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The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart
Charles Fishman, senior writer for Fast Company magazine has recently published a book entitled The Man Who Said No To Wal-mart. It's an excellent book (Yes, I've read it) that talks about the intersection of making good stuff, the commodization of products, and the changing world that we work in; not exactly high tech, but tech nonetheless.
Every year, thousands of executives venture to Bentonville, Arkansas, hoping to get their products onto the shelves of the world's biggest retailer. But Jim Wier wanted Wal-Mart to stop selling his Snapper mowers.What struck Jim Wier first, as he entered the Wal-Mart vice president's office, was the seating area for visitors. "It was just some lawn chairs that some other peddler had left behind as samples." The vice president's office was furnished with a folding lawn chair and a chaise lounge.
And so Wier, the CEO of lawn-equipment maker Simplicity, dressed in a suit, took a seat on the chaise lounge. "I sat forward, of course, with my legs off to the side. If you've ever sat in a lawn chair, well, they are lower than regular chairs. And I was on the chaise. It was a bit intimidating. It was uncomfortable, and it was going to be an uncomfortable meeting."
It was a Wal-Mart moment that couldn't be scripted, or perhaps even imagined. A vice president responsible for billions of dollars' worth of business in the largest company in history has his visitors sit in mismatched, cast-off lawn chairs that Wal-Mart quite likely never had to pay for.
The vice president had a bigger surprise for Wier, though. Wal-Mart not only wanted to keep selling his lawn mowers, it wanted to sell lots more of them. Wal-Mart wanted to sell mowers nose-to-nose against Home Depot and Lowe's.
"Usually," says Wier, "I don't perspire easily." But perched on the edge of his chaise, "I felt my arms getting drippy."
Wier took a breath and said, "Let me tell you why it doesn't work."
Tens of thousands of executives make the pilgrimage to northwest Arkansas every year to woo Wal-Mart, marshaling whatever arguments, data, samples, and pure persuasive power they have in the hope of an order for their products, or an increase in their current order. Almost no matter what you're selling, the gravitational force of Wal-Mart's 3,811 U.S. "doorways" is irresistible. Very few people fly into Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport thinking about telling Wal-Mart no, or no more.
In 2002, Jim Wier's company, Simplicity, was buying Snapper, a complementary company with a 50-year heritage of making high-quality residential and commercial lawn equipment. Wier had studied his new acquisition enough to conclude that continuing to sell Snapper mowers through Wal-Mart stores was, as he put it, "incompatible with our strategy. And I felt I owed them a visit to tell them why we weren't going to continue to sell to them."
Selling Snapper lawn mowers at Wal-Mart wasn't just incompatible with Snapper's future -- Wier thought it was hazardous to Snapper's health. Snapper is known in the outdoor-equipment business not for huge volume but for quality, reliability, durability. A well-maintained Snapper lawn mower will last decades; many customers buy the mowers as adults because their fathers used them when they were kids. But Snapper lawn mowers are not cheap, any more than a Viking range is cheap. The value isn't in the price, it's in the performance and the longevity.
You can buy a lawn mower at Wal-Mart for $99.96, and depending on the size and location of the store, there are slightly better models for every additional $20 bill you're willing to put down -- priced at $122, $138, $154, $163, and $188. That's six models of lawn mowers below $200. Mind you, in some Wal-Marts you literally cannot see what you are buying; there are no display models, just lawn mowers in huge cardboard boxes.
The least expensive Snapper lawn mower -- a 19-inch push mower with a 5.5-horsepower engine -- sells for $349.99 at full list price. Even finding it discounted to $299, you can buy two or three lawn mowers at Wal-Mart for the cost of a single Snapper.
If you know nothing about maintaining a mower, Wal-Mart has helped make that ignorance irrelevant: At even $138, the lawn mowers at Wal-Mart are cheap enough to be disposable. Use one for a season, and if you can't start it the next spring (Wal-Mart won't help you out with that), put it at the curb and buy another one. That kind of pricing changes not just the economics at the low end of the lawn-mower market, it changes expectations of customers throughout the market. Why would you buy a walk-behind mower from Snapper that costs $519? What could it possibly have to justify spending $300 or $400 more?
That's the question that motivated Jim Wier to stop doing business with Wal-Mart. Wier is too judicious to describe it this way, but he looked into a future of supplying lawn mowers and snow blowers to Wal-Mart and saw a whirlpool of lower prices, collapsing profitability, offshore manufacturing, and the gradual but irresistible corrosion of the very qualities for which Snapper was known. Jim Wier looked into the future and saw a death spiral.
Wier had two things going for him: First, he had another way to get his lawn mowers to customers -- a well-established network of independent lawn-equipment dealers that accounted for 80% of Snapper's sales. And Wier had the courage, the foresight, to take an unblinking view of where his Wal-Mart business was heading -- not in year 3, or year 4, but year 10.
Wier traveled to Bentonville with a firm grasp of the values of Snapper, the dynamics of the lawn-mower business, the needs of the dealers, the needs of the Snapper customer, and the needs of the Wal-Mart customer. He was not dazzled by the tens of millions of dollars' worth of lawn mowers Wal-Mart was already selling for Snapper; he was not deluded about his ability to beat Wal-Mart at its own game, to somehow resist the price pressure. He was not imagining that he could take the sales now and figure out the profits later.
Jim Wier believed that Snapper's health -- indeed, its very long-term survival -- required that it not do business with Wal-Mart.
Every Snapper lawn mower sold anywhere in the world comes from a factory in McDonough, Georgia, a small town 30 minutes southeast of Atlanta. Coils of raw steel arrive on flatbed trucks every day at the old, nondescript building; brand-new fire-engine-red lawn mowers leave every day, loaded in 18-wheelers. The facility looks undistinguished, but it is energetically trying to defy the conventional wisdom about manufacturing in the global economy.
The Snapper factory has had an invigorating decade. Ten years ago, it produced about 40 models of mowers, leaf blowers, and snow blowers; now it makes 145. Today, robots do the welding, lasers cut parts, and computers control the steel-stamping presses. Productivity is three times what it was 10 years ago, and the number of people working here, 650, is half what it was.
Indeed, the productivity of every factory worker is measured "every hour, every day, every month, every year," says Snapper president Shane Sumners, who walks the 10.5-acre factory floor with comfort and familiarity. "And everybody's performance is posted, publicly, every day for everyone to see." It's a lot like Wal-Mart -- which measures the number of items every checkout clerk scans every hour. Some of Snapper's dramatic productivity improvements, in fact, seem to come almost directly from the Wal-Mart playbook. These days, the Snapper factory operates in Wal-Mart time. It must, because it operates in Wal-Mart's ecosystem.
Ten years ago, at about the time Sumners came on board, Snapper had 52 regional distributors. It uses no distributors now -- the company runs four regional warehouses of its own and sells directly to 10,000 independent dealerships. Ten years ago, in part because of the complexity of the middleman distribution system, Snapper carried a huge quantity of inventory. It paid to manufacture and ship thousands of lawn mowers -- worth tens of millions of dollars -- without quite knowing when they would be sold. Now planners come up with an ideal level of inventory for every model, for every region of the country, based on things like historic demand and the weather. The goal is to make sure every customer can get the mower he wants -- while making absolutely the smallest number of lawn mowers.
Production at the Snapper factory is rescheduled every week, according to the pace at which mowers sell. A computer juggles work assignments and balances the various parts of the assembly line. The main manufacturing line for Snapper's entry-level walk-behind mowers -- with 28 people -- was recently charged with producing 265 lawn mowers in an eight-hour shift. The group hit the mark exactly. That's a new lawn mower, from loose parts to sealed box, every 109 seconds. "It's all a matter of seconds," says Sumners.
It's not hard to make a cheap lawn mower. A cheap lawn mower feels flimsy, sounds louder than it has to, and even when new, requires a mysterious, frustrating combination of choke, priming, and pulling to start. The cutting deck of a cheap mower is stamped from thin sheet metal. Making a high-quality lawn mower -- even in 109 seconds -- requires attention to detail and constant improvement, which seems surprising for a machine that doesn't evolve that much.
All Snapper machines, from the simplest walk-behind to the most elaborate riding mower, are painted one color: what Shane Sumners calls "Snapper red." In the factory, the finished chassis of riding mowers coast along slowly, dangling from an overhead conveyor as they approach a 20-foot-long pool of red paint. The conveyor track dips low, and the mowers glide down into the pool and completely disappear beneath the surface, then rise back up, gleaming red, before heading for a pass through a curing oven.
It's not quite as simple as dip and bake, however. Each mower is electrically grounded as it hangs from the overhead conveyor, and a slight positive electrical charge runs through the 16,000-gallon trench of paint. "So the paint is attracted to the metal and builds up on the parts and sticks very effectively and evenly," says Sumners. The process is monitored every hour -- from the speed of the conveyor and the temperature of the ovens to the pH of the paint -- along 115 parameters. "If you control the process," says Sumners, "you will get a good paint job."
Snapper technicians start every riding mower before it leaves the McDonough plant. At the "hot start" station, a man wearing ear protectors squirts gas into the fuel tank and oil into the crankcase, pulls the starter cord, and brings the machine to life. He runs through all the gears, checks speed, engine performance, the mounting of the seat. The engine is given just enough fuel for the "run in." If the mower passes all the tests, the man sucks the oil back out and sends the mower on to be boxed.
As Sumners watches, one of the riding mowers takes two pulls to start, then comes to life with a rough growl. In the blink of an eye, the technician shuts it down. "Did you hear how that sounded?" asks Sumners. "It's not right. That's a bad one." The mower is shunted off to be inspected and properly tuned if possible. "If we didn't," says Sumners, "that mower would have gone to a customer."
The Snapper factory started making riding mowers in 1951. It is unadorned and old, but it is old in the sense of solidity and use. There is nothing tired about it. More significant, there is nothing sentimental about it. This factory isn't here out of some misplaced sense of economic loyalty to U.S. manufacturing. It's here because it makes Snapper-quality lawn mowers at a competitive price.
Snapper's factory hums with discipline and focus and urgency. Even with no products at Wal-Mart, a company like Snapper has to compete psychologically, has to keep the price gap between the big-box lawn mowers and its lawn mowers rational. If it did not, its potential slice of the market would get smaller and smaller.
