Les Jones: WSJ: "Wal-Mart Era Wanes"

October 08, 2007

Economics > WSJ: "Wal-Mart Era Wanes"

The Wall Street Journal makes the case for a Wal-Mart with diminishing influence. Time will tell if this is Wal-Mart's nadir, but sooner or later it will come. From my post almost two years ago:

It's also silly to think that Wal-Mart will be number 1 forever. That's what people thought about Kmart 20 years ago, and about Sears 20 years earlier when they were a Dow Jones blue chip stock (they're no longer one of the Dow Jones stocks). Success is transitory. Ten years ago I thought that bookstores in the future would be yellow and black because they would be filled with "For Dummies" books, but after buying Cliff's Notes and other imprints IDG went through a downturn, just as Sears and Kmart did. Henry Ford's car company and Oliver Winchester's rifle company are also falling on hard times, and it's mostly to the detriment of American workers, to no one's rejoice.

No one stays on top forever.

Posted by lesjones | TrackBack

Comments

My son travels in progressive hippie circles. He's of the element which loves Wal-Mart because they sell cheap propane and let people park overnight in their lot. He gets into arguments with the other crowd, who typically claim that Wal-Mart put all the mom&pop businesses under. He tells them Wal-Mart didn't do that; it was Zayre. Most of them never heard of Zayre. I'm surprised he had.

Posted by: triticale at October 08, 2007

Yeah, there's no doubt some small stores have been hurt by Wal-Mart, but you can say the same thing about Target, Kroger's, Blockbuster, Home Depot, Walgreen's, or hundreds of other chains.

Institutions like the mom and pop grocery store and the corner drugstore were wiped out decades ago. Around here Eckerds, SupeRx, and Revco ran the corner drugstore out of business, and in turn they were bought out by bigger chain stores like CVS.

Posted by: Les Jones at October 08, 2007