystem of retailing before Wal-Mart, the opportunity costs of getting what you wanted was heavily tied to location and mode of transportation. Let's say it's 1950 and you and your family live in a traditional residential neighborhood in Seattle. It's a Thursday, you've just come home from work, and you realize you are out of milk. No sweat!   You just walk 8 minutes to the corner store and buy some milk. It might be a little bit more expensive than you would normally pay for milk, but you need it now, and its not too far away to walk. You could drive, but parking is a hassle and really, what's the point? Let's jump forward to the weekend. You need to get some groceries. Yes, the corner store is convenient, but its prices are too high and it doesn't have the selection you want. Where do you go? To the supermarket, of course!   Safeway is only an 11 minute drive away! Perfect. Plus there is ample parking, so you don't have to worry about loading up the station wagon with groceries. But now it's the next weekend. Your kids need new clothes, you need a new set of dishes, AND you need groceries. Well, Safeway might be an 11 minute drive away, but there is bound to be traffic. Even then, you'd have to go downtown where those people are in order to get the rest of what you need. But what's this? A new mall has opened just off the I5. It has a grocer, department stores, hardware stores -- everything you need and more, plus acres upon acres of blissful, hassle-free parking.   More than that, though, it's only a 9 minute drive away. Not only is it a shorter drive than going to Safeway, it's only one-minute more than walking to the corner store! This is how things traditionally operated. You would have small shops within walking distance to take care of immediate neighborhood needs, larger consolidated stores a bit further away that offered more inventory for the area, and finally the major power-centres that acted as a regional draw for shopping. This ecosystem allowed for a ranger of retailers: mom and pops on the corner (well, before they sold to 7-11 at least), regional chains, and larger national chains all had a space within which to compete. Then the world after the 1950's happened and low-density suburbs became the dominant way we built neighborhoods. We eventually oriented the entirety of our built environment around convenience for car travel and, ultimately, preference for only one type of retailer. Today, we build neighborhoods that are virtually permanent captive audiences/customers for Wal-Mart. Lets say it's 2015 and you live here in a suburban community just outside of Nashville, TN. Not only is there no nearby corner store, there are literally no sidewalks for walking. More than that, zoning laws prohibit anything but single-family detached housing nearby, so even if somehow you did manage to install sidewalks, you couldn't build a corner store.   That's OK, though, because walking is hard, cars are cheap, you have a three car garage and it's only an 8 minute drive to a brand new Wal-Mart. So, what's the point of all this? The point is, don't blame Wal-Mart for its lovely labor practices and its tendency to drain the life from small downtowns. The blame solely rests in your hands -- specifically, the steering wheel of your car. You want to stop Wal-Mart? Then convince people to stop driving. Good luck. sitchensis fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 22:22
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OneEightHundred posted:Different segments are going to be under different amounts of pressure. The worst-off are entertainment and electronics, which are doomed because content is all going to digital distribution and hardware prices are crashing. Barnes & Noble is probably hosed and Best Buy might be hosed (I'm really skeptical that what's left on their sales floor makes enough money to justify their real estate footprint, especially since the items most exposed to competition from Amazon are the bulky electronics that justify their huge size in the first place). Office stores are probably hosed because they're basically just electronics, furniture, and stationary, the first two are dying to Amazon and the third is dying to Wal-Mart. Honestly I feel like Barnes & Noble isn't hosed - but only because all national competitors to them have already died. Barnes & Noble is the only physical book store that still has branches in all 50 states, because the last nationwide competitor died in 2011 (Borders). The next largest chain is Books-A-Million, and they're only operating in 33 states, many of them only with one or two stores. Next ones below them operate in even fewer places. So basically B&N may as well have a monopoly in a lot of places, because lord knows the small time bookstores have been hit just as hard, and don't have the benefit of national contracts to help. But it's not because of anything B&N specifically managed to do, Borders could have been the one that managed to survive, or whatever the other ones were that have been dead even longer. They just got lucky. Also I wouldn't count office stores out. There's a need for grabbing business supplies quick and not waiting for shipping, and Wal-Mart/Target/whoever generally don't have the selection. Keep in mind that the office stores of today didn't exist until the late 80s, because businesses were expected to deal with suppliers that would ship things out, and if you were really small time you made do with what a supermarket or department store could offer. There's certainly going to be some of the weaker chains getting bought out though.