Sumners has to spur his factory on with the same tirelessness as if it were supplying Wal-Mart -- the efficiency of every factory worker measured every hour of every day -- because Wal-Mart sets the pace, even if you're not working for them.
Jim Wier is 62 years old, with a youthful twinkle, despite a thatch of white hair. He is a solidly built man who dresses casually. He is comfortable with himself. Wier, who until the summer of 2005 ran a group of lawn-equipment businesses that approach half a billion dollars a year in sales, is confident, direct, and unprepossessing. He mows his own lawn. "I don't want to hire a service," he says. "I still love to cut my grass."
Wier is much like Snapper's customers. "When we do surveys of our customers, they like to cut their grass. And they want a good piece of equipment to do it. We're designed to give you the best quality of cut. We have full rollers on the riding mowers, to give that nice striped look on your grass, like on the baseball fields. It makes you feel proud of the home you own. Proud of your lawn. The neighbors walk by, they say, 'Look how good the yard looks.' "
Wier doesn't really think that a $99 lawn mower from Wal-Mart and Snapper's lawn mowers are the same product any more than a cup of 50-cent vending-machine coffee is the same as a Starbucks nonfat venti latte. "We're not obsessed with volume," says Wier. "We're obsessed with having differentiated, high-end, quality products." Wier wants them sold -- he thinks they must be sold -- at a store where the staff is eager to explain the virtues of various models, where they understand the equipment, can teach customers how to use a mower, can service it when something goes wrong. Wier wants customers who want that kind of help -- customers who are unlikely to be happy buying a lawn mower at Wal-Mart, and who might connect a bum experience doing so not with Wal-Mart but with Snapper.
And so in October 2002, with a colleague, Wier kept an appointment with a merchandise vice president for Wal-Mart's outdoor-product category.
"The whole visit to Wal-Mart headquarters is a great experience," says Wier. It really is a pilgrimage to the center of the retail universe. "It's so crowded, you have to drive around, waiting for a parking space, you have to follow someone who is leaving, walking back to their car, and get their spot. Then you go inside this building, you register for your appointment, they give you a badge, and then you wait in the pews with the rest of the peddlers, the guy with the bras draped over his shoulder."
Normally, meetings between Wal-Mart buyers and people from supplier companies take place in the legendary meeting rooms just off the vendor lobby. These cubicles are simple to the point of barren -- a table and four chairs, and 30 minutes to make your case. "It's a little like going to see the principal, really," says Wier.
In this case, Wier says, both he and the Wal-Mart managers "had a feeling that this would be an important meeting." So Wier and his colleague were scheduled to visit the vice president in his office. Sitting on lawn chairs.
"The meeting started with the vice president of the category saying how it was clear that Lowe's was going to build their outdoor power-equipment business with the Cub Cadet brand, and how Home Depot was going to build theirs with John Deere," says Wier. "Wal-Mart wanted to build their outdoor power-equipment business around the Snapper brand. Were we prepared to go large?"
Talk about coming to the table with different agendas. Wier was in Bentonville to pull his mowers from Wal-Mart's stores. The vice president was offering a greater temptation: Let's join hands and go head-to-head against the home-improvement superstores.
Which is when Wier said no.
"As I look at the three years Snapper has been with you," he told the vice president, "every year the price has come down. Every year the content of the product has gone up. We're at a position where, first, it's still priced where it doesn't meet the needs of your clientele. For Wal-Mart, it's still too high-priced. I think you'd agree with that.
"Now, at the price I'm selling to you today, I'm not making any money on it. And if we do what you want next year, I'll lose money. I could do that and not go out of business. But we have this independent-dealer channel. And 80% of our business is over here with them. And I can't put them at a competitive disadvantage. If I do that, I lose everything. So this just isn't a compatible fit."
The Wal-Mart vice president responded with strategy and argument. Snapper is the sort of high-quality nameplate, like Levi Strauss, that Wal-Mart hopes can ultimately make it more Target-like. He suggested that Snapper find a lower-cost contract manufacturer. He suggested producing a separate, lesser-quality line with the Snapper nameplate just for Wal-Mart. Just like Levi did.
"My response was, we would take a look at that," says Wier. "The reason I gave that response was, it was a legitimate question. In my own mind, I knew where I'd go with that" -- no thanks -- "but at that kind of meeting you at least have to be willing to say, I'll investigate." And that was it. "The tone at the end was, We're not going forward as a supplier."
No lightning bolt struck. Except that Snapper instantly gave up almost 20% of its business. "But when we told the dealers that they would no longer find Snapper in Wal-Mart, they were very pleased with that decision. And I think we got most of that business back by winning the hearts of the dealers."
Snapper was successfully integrated into Simplicity, which in 2004 was itself bought by Briggs & Stratton, the company that makes many of the engines in Snapper and Simplicity mowers. Simplicity and Snapper operate as independent divisions, and Wier remained CEO of both until last summer, when he resigned to join the private equity firm Kohlberg & Co. In McDonough, business is strong. Shane Sumners plans to add a second assembly line for both walk-behind and riding mowers.
One serious hazard to Wier's strategy is that independent lawn-equipment dealers face all the same pressures that have killed, for instance, many independent hardware stores and toy stores. "That is a legitimate question and a legitimate concern," says Wier. "I think we have a part in that outcome. Can Snapper, as a major supplier, continue to supply [the independents] with great product, and a product different than you can buy at Wal-Mart?"
Wier says, "I'm probably pro-Wal-Mart. I'm certainly not anti-Wal-Mart. I believe Wal-Mart has done a great service to the country in many ways. They offer reasonably good product at very good prices, and they've streamlined the entire distribution system. And it may be that along the way, they've driven some people out of business who shouldn't have been driven out of business." Wier wasn't going to let that happen to Snapper.
Wier had determined to lead Snapper to focus on quality, and through quality, on cachet. Not every car is a Honda Accord or a Toyota Camry; there is more than enough business to support Audi and BMW and Lexus. And so it is with lawn mowers, Wier hoped. Still, perhaps the most remarkable thing is that the Wal-Mart effect is so pervasive that it sets the metabolism even of companies that purposefully do no business with Wal-Mart.
And the power and allure of Wal-Mart is such that even Jim Wier, the man who said no to Wal-Mart, a man who knows all the reasons why that was the right decision, has slivers of doubt.
"I could go to my grave, and my tombstone could say, 'Here lies the dumbest CEO ever to live. He chose not to sell to Wal-Mart.'"
Charles Fishman is a Fast Company senior writer and the author of, "The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works -- And How It's Transforming the American Economy." See www.walmarteffectbook.com for more information.
From THE WAL-MART EFFECT by Charles Fishman. Reprinted by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) Charles Fishman, 2006. Charles is a senior writer for Fast Company magazine.
And so Wier, the CEO of lawn-equipment maker Simplicity, dressed in a suit, took a seat on the chaise lounge. "I sat forward, of course, with my legs off to the side. If you've ever sat in a lawn chair, well, they are lower than regular chairs. And I was on the chaise. It was a bit intimidating. It was uncomfortable, and it was going to be an uncomfortable meeting."
It was a Wal-Mart moment that couldn't be scripted, or perhaps even imagined. A vice president responsible for billions of dollars' worth of business in the largest company in history has his visitors sit in mismatched, cast-off lawn chairs that Wal-Mart quite likely never had to pay for.
The vice president had a bigger surprise for Wier, though. Wal-Mart not only wanted to keep selling his lawn mowers, it wanted to sell lots more of them. Wal-Mart wanted to sell mowers nose-to-nose against Home Depot and Lowe's.
"Usually," says Wier, "I don't perspire easily." But perched on the edge of his chaise, "I felt my arms getting drippy."
Wier took a breath and said, "Let me tell you why it doesn't work."
Tens of thousands of executives make the pilgrimage to northwest Arkansas every year to woo Wal-Mart, marshaling whatever arguments, data, samples, and pure persuasive power they have in the hope of an order for their products, or an increase in their current order. Almost no matter what you're selling, the gravitational force of Wal-Mart's 3,811 U.S. "doorways" is irresistible. Very few people fly into Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport thinking about telling Wal-Mart no, or no more.
In 2002, Jim Wier's company, Simplicity, was buying Snapper, a complementary company with a 50-year heritage of making high-quality residential and commercial lawn equipment. Wier had studied his new acquisition enough to conclude that continuing to sell Snapper mowers through Wal-Mart stores was, as he put it, "incompatible with our strategy. And I felt I owed them a visit to tell them why we weren't going to continue to sell to them."
Selling Snapper lawn mowers at Wal-Mart wasn't just incompatible with Snapper's future -- Wier thought it was hazardous to Snapper's health. Snapper is known in the outdoor-equipment business not for huge volume but for quality, reliability, durability. A well-maintained Snapper lawn mower will last decades; many customers buy the mowers as adults because their fathers used them when they were kids. But Snapper lawn mowers are not cheap, any more than a Viking range is cheap. The value isn't in the price, it's in the performance and the longevity.
You can buy a lawn mower at Wal-Mart for $99.96, and depending on the size and location of the store, there are slightly better models for every additional $20 bill you're willing to put down -- priced at $122, $138, $154, $163, and $188. That's six models of lawn mowers below $200. Mind you, in some Wal-Marts you literally cannot see what you are buying; there are no display models, just lawn mowers in huge cardboard boxes.
The least expensive Snapper lawn mower -- a 19-inch push mower with a 5.5-horsepower engine -- sells for $349.99 at full list price. Even finding it discounted to $299, you can buy two or three lawn mowers at Wal-Mart for the cost of a single Snapper.
If you know nothing about maintaining a mower, Wal-Mart has helped make that ignorance irrelevant: At even $138, the lawn mowers at Wal-Mart are cheap enough to be disposable. Use one for a season, and if you can't start it the next spring (Wal-Mart won't help you out with that), put it at the curb and buy another one. That kind of pricing changes not just the economics at the low end of the lawn-mower market, it changes expectations of customers throughout the market. Why would you buy a walk-behind mower from Snapper that costs $519? What could it possibly have to justify spending $300 or $400 more?
That's the question that motivated Jim Wier to stop doing business with Wal-Mart. Wier is too judicious to describe it this way, but he looked into a future of supplying lawn mowers and snow blowers to Wal-Mart and saw a whirlpool of lower prices, collapsing profitability, offshore manufacturing, and the gradual but irresistible corrosion of the very qualities for which Snapper was known. Jim Wier looked into the future and saw a death spiral.
Wier had two things going for him: First, he had another way to get his lawn mowers to customers -- a well-established network of independent lawn-equipment dealers that accounted for 80% of Snapper's sales. And Wier had the courage, the foresight, to take an unblinking view of where his Wal-Mart business was heading -- not in year 3, or year 4, but year 10.
Wier traveled to Bentonville with a firm grasp of the values of Snapper, the dynamics of the lawn-mower business, the needs of the dealers, the needs of the Snapper customer, and the needs of the Wal-Mart customer. He was not dazzled by the tens of millions of dollars' worth of lawn mowers Wal-Mart was already selling for Snapper; he was not deluded about his ability to beat Wal-Mart at its own game, to somehow resist the price pressure. He was not imagining that he could take the sales now and figure out the profits later.
Jim Wier believed that Snapper's health -- indeed, its very long-term survival -- required that it not do business with Wal-Mart.
Every Snapper lawn mower sold anywhere in the world comes from a factory in McDonough, Georgia, a small town 30 minutes southeast of Atlanta. Coils of raw steel arrive on flatbed trucks every day at the old, nondescript building; brand-new fire-engine-red lawn mowers leave every day, loaded in 18-wheelers. The facility looks undistinguished, but it is energetically trying to defy the conventional wisdom about manufacturing in the global economy.
The Snapper factory has had an invigorating decade. Ten years ago, it produced about 40 models of mowers, leaf blowers, and snow blowers; now it makes 145. Today, robots do the welding, lasers cut parts, and computers control the steel-stamping presses. Productivity is three times what it was 10 years ago, and the number of people working here, 650, is half what it was.
Indeed, the productivity of every factory worker is measured "every hour, every day, every month, every year," says Snapper president Shane Sumners, who walks the 10.5-acre factory floor with comfort and familiarity. "And everybody's performance is posted, publicly, every day for everyone to see." It's a lot like Wal-Mart -- which measures the number of items every checkout clerk scans every hour. Some of Snapper's dramatic productivity improvements, in fact, seem to come almost directly from the Wal-Mart playbook. These days, the Snapper factory operates in Wal-Mart time. It must, because it operates in Wal-Mart's ecosystem.
Ten years ago, at about the time Sumners came on board, Snapper had 52 regional distributors. It uses no distributors now -- the company runs four regional warehouses of its own and sells directly to 10,000 independent dealerships. Ten years ago, in part because of the complexity of the middleman distribution system, Snapper carried a huge quantity of inventory. It paid to manufacture and ship thousands of lawn mowers -- worth tens of millions of dollars -- without quite knowing when they would be sold. Now planners come up with an ideal level of inventory for every model, for every region of the country, based on things like historic demand and the weather. The goal is to make sure every customer can get the mower he wants -- while making absolutely the smallest number of lawn mowers.
Production at the Snapper factory is rescheduled every week, according to the pace at which mowers sell. A computer juggles work assignments and balances the various parts of the assembly line. The main manufacturing line for Snapper's entry-level walk-behind mowers -- with 28 people -- was recently charged with producing 265 lawn mowers in an eight-hour shift. The group hit the mark exactly. That's a new lawn mower, from loose parts to sealed box, every 109 seconds. "It's all a matter of seconds," says Sumners.
It's not hard to make a cheap lawn mower. A cheap lawn mower feels flimsy, sounds louder than it has to, and even when new, requires a mysterious, frustrating combination of choke, priming, and pulling to start. The cutting deck of a cheap mower is stamped from thin sheet metal. Making a high-quality lawn mower -- even in 109 seconds -- requires attention to detail and constant improvement, which seems surprising for a machine that doesn't evolve that much.
All Snapper machines, from the simplest walk-behind to the most elaborate riding mower, are painted one color: what Shane Sumners calls "Snapper red." In the factory, the finished chassis of riding mowers coast along slowly, dangling from an overhead conveyor as they approach a 20-foot-long pool of red paint. The conveyor track dips low, and the mowers glide down into the pool and completely disappear beneath the surface, then rise back up, gleaming red, before heading for a pass through a curing oven.
It's not quite as simple as dip and bake, however. Each mower is electrically grounded as it hangs from the overhead conveyor, and a slight positive electrical charge runs through the 16,000-gallon trench of paint. "So the paint is attracted to the metal and builds up on the parts and sticks very effectively and evenly," says Sumners. The process is monitored every hour -- from the speed of the conveyor and the temperature of the ovens to the pH of the paint -- along 115 parameters. "If you control the process," says Sumners, "you will get a good paint job."
Snapper technicians start every riding mower before it leaves the McDonough plant. At the "hot start" station, a man wearing ear protectors squirts gas into the fuel tank and oil into the crankcase, pulls the starter cord, and brings the machine to life. He runs through all the gears, checks speed, engine performance, the mounting of the seat. The engine is given just enough fuel for the "run in." If the mower passes all the tests, the man sucks the oil back out and sends the mower on to be boxed.
As Sumners watches, one of the riding mowers takes two pulls to start, then comes to life with a rough growl. In the blink of an eye, the technician shuts it down. "Did you hear how that sounded?" asks Sumners. "It's not right. That's a bad one." The mower is shunted off to be inspected and properly tuned if possible. "If we didn't," says Sumners, "that mower would have gone to a customer."
The Snapper factory started making riding mowers in 1951. It is unadorned and old, but it is old in the sense of solidity and use. There is nothing tired about it. More significant, there is nothing sentimental about it. This factory isn't here out of some misplaced sense of economic loyalty to U.S. manufacturing. It's here because it makes Snapper-quality lawn mowers at a competitive price.
Snapper's factory hums with discipline and focus and urgency. Even with no products at Wal-Mart, a company like Snapper has to compete psychologically, has to keep the price gap between the big-box lawn mowers and its lawn mowers rational. If it did not, its potential slice of the market would get smaller and smaller.
Sumners has to spur his factory on with the same tirelessness as if it were supplying Wal-Mart -- the efficiency of every factory worker measured every hour of every day -- because Wal-Mart sets the pace, even if you're not working for them.
Jim Wier is 62 years old, with a youthful twinkle, despite a thatch of white hair. He is a solidly built man who dresses casually. He is comfortable with himself. Wier, who until the summer of 2005 ran a group of lawn-equipment businesses that approach half a billion dollars a year in sales, is confident, direct, and unprepossessing. He mows his own lawn. "I don't want to hire a service," he says. "I still love to cut my grass."
Wier is much like Snapper's customers. "When we do surveys of our customers, they like to cut their grass. And they want a good piece of equipment to do it. We're designed to give you the best quality of cut. We have full rollers on the riding mowers, to give that nice striped look on your grass, like on the baseball fields. It makes you feel proud of the home you own. Proud of your lawn. The neighbors walk by, they say, 'Look how good the yard looks.' "
Wier doesn't really think that a $99 lawn mower from Wal-Mart and Snapper's lawn mowers are the same product any more than a cup of 50-cent vending-machine coffee is the same as a Starbucks nonfat venti latte. "We're not obsessed with volume," says Wier. "We're obsessed with having differentiated, high-end, quality products." Wier wants them sold -- he thinks they must be sold -- at a store where the staff is eager to explain the virtues of various models, where they understand the equipment, can teach customers how to use a mower, can service it when something goes wrong. Wier wants customers who want that kind of help -- customers who are unlikely to be happy buying a lawn mower at Wal-Mart, and who might connect a bum experience doing so not with Wal-Mart but with Snapper.
And so in October 2002, with a colleague, Wier kept an appointment with a merchandise vice president for Wal-Mart's outdoor-product category.
"The whole visit to Wal-Mart headquarters is a great experience," says Wier. It really is a pilgrimage to the center of the retail universe. "It's so crowded, you have to drive around, waiting for a parking space, you have to follow someone who is leaving, walking back to their car, and get their spot. Then you go inside this building, you register for your appointment, they give you a badge, and then you wait in the pews with the rest of the peddlers, the guy with the bras draped over his shoulder."
Normally, meetings between Wal-Mart buyers and people from supplier companies take place in the legendary meeting rooms just off the vendor lobby. These cubicles are simple to the point of barren -- a table and four chairs, and 30 minutes to make your case. "It's a little like going to see the principal, really," says Wier.
In this case, Wier says, both he and the Wal-Mart managers "had a feeling that this would be an important meeting." So Wier and his colleague were scheduled to visit the vice president in his office. Sitting on lawn chairs.
"The meeting started with the vice president of the category saying how it was clear that Lowe's was going to build their outdoor power-equipment business with the Cub Cadet brand, and how Home Depot was going to build theirs with John Deere," says Wier. "Wal-Mart wanted to build their outdoor power-equipment business around the Snapper brand. Were we prepared to go large?"
Talk about coming to the table with different agendas. Wier was in Bentonville to pull his mowers from Wal-Mart's stores. The vice president was offering a greater temptation: Let's join hands and go head-to-head against the home-improvement superstores.
Which is when Wier said no.
"As I look at the three years Snapper has been with you," he told the vice president, "every year the price has come down. Every year the content of the product has gone up. We're at a position where, first, it's still priced where it doesn't meet the needs of your clientele. For Wal-Mart, it's still too high-priced. I think you'd agree with that.
"Now, at the price I'm selling to you today, I'm not making any money on it. And if we do what you want next year, I'll lose money. I could do that and not go out of business. But we have this independent-dealer channel. And 80% of our business is over here with them. And I can't put them at a competitive disadvantage. If I do that, I lose everything. So this just isn't a compatible fit."
The Wal-Mart vice president responded with strategy and argument. Snapper is the sort of high-quality nameplate, like Levi Strauss, that Wal-Mart hopes can ultimately make it more Target-like. He suggested that Snapper find a lower-cost contract manufacturer. He suggested producing a separate, lesser-quality line with the Snapper nameplate just for Wal-Mart. Just like Levi did.
"My response was, we would take a look at that," says Wier. "The reason I gave that response was, it was a legitimate question. In my own mind, I knew where I'd go with that" -- no thanks -- "but at that kind of meeting you at least have to be willing to say, I'll investigate." And that was it. "The tone at the end was, We're not going forward as a supplier."
No lightning bolt struck. Except that Snapper instantly gave up almost 20% of its business. "But when we told the dealers that they would no longer find Snapper in Wal-Mart, they were very pleased with that decision. And I think we got most of that business back by winning the hearts of the dealers."