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Dec 6, 2016 22:27
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fishmech posted:Honestly I feel like Barnes & Noble isn't hosed - but only because all national competitors to them have already died. Barnes & Noble is the only physical book store that still has branches in all 50 states, because the last nationwide competitor died in 2011 (Borders). The next largest chain is Books-A-Million, and they're only operating in 33 states, many of them only with one or two stores. Next ones below them operate in even fewer places. So basically B&N may as well have a monopoly in a lot of places, because lord knows the small time bookstores have been hit just as hard, and don't have the benefit of national contracts to help. But it's not because of anything B&N specifically managed to do, Borders could have been the one that managed to survive, or whatever the other ones were that have been dead even longer. They just got lucky. If you were a small office in that era you went to a stationery store or a print shop, both of which still exist but serve niche markets now
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Dec 6, 2016 22:42
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fishmech posted:Honestly I feel like Barnes & Noble isn't hosed - but only because all national competitors to them have already died. They are dying of the same disease that B&N have got - people don't read so many physical books any more. Especially big readers. I'm *so* glad that my husband, who devours novels, doesn't have 500 books cluttering our house anymore. B&N, down the street from us, probably isn't.
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Dec 6, 2016 23:17
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PT6A posted:A lot of delivery services here are either quite expensive, have a terrible/incomplete selection of products, or rely on you being at home at an arbitrary time to accept the delivery. I don't know, I just live in a random nowhere suburb in CT and all the grocery stores nearby have some form of delivery service and they're all fine. It's pretty much exclusively how I buy groceries now. None of them are particularly expensive, and they all either have their entire selection available online or you can call to request unusual items for your order. Having to be around for delivery is kind of annoying, but they'll give you a list of open delivery times and provide an hour delivery window, so it's not all that bad. Picking an hour window where I'll definitely be home is no worse than setting aside an hour to drive to the store and actually shop.
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Dec 6, 2016 23:26
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Walmart yeah nah they take a fixed fee plus a %. Walmarts are often worse than payday loan outlets when it comes to cashing paychecks.
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Dec 7, 2016 10:43
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Cease to Hope posted:yeah nah they take a fixed fee plus a %. Walmarts are often worse than payday loan outlets when it comes to cashing paychecks. At a lot of their locations they waive the fee or heavily reduce it... but only if you're also about to pay for your monthly groceries etc with it at that Wal-Mart. It's basically holding their business and paycheck hostage. Same sort of deal at a lot of supermarket chains.
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Dec 7, 2016 19:03
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The big box that is hosed the most is probably Sears.quote:Sears reported Thursday that revenue fell 12.5% to $5 billion in the third quarter, with losses widening to $748 million from $454 million in the period one year ago. It has 1,687 stores compared to 3,510 five years ago with more closures to come.
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Dec 8, 2016 17:14
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Are they still doing that insane libertarian management strategy? If so that's frankly a miracle of inertia that they haven't already collapsed.
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Dec 8, 2016 17:16
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OhFunny posted:The big box that is hosed the most is probably Sears. Sears also runs K-Mart? I think most of the Sears I know are still anchor stores in malls. But that might vary from place to place. OwlFancier posted:Are they still doing that insane libertarian management strategy? I don't know what this is, but it sounds fascinating.
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Dec 8, 2016 18:05
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glowing-fish posted:I don't know what this is, but it sounds fascinating. I can't remember the details but if it's Sears I'm thnking of, a new CEO came in and decided that what the company needed was to operate on an internal market economy. As opposed to say, wal-mart, possibly the best example of the power of central planning in existence. So at Sears, each department, store, everything, competes against all the other ones for resources. It's like one step above getting all the GSMs to do king of the ring cage matches until the last one standing gets first dibs on stock distribution. It worked about as well as you could expect.
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Dec 8, 2016 18:07
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Aww I'm a little disappointed, that's not what I think of when I think "libertarian management style", it sounds highly structured and rigid if inane. A libertarian management style is like, a hilariously well-spun way of saying a manager doesn't give a gently caress what happens if they even show up at all, which obviously would be funny coming from the CEO.
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Dec 8, 2016 18:11
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glowing-fish posted:Sears also runs K-Mart? Sears' current CEO is Edward Lampert, a diehard libertarian weirdo, who was one of the people who engineered the merger of Sears and K-Mart in 2004. He's been the CEO since 2013 after being very influential on the other leadership for a while.
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Dec 8, 2016 18:13
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Aww I'm a little disappointed, that's not what I think of when I think "libertarian management style", it sounds highly structured and rigid if inane. A libertarian management style is like, a hilariously well-spun way of saying a manager doesn't give a gently caress what happens if they even show up at all, which obviously would be funny coming from the CEO. Libertarian management in that he seems convinced that turning the company's internal management into galt's gulch is the way to improve productivity.
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Dec 8, 2016 18:15
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OwlFancier posted:Libertarian management in that he seems convinced that turning the company's internal management into galt's gulch is the way to improve productivity. Instead it's "oh let's have all the overhead of being a big company but none of the corresponding benefits of collaboration".
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Dec 8, 2016 18:29
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