Snapper was successfully integrated into Simplicity, which in 2004 was itself bought by Briggs & Stratton, the company that makes many of the engines in Snapper and Simplicity mowers. Simplicity and Snapper operate as independent divisions, and Wier remained CEO of both until last summer, when he resigned to join the private equity firm Kohlberg & Co. In McDonough, business is strong. Shane Sumners plans to add a second assembly line for both walk-behind and riding mowers.
One serious hazard to Wier's strategy is that independent lawn-equipment dealers face all the same pressures that have killed, for instance, many independent hardware stores and toy stores. "That is a legitimate question and a legitimate concern," says Wier. "I think we have a part in that outcome. Can Snapper, as a major supplier, continue to supply [the independents] with great product, and a product different than you can buy at Wal-Mart?"
Wier says, "I'm probably pro-Wal-Mart. I'm certainly not anti-Wal-Mart. I believe Wal-Mart has done a great service to the country in many ways. They offer reasonably good product at very good prices, and they've streamlined the entire distribution system. And it may be that along the way, they've driven some people out of business who shouldn't have been driven out of business." Wier wasn't going to let that happen to Snapper.
Wier had determined to lead Snapper to focus on quality, and through quality, on cachet. Not every car is a Honda Accord or a Toyota Camry; there is more than enough business to support Audi and BMW and Lexus. And so it is with lawn mowers, Wier hoped. Still, perhaps the most remarkable thing is that the Wal-Mart effect is so pervasive that it sets the metabolism even of companies that purposefully do no business with Wal-Mart.
And the power and allure of Wal-Mart is such that even Jim Wier, the man who said no to Wal-Mart, a man who knows all the reasons why that was the right decision, has slivers of doubt.
"I could go to my grave, and my tombstone could say, 'Here lies the dumbest CEO ever to live. He chose not to sell to Wal-Mart.'"
Charles Fishman is a Fast Company senior writer and the author of, "The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works -- And How It's Transforming the American Economy." See www.walmarteffectbook.com for more information.
From THE WAL-MART EFFECT by Charles Fishman. Reprinted by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) Charles Fishman, 2006. Charles is a senior writer for Fast Company magazine.
And???
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Walmart sells cheap crap - if your company does not sell cheap crap, you can't sell at walmart.
Oh - and the quote: same product any more than a cup of 50-cent vending-machine coffee is the same as a Starbucks nonfat venti latte.
Dreadful analogy - the 50-cent vending machine coffee is crap, the $3.50 starbucks latte is crap.
My pics.
The decision not to do business with Walmart is not only an issue of branding, but an issue of scalability. With your mowers in the hands of 20% more consumers, more warranties have to be honored forcing Snapper to increase 'support' for their machines.
And if it turns out that the lower end users have a propensity to be pickier about the product, requesting support, service, and such, the returns get even worse.
Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/
The book by Charles Fishman is called [i]The Walmart Effect[/i] not [i]The Man Who Said No to Walmart[/i], which is the title of the Fast Company article that forms the basis for the Slashdot article.
FYI
I usually enjoy the book reviews here, but this isn't that, this just appears to be an ad.
Actually, the title of the book is: The Wal-Mart Effect : How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and How It's Transforming the American Economy. Amazon has it for $16.35. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!
Company A decides to target a higher-margin, lower-volume segment of the market v/s a lower-margin, higher-volume segment. I didn't need to read a 1000-word essay telling me about it. Companies do this all the time and it's not news. Sounds more like a publicity stunt for Snapper and the book author than anything else.
Mmmm.. Donuts
A similar thing happened a year ago in the Netherlands, where a Dutch 'cake'-maker* (for those who know Dutch: ontbijtkoek)
n ents/financien/rtlz/2005/02_februari/02-peijnenbur g_albert_heijn_supermarktoorlog_koek_uit_schap.xml
actually went to court so that they wouldn't be obliged to sell to a certain supermarket** anymore... (By the way, they won!)
Roel
* Peijnenburg was the 'cake'-maker;
** Albert Hein was the supermarket store.
Link in dutch:
http://www.rtl.nl/(/financien/rtlz/nieuws/)/compo
>>And it may be that along the way, they've driven some people out of business who shouldn't have been driven out of business.
And that isn't enough to boycott them right there?
What's the big deal?...I know a bunch of people who do this.
I wish all personal boycott targets were as east as this.
Try buying a pair of sneakers from somewhere OTHER than China
(a country with a horrible human rights record...so I boycott it)
I'm trying very hard to not buy stuff from the USA also (I'm in
Canada) and it's tough to do.
This article seems, to me, almost like a Shameless Plug for the Snapper lawn supplies. It makes the company look good, look smart, look loyal to its customers, and so forth. I don't know about you, but that's how I interpreted it, at least.
And this guy said "YES!" to Walmart. Well, for 41 hours at least.
Also, check out this links.
Hel-Mart
Sprawl Busters
PBS Store Wars- Facts About Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Blows.com
Wal-Mart Litigation Project
Wal-Mart Movie
Wal-Mart Sucks.org
Wal-Mart Watch
Wal-Mart vs Women
...so you keep your precious Snapper brand name for your quality products and start up some new brand name for your low end crap you sell at Wal-Mart. Win - win.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
This is actually a word-for-word duplicate of the FC article here: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html
It's ALSO from back in January. Hemos needs to wake up...
They have created a vicious cycle that makes it so that they drive down the profits of domestic manufacturers, which sends the good jobs out of the country, and then they sell the cheap, Chinese-made crap to the people who lost their job because now it's all they can afford. Eventually, the Wal-Martification of the economy will leave us on the brink of disaster because all of our real manufacturing will be outsourced.
What this guy did that was so smart was to recognize that at the end of the day, there is only economic destruction to be had from placing sales numbers and short term profits on a pedastal. Most of Wal-Mart's suppliers would do well to follow in his foot steps and reach a gentleman's agreement to collectively tell Wally World to agree to their terms or fuck off.
But wait... they can't do that. That'd be price colluding, even though it would actually benefit the public if the makers of kitchen supplies collectively pulled out of Wal-Mart, for example. Wal-Mart isn't that profitable. They make take in $220B a year, but last I saw they only make about $7B. You know what smart people call that, considering how many stores that profit is spread over? A house of cards. All it would take would be 1 or 2 years of a concerted effort by their suppliers to revolt to bring Wal-Mart to its knees.
So the myth is not true: Wal-Mart is NOT invincible and free markets WILL win out.
I mean, really, this is hardly the earth-shattering revelation I was expecting. Walmart sells cheap stuff. Company wants to sell expensive stuff. Company decides not to go with Walmart. There weren't any death threats or dirty tricks, just some calm discussion and reasonable logic.
I don't see why it's news that branding and quality are important. Even the folks running Walmart are not so dense - they just like to feed off that lower part of the retail sector. Historical note: the United States got its start in the textile industry not by producing higher quality stuff than you'd find in, say, Britain, but by producing lower quality stuff that was "good enough", but much cheaper. America got a reputation for cheap, lousy material - but then again, everyone bought it, even when better-but-more-expensive local material was available
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Wow, thanks for the "brief" "summary." I don't think I need to read the book now...
in that, despite the cult like devotion of their followers, they're are merely human inventions, that can and will fail.
While I admire Jim Wier for his commitment to quality, my walk-behind mower sits unused because I paid ~$350 for a robot on eBay to do the work for me. Sure a new robot will set you back $1100 - $1700, but it will mow the lawn by itself on a schedule and find the docking station. $1700 is still less than high end riding mowers.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
not by me, though I do my best by boycotting them as much as possible and getting others to do so as well.
Yeah, but unless you get the Advanced Shoes, your feet disappear when you tie the laces. And they don't work with Unix.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/29/walmat.spring.bre ak.ap/index.html
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- For spring break, some college students set out for sun-drenched beaches or cheap European cities. Skyler Bartels headed for the local Wal-Mart. Bartels, 20, an aspiring writer and Drake University sophomore, thought he'd spend a week in a Wal-Mart as a test of endurance, using it as the premise for a magazine article. His college adviser liked the idea.
For 41 hours, Bartels wandered the aisles of a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Windsor Heights that's open 24 hours a day. He checked out shoppers, read magazines, watched movies on the DVD display and played video games.
Other shoppers and employees didn't pay much attention until the end of his stay, he said, when it appeared some store greeters began to take notice -- pointing at him and whispering.
A shift manager approached him and asked him if he was finding everything he needed.
"He said, 'Didn't I see you over by the magazines, like, five hours ago?' I told him, 'Maybe,"' Bartels said.
This guy lived at Wal-Mart during his Spring Break. I heard Des Moines can be boring at times, but come on now, whatever happened to exploring the great outdoors?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
> SAS Shoes -- Buy Local, or Buy Nothing at all.
Gee, I don't live in San Antonio, so I guess I can't buy them.
Chris Mattern
Why even link to the article if you're going to reprint the entire text of it? Also, as someone else mentioned, it's kind of odd that Hemos is saying "Yes, I've read the book," but then completely gets the title wrong. Something ain't quite right at slashdot...
This guy's the limit!
I need to buy a lawn mower this weekend. I had no idea Wal Mart sold them.
That'll save me some money!
...the Wal-Mart tells you NO.
Number of dollars spent at walmart since 1998: $0
Additional-Cost of access to online retailers vs the rest of the net: $0
Being able to sleep at night: Priceless
Last time I shopped at WAL-MART I made a point to check the country of
origin of the things I bought. I was surprised: An oil filter made in
Israel, printer ink cartridges made in Ireland, printer paper made in
Canada, a utility shelf made in the USA, a box of DVD-R's made in
Taiwan, scissors made in the USA, a shirt made in Vietnam, a coffee mug
made in Thailand, two different kinds of shampoo made in the USA,
several house cleaning products made in the USA, some bath towels made
in the USA, and a coffee grinder made in France.
Not one single item I bought that day was made in China (I don't care
to enter the argument about Taiwan). I wasn't trying to avoid China.
I was quite surprised by this. I think more people should actually
pay attention, before they spout off about how all products are made in
China now.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Snappers really are excellent mowers. I don't know that I'd buy a Snapper push-mower, just because push-mowers tend to get banged up since their job is basically to get the rough areas where a riding mower won't go, but their riding mowers are reliable and easy to maintain.
Snapper may not be in the commodity stores, but that's not because they are a boutique item. It is an intentional attempt to maintain a reputation of dignity among professionals.
From Simplicity Manufacturing's Website:
In other words, they already had the cheap crap to sell (B&S Mowers), and didn't want to compete with themselves with higher priced models that could go to specialty home improvement stores where they would move more quickly.
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
"Wier doesn't really think that a $99 lawn mower from Wal-Mart and Snapper's lawn mowers are the same product any more than a cup of 50-cent vending-machine coffee is the same as a Starbucks nonfat venti latte."
Yeah, one of each pair is massively overpriced for what you get. Snapper makes a decent mower, but similar quality mowers can be found at far cheaper prices.
My back yard would laugh at your robotic mower. We might never find it again.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You're really clueless.
Sony stuff is garbage. It uses a bunch of crappy proprietary formats (like ATRAC or Memory Stick) that usually die (like BetaMax). It's usually overpriced too - you're paying for the name. Last I bought a [standard definition] TV theirs had one of the worst looking picture out there (and I'm not blind; I do AV editing daily). I'm now shopping for a HDTV, adn trust me, there isn't a chance in hell it'll be a sony. The picture quality of the ones I've seen was laughable (RCA is the only one I've seen with a worse picture). And Sony means DRM and rootkits, don't remember? If you think Sony's garbage is worth anything you're clueless...
And Apple's stuff isn't much better. Overpriced commodity hardware that comes with an OS I don't want as it runs none of the stuff I need. Or ugly overpriced mp3 players that are meant to work with a DRM'ed single-source vendor/monopoly in online music, which doesn't interoperate with anything - they don't license their DRM/technologies, instead, they sue those who try (like Real), unlike other companies (yes, even those Redmond folks we like to bash here) who license theirs so anyone can have an online store, and multiple devices from different vendors can play the content. If I've seen something that was 100% worthless before, that's it! (However, here there's so much people drinking Apple Koolaid and mac fanboys... *WAY* overhyped junk!)
There are LOTS of quality stuff out there worth buying, but if I had to name 2 that aren't, it's Sony and Apple!
"It's an excellent book (Yes, I've read it)"
I think I've been duped by a phishing scam. I mean, clearly it says "slashdot.org" on the top address bar, but that can't be right. Damn it, they said if I upgraded to Firefox I'd be safe from this crap!
As someone who spent one summer installing security cameras in a Wal-mart (so they could more carefully watch their cashiers) and assembling lawn-mowers etc. for displays and for customers who paid for that option, I can confirm that the quality of the machines they sell is abysmal. It was not at all unusual to go through three sets of parts to get enough properly made parts to assemble one lawn mower. I wouldn't accept one as a gift.
They just consistantly work better then anything else that has been tried.
In that sense they are nothing like communism. Which has only worked in opt in voluteer communitees (e.g. works for religous orders but generally not in hippy communes, participants need to be mental adults).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Snapper. Is. Awesome.
Oh and Profit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"Honestly, can someone tell me how this is news for nerds?"
Yeah, as if we care what our mom's lawn looks like from the basement
Snapper is the sort of high-quality nameplate, like Levi Strauss, that Wal-Mart hopes can ultimately make it more Target-like.
Wait, wait, wait.. there's supposed to be a difference between Target and Walmart??
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Because we all know what happens to economies that don't actually make anything, right? They collapse, don't they?
When I started reading the review I thought I might enjoy reading the book, but by the time I got to the end of the review I felt like I had just read the book!
I am Homer of Borg. Resistance is Fut.. Mmmmmmmm, Donuts!
Ahh, you too know the joy of SAS. I happened upon them becuase it is hard to find US size 15. They are nice shoes indeed, very comfortable.
I bought a push reel mower for $100. My yard is pretty small, and it takes me about a half an hour to cut the grass, from the time I walk to the garage to grab the mower until the end when I clean and put it away. But that's ok because I enjoy cutting the grass. It's a half hour where I can be outside, turn half my brain off, and relax a little, while still being mildly productive and making my yard look better. A bonus for the push reel mower, it's better for the grass, it doesn't require fuel, and it doesn't have a noisy motor, so I end up finding it all pretty relaxing.
I guess my main point is, if you don't like cutting the grass, then you shouldn't have spent so much on your walk-behind mower. You aren't the market that Jim Wier is targeting. He believes that there are enough people who want to cut their own grass and enjoy it that he can make money just serving them.
My second point is that if you've got a small enough yard to make it feasible, push reel mowers are quite nice.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
There needs to be a moderation catagory 'Fucking idiot' for posts like the parents.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Charles Fishman, senior writer for Fast Company magazine has recently published a book entitled The Man Who Said No To Wal-mart. It's an excellent book (Yes, I've read it) that talks about the intersection of making good stuff, the commodization of products, and the changing world that we work in; not exactly high tech, but tech nonetheless.
Every year, thousands of executives venture to Bentonville, Arkansas, hoping to get their products onto the shelves of the world's biggest retailer. But Jim Wier wanted Wal-Mart to stop selling his Snapper mowers.What struck Jim Wier first, as he entered the Wal-Mart vice president's office, was the seating area for visitors. "It was just some lawn chairs that some other peddler had left behind as samples." The vice president's office was furnished with a folding lawn chair and a chaise lounge.
And so Wier, the CEO of lawn-equipment maker Simplicity, dressed in a suit, took a seat on the chaise lounge. "I sat forward, of course, with my legs off to the side. If you've ever sat in a lawn chair, well, they are lower than regular chairs. And I was on the chaise. It was a bit intimidating. It was uncomfortable, and it was going to be an uncomfortable meeting."
It was a Wal-Mart moment that couldn't be scripted, or perhaps even imagined. A vice president responsible for billions of dollars' worth of business in the largest company in history has his visitors sit in mismatched, cast-off lawn chairs that Wal-Mart quite likely never had to pay for.
The vice president had a bigger surprise for Wier, though. Wal-Mart not only wanted to keep selling his lawn mowers, it wanted to sell lots more of them. Wal-Mart wanted to sell mowers nose-to-nose against Home Depot and Lowe's.
"Usually," says Wier, "I don't perspire easily." But perched on the edge of his chaise, "I felt my arms getting drippy."
Wier took a breath and said, "Let me tell you why it doesn't work."
Tens of thousands of executives make the pilgrimage to northwest Arkansas every year to woo Wal-Mart, marshaling whatever arguments, data, samples, and pure persuasive power they have in the hope of an order for their products, or an increase in their current order. Almost no matter what you're selling, the gravitational force of Wal-Mart's 3,811 U.S. "doorways" is irresistible. Very few people fly into Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport thinking about telling Wal-Mart no, or no more.
In 2002, Jim Wier's company, Simplicity, was buying Snapper, a complementary company with a 50-year heritage of making high-quality residential and commercial lawn equipment. Wier had studied his new acquisition enough to conclude that continuing to sell Snapper mowers through Wal-Mart stores was, as he put it, "incompatible with our strategy. And I felt I owed them a visit to tell them why we weren't going to continue to sell to them."
Selling Snapper lawn mowers at Wal-Mart wasn't just incompatible with Snapper's future -- Wier thought it was hazardous to Snapper's health. Snapper is known in the outdoor-equipment business not for huge volume but for quality, reliability, durability. A well-maintained Snapper lawn mower will last decades; many customers buy the mowers as adults because their fathers used them when they were kids. But Snapper lawn mowers are not cheap, any more than a Viking range is cheap. The value isn't in the price, it's in the performance and the longevity.
You can buy a lawn mower at Wal-Mart for $99.96, and depending on the size and location of the store, there are slightly better models for every additional $20 bill you're willing to put down -- priced at $122, $138, $154, $163, and $188. That's six models of lawn mowers below $200. Mind you, in some Wal-Marts you literally cannot see what you are buying; there are no display models, just lawn mowers in huge cardboard boxes.
The least expensive Snapper lawn mower -- a 19-inch push mower with a 5.5-horsepower engine -- sells for $349.99 at full list price. Even finding it discounted to $299, you can buy two o
A lawn mower is for the most part, an engine. B&S makes engines for most of the mowers out there (Snapper included). B&S engines are also on Murrays - the $138 mower sold at Walmart.
I bought one of these mowers 5 years ago... and it still runs fine.
Briggs and Stratton is the real variable here, not Snapper.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
If your think your too good for Wal-mart, then just don't sell your products to Wall-mart, don't write a book about it! Save your overpriced lawn mowers for specialty yuppie suburban garden centers where they can also buy a $1000 espresso machine and $600 Dyson vacuums that always suck! For the rest of us that just needs something that cuts lawn, let us buy our $99 lawn mowers in peace.
I actually use a manual push mower because lawnmowers are evil noisy things that are ruining our environment. Lawn mowers account for 30% of North American vehicle pollution. Don't pull up to a yuppie garden center with your V6 Hybrid Highlander and buy a $500 gas guzzling lawn mower, morons.
It was a Wal-Mart moment that couldn't be scripted, or perhaps even imagined. A vice president responsible for billions of dollars' worth of business in the largest company in history has his visitors sit in mismatched, cast-off lawn chairs that Wal-Mart quite likely never had to pay for.
"You don't get rich by spending money." --- Mr. Turgid senior.
Stick Men
As a former Wal-Mart employee (notice that I'm posting anonymously too, I might add) This actually warms my heart. There are many reasons I no longer work for Wal-Mart which I won't go into, and I would never consider working for or with them again.
Notice they said "...a lesser quality model specifically for Wal-Mart"? THAT'S what you're getting when you buy there. You're getting substandard equipment, clothes, whatever it is you're buying. It will die or wear out in half the time a better made product will. You're NOT saving the money you think you are when you do math.
$100 stereo - use for 2 years and dies. You buy another $100 stereo - user for 1.5 years and dies. You buy another one and again it dies in 2 years. You're now up to $300 and you've only got 5.5 years use vs......
$300 stereo - Use for 10 years before it needs attention.
Of course those are numbers grabbed out of the air, but I can give you so many numbers on that company you're head would swim.
Wal-Mart uses it's buying power to MUSCLE the manufacturers into lower costs. Which in turn causes the manufacturers to cut corners to save cost so they can have even a small profit. We've all seen what happens when you cut corners, you end up with poor workmanship (notice I don't say craftsmanship...that word isn't in the Wal-Mart Volcabulary) that in turn means a peice of cow dung for a product. They'll buy a product for $48 and sell it for $80. Instead of buying for $60 and selling for $80 they take the manufacturer's share of the profits as well.
They don't even offer employees decent benefits, I won't go into much here because they're already getting sued like mad by their employees for it. But even things like employee store discounts, 10%. What kind of discount is that when they have an almost 100% markup? You'd think they'd be a little bit more generous to the people that make it happen.
No, sir. We've become a throw away society and it's costing us greatly and we don't even see it. Spend a little more for a product and use it MUCH longer. There's always other things to be concerned about than the immediate "gains". What about the ecology from the 1000 items a year we throw away instead of the 100 we could be throwing away. What about the money that our local and state governments are spending to subsidize healthcare for Wal-Mart employees a year. What about the time you spend SHOPPING to replace things you shouldn't have to replace yet? That's time you could have been in the back yard playing with your children or pets. Not spending 45 minutes in traffic wasting gas (I might add, is an issue in and of itself) getting there and back plus 30 minutes looking for what you want and another 20 in checkout.
Nyet, spend less time shopping and giving money to Wal-Mart. Find a local retailer that can set you up with a better product, go home and spend time with your family. In 20 years when your neighbor has spent tens of thousands replacing Wal-Mart purchased products you spend a couple of thousand and have more time for yourself and family instead of in your car burning gas.
...where your opening comment ended and where Charles Fishman's writing begins?
-b
I seem to remember that, in the early days, iPods weren't purchasable anywhere except directly from Apple. Partially this was because they weren't in demand yet, and eventually it became a matter of Apple refusing to discount its products for anybody. The price you paid for a new iPod (or any new Apple product) at Apple's stores is as low as the price you paid anywhere else.
As iPods became more and more popular, it became painfully obvious that Wal-Mart was the last major retailer not to sell them. And, of course, this is because Wal-Mart's policy is to price anything it sells lower than all of its competitors.
So Wal-Mart had a problem: they needed to sell these iconic iPods, but Apple wouldn't let them sell it at a lower price. They'd be eroding their own business, but more importantly, they'd be losing a lot of money on what Apple insisted should be a quality product worth a higher price.
Eventually the two came to some kind of compromise, because you can buy a new iPod Nano at the Apple Store for $149.00, or at Wal-Mart for... $147.88. No matter what iPod you want to buy, Wal-Mart will sell it to you for precisely $1.12 less than Apple. And I'm assuming that Wal-Mart eats that loss themselves in the hopes of selling iPod accessories to you while you're in the store.
Capitalism is capitalism, and I don't begrudge Wal-Mart for the quite successful strategy it uses. But let's face it: for the most part, you get what you pay for. I'd much rather keep enjoying the $150 DVD player I have in my family room than some $30 P.o.S. from an off-brand Chinese manufacturer who only sells it to Wal-Mart because the remote control is incomprehensible and the components aren't expected to last a year.
I can say BRAVO for not selling to wal-mart, you wouldn't BELIEVE how customers would abuse their 80$ Craftsman or MTD mowers. We were a Snapper dealer as well and did warranty work (and NOT very often!). IF we saw a snapper come in for repair, it was usually the engine or normal wear parts (belts, springs, blades, etc...)
In the Motley Fool Radio Show several weeks back, they were discussing the Walmart Effect and how Snapper did not want to do business with Walmart because it would have ultimately destroyed Snapper current business.
y Id=5301103
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
I'm... blown away by this advertisement for Snapper. What makes this a SlashDot worthy article? I used to be a professional writer. I pitched stories on two technology related startups (who will remain nameless so as to respect the editor's right of refusal) to SlashDot that were very relevant. The first was about an open iTunes publisher who puts your music up for sale for a flat fee (ties in with digital music rights, open source). The second was a new web based real estate company (that I'm the CEO of, but they knew that) built on 100 percent open source software, promoting affordable housing by taking a team approach with real estate purchases. Now I'm fine with these kinds of stories being turned down, if SlashDot's policy is to avoid anything that might even be considered free advertising. They'll have to pass on some very relevant pieces, but that's the price you pay. Sure, a reasonable policy. But after seeing this, I have no idea what to think. Maybe Jeff just loves their products. Maybe he liked the writing. We may never know. All I can say is: This piece was an advertisement, pure and simple.
Bill Ricardi - Jigsale LLP
"It's an excellent book (Yes, I've read it)"
And thanks to Hemos now you have too !!!
Now all we need is someone to say no to slashvertisements.
Are you bored right now, but harbouring a good sense of humor? Here's a joke in time for April 1st:
I called a service dealer around the corner from my house and asked if they carry Snappers, and so can you! They do, they're listed on the snapper site. So make a store clerk's day interesting. Give them a call and ask if they have Snappers too.
EAST COBB LAWN MOWER SERVICE
2995 JOHNSON FERRY ROAD
MARIETTA, GA, 30062
(770) 587-3955
And if you aren't from the US, ask in your native tongue while you're at it.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Every higher organism on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but Wal-Mart does not. It moves in on a brand, and it consumes and consumes, until every shred of credibility is destroyed. The only way it can survive is to spread to another brand. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Wal-Mart is a disease, a cancer of this planet, a plague - and hippies are the cure.
ConsultingFair.com
And as an added bonus, your robot with the whirling blands will make the neighborhood kids and pets steer clear of your yard as well as fertilize your lawn with the ones who don't.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
This is why I own a Snapper ZF.
There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
That's the impression I had. I live in Wisconsin, San Antonio may as well be in China as far as being concerned "local"
Man, that is a terrible name for a company...s asshoes. (I am very childish-I know this )
While this was more a book exerpt than a book review (actually, what exactly was that intended to be?), it was a good read. I'd never heard of Snapper before, and as a broke college student, I do most of my shopping at Wal-mart.
I've actually worked at Wal-mart, too. It's not the soul-sucking lowlife job that many would have you believe, though most of my coworkers weren't exactly the greatest bunch. While I wasn't there long enough to actually cash in on any of the benefits (thankfully,) what they offered seemed to be well enough, considering the job.
In any case, despite having worked there, I don't like Wal-mart because of their by-products. Most of their wares are crap (though useful if you want, say, a pot for just a few uses), and their stores are usually messy. I don't so much mind the whole "running the local places out of business" thing- after all, that's free market. I do have some problems with how they make their prices so low. Lastly, they seem to pander to the lowest of the low class- grossly overweight parents with three unbehaved children who buy a piece of tupperware, use it thrice in the microwave before it melts, and then tosses it out.
Part of the landfill problem is that people are okay with buying something on the cheap, tossing it out, and buying it again. Buying long lasting products for a bit more cuts down on waste.
Wal-mart is usefull for helping those on poor income, but it causes more problems than it solves, methinks.
In any case, now I think I'll buy a Snapper if and when I own my own home.
Where are mod points when you need them? That was a wonderfully put together takeoff of Agent Smiths line from The Matrix. Bravo!
Speaking of mod points, how come I haven't received any for months? Did I piss someone off?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
This article really hit home, HARD. My dad used to own a consumer electronics (TV, Stereos, vcrs, dvds) and appliance store (washer, dryer, refrigerators) and lawnmowers including Snappers. He chose to sell and service good quality brands, and did so for quite a long time.
My dad had to sell his entire shop for just enough to break even. He now works 5 jobs and about 80 hours a week just to pay off his personal debts.
Walmart was part of the reason, but the attitude of "It it breaks, buy a new one" so permeates the atmosphere that it is impossible to compete.
My grandfather built his business on a premise that every customer wants the best quality item money can buy. Wal-mart proves him wrong completely. Customers are idiots.
I'm happy to say that I live in a Walmart-less town. Unfortunately we do have a Kmart (pronounce Kmart as "Came-apart"), though no Target (which is "Tar-zhay", being someone more refined). Luckily, though, my town has a decent amount of tourism and can support quite a bit of small-town business, which I'm happy to partonize.
Henry Ford's context for those amazing wages was that he was the first, or one of the first, mass production automobile manufacturers, had little or no competition, and could afford to not sweat the salaries in order to hire the best workers. No one ever mentions that, they make him out to be some magnanimous altruistic nice guy who liked paying his workers fairly. He was not. He was just as cold blooded as any factory owner and later proved it when he had competition.
Infuriate left and right
If they made them, then they aren't an economy that doesn't make anything. And if they didn't make them, then they got them from someone who does, and since we are talking big scary guns here, theft is unlikely, meaning they acquired them thru trade of some sort. Which means they must have had something of value to trade, but where did that come from?
This confuses me.
Infuriate left and right
What's the 'real' difference between the two? I assume the auth. dealer version sells for higher price and I would also assume the quality and sound reproduction is superior...
But is that actually the case?
Blar.
Your ideas are insane! How would such an enormous monolithic entity ever hope to be effective!?
Just as the Gov't screws up the army, so would the Gov't screw up healthcare.
Wait a minute...
Blar.
Look, if you want to bash someone, then bash all the Walmart customers for keeping them afloat.
It's like bashing Hollywood for putting out all the smutty movies, bash the people for BUYING them.
How about RedWings? Not Detroit hockey, Red Wing MN shoes.
My last two mod points expired this morning, you definitely deserved one of them. That was great.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Next time I am in the market for a new lawnmower, I know which one I'm going to look at first. This is my kind of company.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
The off comment about robots was the most interesting thing to me combined with the reduced number of employees.
As robots get better, they are going to increasingly challenge humans for low skill (and some high skill) jobs.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Apparently you've never seen a slashvertisement before.
I don't know what you mean by that, but I can tell you this: I'm going to rush right out and buy a Snapper lawn mower right away! It sounds like a really fantastic product! I'd hate to wind up with one of those other, inferior lawn mowers for less money.
Now if only I had a lawn...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Heh, I wasn't expecting mod points on that (not positive ones, anyway) but I'm glad just to know someone got the reference!
Go back to AR, shill. Wal-Mart is FORCED to sell brand-name goods at MSRP in some cases because of very strong brand names. Saunter into the personal music player section. Notice that, particularly after Xmas, the iPods have been pretty well cleared off the shelves, while the racks still groan under the weight of Phillips, RCA, and other MP3 players. At the moment, if they don't offer iPods, they basically won't sell MP3 players, so they're forced to sell at pretty much the same price as everyone else.
For other goods where they've got the suppliers by the balls, if the product isn't currently crap, it soon will be.
Luke, help me take this mask off
every single problem people have with walmart is overcome with one salient observation: walmart is cheap
this observation conquers all
there is a disconnect between people's personal ideas about how walmart should work and how much they want to pay for their stuff
as a wider observation, the most entrenched liberal or conservative ideologue, even after decades of rants and fights, will often wind up acting in ways completely against their multiply-stated ideals
a social conservative will fly to canada and get an abortion, and a socialist wal-mart hater will insist on the lowest possible price on everything they buy
why?
because we're all selfish, and anyone who tells you they would never do {xyz} is exactly the kind of person who would, because they are weak idealists
we all are
we can think mighty fine in the abstract, and get quite inflamed and impassionate about whatever issue is stoking us at that particular moment, but in concrete terms that effect someone directly, pure selfishness always wins out
welcome to human nature
we are all weak and shallow
anyone who tells you differently is probably the weakest and shallowest of us all: blind to ones own nature
because when you are confronted with paying $6.99 for the same widget that costs $3.99 somewhere else, no matter what your ideology is, you're spending the $3.99
and, unfortunately for all the walmart haters, this observation trumps all of their rhetoric
i'm not championing walmart, i'm simply signifying to people who spout off on the issue that there is a issue which trumps all of their words: no one wants to pay more
so go ahead and fight walmart, be my guest, but try to understand human nature and the reality of human behavior first before you propose some idealistic scneario which no one will buy into
go ahead and work against walmart, but work against them in the realm of reality of human nature, please
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why should the employer pay for health insurance? Where is this written? Should he pay your car insurance too?
Look people, Wal-Mart provides poor people with low prices, so they don't need as much money to live on. So Wal-Mart also "subsidizes" society by making the cost of living lower.
Wal Mart drives prices lower and lower, forcing suppliers to move their production offshore. This means that we're losing manufacturing capability in this country, and we're losing the manufacturing jobs.
Good, if other countries can do it cheaper, better for all involved. Besides, the US should be moving to a service-providing country - they have the highest per-capita incomes anyway. Why is /. so socialist?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Many, many companies have been destroyed or assimilated into something they didn't wish, because they were beguiled by the promises of quick riches at Wal-Mart (an dthey're not alone).
*That's* why it's news. Almost nobody says no to WM without being punished severely. And it's been a huge thorn in our economy. WM has, indeed, brought some good into the fray, but they've brought at least as much bad. IMO, even more bad.
With all the truckloads of mowers being sold, those 650 workers must be millionaires!!
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
In Oregon, we like our Target stores clean and our hippies dirty.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
..*SOB* what a touching *sob* story, I nearly *sob* passed out with *sob* emotion, especially *sob* *sob* the touching *sob* part about *sob* dipping in read *sob* paint. And when *sob* he was forced to *sob* sit on a *sob* folding chair, *sob* *sob* I thought my *sob* heart would *sob* burst.
...
Oh *sob*, the inhumanity of it all *sob*, of his not *sob* wanting to sell *sob* his products to *sob* Walmart. *sob* *sob* Maybe *sob* I should *sob* check into my *sob* local Walmart *sob* *sob* for an extended *sob* vacation. *sob* *sob*
Couldn't this whole story be summarised as "He didn't want to sell lawnmowers to Walmart, so he didn't", instead of this long, dull tirade?
By the way, what the hell does Walmart or Lawnmowers have to do with "news for nerds, stuff that matters"?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
It was just some lawn chairs that some other peddler had left behind as samples.
Maybe Microsoft had just been through, and thus they needed new chairs in a hurry.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I've got nothing against Wal Mart getting rich. I have a big problem with them getting rich at the expense of the rest of us. All of the things I've pointed out are *negative* effects of Wal Mart's activities, and these cost the economy as much as any contribution to the economy that they make.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Good, if other countries can do it cheaper, better for all involved. Besides, the US should be moving to a service-providing country - they have the highest per-capita incomes anyway.
Interesting statement. I was just curious, which are the countries now that have a "higher per-capita income" and are service based? We (here in the US) have the highest per capita income because we are effectively robbing Peter to pay Paul (as it were). Having a service based econmy only works well for those few sitting at the top that own the corporations that are providing the "services". For the rest of the "service industry" workers - life sucks and will continue to suck worse as time goes on. Wal-mart does nothing but facilitate an all out race to the bottom.
No doubt, you are preparing to lecture me on how "they" need to get out there and get an education. I sure hope they pick the right major. If they make the horrible mistake of choosing computer science, or electrical engineering, or chemical engineering, or bio-tech, or ANYTHING else that results in the creation of some end product, they can kiss their future good-bye and head back to Wal-mart for work. I've always wondered why the HR or accounting departments rarely seem to get outsourced. I mean really, why is that? They are both providing a service that is no more than glorified data entry and processing and for all intents and purposes could be moved off shore just as easily as tech support or IT. Why, yes, that sounds like a great idea!!! THAT way, companies are REALLY focus on their core competencies! Making executive decesions and scalping money from the public for providing middle-man services!!! Does anyone other than me see this is a bad idea?
It is not that slashdot is SOOO socialist. Its that the "right wing" of your party has gone SOO far to the right that someone who was once considered a centrist (myself) looks socialist to you.
The answer lies somewhere in the middle. As a country, we'd be royally fucking ourselves if we go to a purely service based economy. We NEED to maintain something of a mix to ensure security against failure of one particular segment.
From another angle, have you ever asked yourself the question: How do you suppose a "service based" econmy turns around to produce the materials neccessary to defend ourselves during time of war? Do you plan to throw Wal-mart greeters at the enemy?
Corporations are the only ones who have enough money for things like benefits.
Bull. I have worked for everything from Mom-n-pop to huge healthcare, and I will tell you this -- small, well-run organizations almost always have better health benefits than corporations. Why? Because they can least afford their employees to be sick.
It's true that some small-business owners don't offer health benefits, largely due to poor cost planning. Such places usually suck to work at anyhow, and the market tends to take care of them.
The central point to this whole thread is being hugely missed: employers offer health benefits because it attracts better applicants. The rising costs of health care are making health benefits an even bigger consideration when one is looking for employment. Of course, socializing health care would probably result in better salary competition as organizations are relieved of the benefits burden, but public healthcare is a complex issue.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Actually, what you're saying is, in fact, probably true. If your goal was to insure everyone in the country at the lowest rate possible, then the most efficient way to do it would be to only have one giant insurance company, and one risk pool.
However this ignores several things. First, and what I think is most important, is by eliminating all competition in the insurance industry, you would remove any impetus to become more efficient. Such a company would probably become hideously bloated and turn into a giant cash sink, employ many times the number of people it actually needed to operate, and would be beholden to basically nobody. Since there wouldn't be any alternatives for customers to switch to, their level of service could also deteriorate to rock-bottom.
The argument you're making is the classic argument for centralization in an economy. "Hey, everyone wants to have a car -- why don't we just make one really big car factory? It'll be really efficient." True, but not everyone wants the same car, and even if they did, eliminating the competition in the marketplace to build better cars would probably over time eliminate the advantage of centralization.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
reach a gentleman's agreement to collectively tell Wally World to agree to their terms or fuck off.
It's very easy to tell a retailer to find another supplier. Simply command a price higher than they are willing to pay and the retailer will find someone else willing to play the game. No collusion necessary.
Walmart is here to stay for the forseeable future. Just like Sears before it.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Admittedly, I'm not 100% certain that politics is a worse motivator for a health care provider than money... Only 99%.
I admire you, that you can take it when the kids ride by on their bikes laughing, and calling you "dweeb", "dork", and "fred".
They do both. Just because they pay people with very low skills that other places won't employ a low wage does not mean that the workers aren't getting what they deserve. Likewise, experienced good workers are much better compensated at the company. There is a small percentage that does not like the place but is too lazy to quit. Due to the company's huge size, the mindless Wal-Mart bashers have hammered on the issue of this relatively-small group of workers in the hopes that most people will forget that while it is a lot of workers, it is a small percentage. The company has succeeded because it treats its workers, by and large, quite well.
"It has killed the mom and pop thing in smaller towns."
I've scoured the Web and other resources for any instances of Wal-Mart killing one single business. It turns out that they don't kill businesses. Some competitors, however, choose to kill themselves by making lousy decisions such as overcharging for products and services, and also by providing poor service (such as extremely limited hours).
It's not Wal-Mart's fault if I want to buy a light bulb at 7:30 AM, and I can either go to Wal-Mart and buy it in minutes, or go downtown and wait 2.5 hours for the downtown True Value hardware to open its lazy doors....and the True Value ends up selling fewer lightbulbs. The downtown True Value is making its own decision to throw away business. Wal-Mart isn't telling it to lock customers out.
"It has killed entire companies (vlasic pickles comes to mind)."
Vlasic made its own decisions, not Wal-Mart. They also have a pretty nice web site http://www.vlasic.com/ Since they are out of business, it must be run by some pickle-loving nostalgic freak, right?
I didn't need to read a 1000-word essay telling me about it.
;)
It was a 3420 word essay. Next time RTFA.
Snapper makes a decent mower, but similar quality mowers can be found at far cheaper prices.
Bah! Bah, I say!
I've mowed yards professionally for years. Even thought about going back to it lately, as the exercise and pay is actually better...
But anyway, we used Snapper mowers. Tried a few others, but always went back to the Snappers. They ran. And ran and ran. And then kept running. When they did break, it was easy to fix ourselves. Once per mowing season each one would break the damn spring that controlled the self-propel, but it was a 5 minute fix if we had a replacement ($5) in the truck, or a 10 minute fix (at most) if we had to break out the needlenose pliers and expanded the broken spring and use some bailing wire to rig it all up. Aside from that, it was just usual maintenence, sharpen the blades every month, watch the self-propel belt, keep the filter clean, keep crap out of the gas and oil.
We liked that the body was kept the same for years and years. Made it real easy to mow at the proper height for each yard, didn't have to fiddle around with different heights on different mower brands, or even different models of the same brand, which was a problem with some of the other mowers we'd tried.
We also liked that it was easy to bypass the stupid kill switch crap. It's a pain to have the engine die if you let go of the handle, so we'd rewire that crap. Well, the pain is that you then, usually, have to push the mower onto the sidewalk or driveway to re-start it, which costs time. Not a big deal for home users, but a big deal for us.
I still use one of our old Snappers for my personal lawn mower. In fact, damnit, now y'all have reminded me that I need to use it tonight :)
This is Fast Company copyright. It should not be up on Slashdot without permission.
But if it is at Wal-Mart, it has to be inferior low-quality crap salt!. It's those cut-rate sodium atoms with weak bond fields that go into it: purchased from Chinese slave labour sodium factories just to shave off a few cents. Shameless!
Because if you don't offer proper health insurance, the community gets pissed off at your behavior. They then stop shopping with you, and encourage other people to stop shopping with you. Why? Because it is in their best interest. Once people stop shopping with you, the company starts to lose money, and share holders lose money.
If we are going to go with the assumption that corporations have no obligation to behave morally, then we have to go with the assumption that the job of keeping them in check must be taken on by the consumer. So the grandparent is doing the right thing by exposing the immoral behavior so that the consumer can get pissed, and use their buying power to make change.
I, and many peple I know, will spend more money in a local owned shop, then any chain.
Twice as much? no, but then I have never seen any chain have the same item for half the price as a mom and pop. Almost always within 20-0% depending on the level of item cost. The more expensive type of item, the less difference there is.
I don't go to wal-mart. I have known people who have been in management, and the stories they tell are amazing. The red lining books, telling companies how to operate once they become dependent on WAL-Mart sales, getting a company to make a cheap version of it's product, then using it against that same company.
Yes, business want to make money, but that does not oblidge them to behave poorly.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I must be missing some great part of the experience, then. I always thought that the measure of a good videogame console was the variety of games and the quality of play (including the controller), not the chips inside elegance of the placement of the circuitry. Silly me; I have learned my lesson. I wonder if I can get my PS3 with a screwdriver set instead of game controllers: the true enjoyment of a game console is in opening it up.
Domestic producers get forced to go abroad by the reseller(s), just to be able to keep on producing.
Hmmm,
Quality in products goes down the drain.
Hmmm,
And it is all the fault of the company (Wall-Mart in this case) who does the selling?
Hmmm,
60-80% (look it up) of american economic value is contained within a little thing called IP (of which brand-names are a part).
Hmmm,
The support for IP is falling. Worldwide...
Hmmm,
I might get to think there might come a bigger problem soon.
And it is not downloading movies!
Tis cute how so many people are bashing Wal-mart. I'd bet most of the people posting here and saying those things have salaries above the national average (around 38 grand a year). There's a reason why it's the average (here's a hint: Most people have a salary around there). These people can't AFFORD to buy anything but the "cheap crap".
As someone who's had to live near the poverty line, I didn't give a damn what the quality is, as long as the price was good. Moms and pops can't offer those prices because they're inefficient.
As an aside, Wal-mart stock is priced very attractively right now. If I had the cash, I would buy some stock and hold onto it forever. Maybe I'll get rich enough to never have to step inside a wal-mart again.
There are brand-name products at Wal-Mart, but they're usually lower-end brands and they're almost always bargain-basement quality or last year's model (superseded by this year's improved model which sells even cheaper but that Wal-Mart doesn't carry). For anything that's brand-name and acceptable quality (meaning "it will outlast its warranty by a significant margin"), you can almost always get it cheaper online or even from another retailer: for a SanDisk 256 MB USB flash drive (SDCZ2-256-A10), walmart.com lists it for $22.88, NewEgg for $17.22. Assuming Wal-Mart's in-store prices are comparable to their online pricing, unless I need that flash-drive right now, I'd be an idiot to waste the time and gas to actually go out and buy it at Wal-Mart. Net result: I pocket the 85 cents I save after buying it and paying shipping at NewEgg, and go out and enjoy my new flash drive (or whatever) while sipping a cup of good-quality coffee two or three days later.
It's obvious that Wal-Mart specializes in cheap "just good enough to get a sale" products to anyone who's spent 5 minutes in there. Notice, for example, all the "Durabrand" electronics. This (if you didn't know) is the Wal-Mart house brand (for electronics at least), and apparently the actual manufacturers of "Durabrand" products are whoever will make the product at a price point Wal-Mart likes. Even in the packaging the stuff looks like cheaply-made, flimsy crap to me.
Sadly that seems to be exactly the type of consumer Wal-Mart caters to: people who want their shiny right this very second, and damn the fact that they could do better than their "always low prices" elsewhere or that the goods they buy will quite likely fall apart into dust, figuratively at least, the day after the warranty expires.
Some other commenter mentioned that all he buys there is plastic tubs and such. That's Wal-Mart's area of expertise all right: cheap plastic crap.
-- Old Man Kensey
The one in Kenosha WI is a total pigpen, I'm afraid of even walking on the floor, let alone eat in the grimy cafeteria next to the smelly bathrooms.
OTOH, just north on Schuering Road in Green Bay it's an absolute gem, sparkling clean and brightly lit.
All this means internal management in WalMart is uneven and floundering and suffering massive growing pains. They're growing too fast too soon and I'll guess there's vicious infighting and politicking ala Office Space or Network. In ten years WalMart will make a great movie after it goes the way of Sears/Woolworth's/Newberry's/adozenotherchains.
which brand do you use?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A lot of Wal-Mart's dominance is predicated on the idea that you can buy stuff there and be reasonably confident that you got a good value for your dollar -- maybe you didn't get the cheapest deal you could have on every item, but close enough that the time and aggravation saved going to every store in town makes up for the extra you paid. These days that's becoming less true, with the ability to check out websites for even small mom and pop shops and know with certainty exactly where the best deal is. And with the rise of tools like Froogle, it's becoming even easier to do that kind of comparison shopping from the comfort of your recliner. How that will affect Wal-Mart's operations remains to be seen.
-- Old Man Kensey
It's important to note that first, there are NOT that many companies refusing to do business with Wal-Mart. More precisely, there are not that many companies who deliberately choose lower volume with higher quality and margins when they actually have a choice.
Second, some of the ones that are doing business with Wal-Mart are quietly selling a second tier of quality, and diluting their own brand value. Snapper chose not to do this. In my opinion, that may be the most significant point of the Snapper story.
I'm not saying that Wal-Mart has no value to the American economy. But, I will say that the huge success of Wal-Mart's "screw quality" attitude says things about the bulk of Americans that make me uncomfortable.
I had forgotten how much cooler teenagers look when they are smoking. Oh, wait
Unless, of course, you like to mow the lawn. Or make money monwing lawns. Or have a really big lawn with many obstacles. I grew up on an acre and half with 105 cypress trees and knees in the back yard, a lake, a fence, and hedge.
Or the property I am looking at: 9 acres.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
How do you make one lawn mower in 109 seconds? In same way that two women make one baby in 4.5 months, probably.
Yes, it's "short shot" so you get less espresso, but it doesn't taste quite like burnt dog shit. If given the choice to walk across the street to anything else, I will. Otherwise, I'll order my double ristretto tall mocha. It's still not as good as almost anywhere else, but you won't gag...
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
At even $138, the lawn mowers at Wal-Mart are cheap enough to be disposable. Use one for a season, and if you can't start it the next spring (Wal-Mart won't help you out with that), put it at the curb and buy another one.
Better yet, think ecologically instead of economically for just a nanosecond, and make the $138 machine last 15 years. It will. Mine has.
I knew he was a Nazi sympathizer, but I had no idea how much.
The link says that $5 a day was only available to white males of high morality, who had to have their homes monitored by the Ford Co., and the offer was rescinded soon after.
Incredible how blind some people are.
Infuriate left and right
to understand what impact the retailer has on the economy. I read Fishman's book too, and what I took away from it was that Wal-mart has reached, or is rapidly approaching, the size where it is necessary for the government to monitor and to regulate the Bentonville giant. Fishman does say what to do, although he recommends some possibilities. As an example of the companies power, Fishman cites an MIT study that shows the company single handedly distorts monetary policy. The Beauru of Labor and Statistics track a 'basket of goods' on a periodic basis. Any change in the cost of those goods is reported back in the Consumer Price Index, and this is often used as a proxy for inflation or deflation. The MIT study shows that the change in inflation is being overstated by 15% each period because the BLST can not process Wal-mart's prices in its current model. Inflation is one of the indicators that the Federal Reserve uses to set interest rates, so the decision to raise rates yesterday by a 25% point was based on erroneous data. So you have to pay more for your mortgage because BLST can not handle Wal-mart. Fishman wrote his book because he felt that peeople needed to understand the company's impact.
The Big Yuan - tracking mainland China
Charles Fishman, senior writer for Fast Company magazine has recently published a book entitled The Man Who Said No To Wal-mart. It's an excellent book (Yes, I've read it) that talks about the intersection of making good stuff, the commodization of products, and the changing world that we work in; not exactly high tech, but tech nonetheless.
Every year, thousands of executives venture to Bentonville, Arkansas, hoping to get their products onto the shelves of the world's biggest retailer. But Jim Wier wanted Wal-Mart to stop selling his Snapper mowers.What struck Jim Wier first, as he entered the Wal-Mart vice president's office, was the seating area for visitors. "It was just some lawn chairs that some other peddler had left behind as samples." The vice president's office was furnished with a folding lawn chair and a chaise lounge.
And so Wier, the CEO of lawn-equipment maker Simplicity, dressed in a suit, took a seat on the chaise lounge. "I sat forward, of course, with my legs off to the side. If you've ever sat in a lawn chair, well, they are lower than regular chairs. And I was on the chaise. It was a bit intimidating. It was uncomfortable, and it was going to be an uncomfortable meeting."
It was a Wal-Mart moment that couldn't be scripted, or perhaps even imagined. A vice president responsible for billions of dollars' worth of business in the largest company in history has his visitors sit in mismatched, cast-off lawn chairs that Wal-Mart quite likely never had to pay for.
The vice president had a bigger surprise for Wier, though. Wal-Mart not only wanted to keep selling his lawn mowers, it wanted to sell lots more of them. Wal-Mart wanted to sell mowers nose-to-nose against Home Depot and Lowe's.
"Usually," says Wier, "I don't perspire easily." But perched on the edge of his chaise, "I felt my arms getting drippy."
Wier took a breath and said, "Let me tell you why it doesn't work."
Tens of thousands of executives make the pilgrimage to northwest Arkansas every year to woo Wal-Mart, marshaling whatever arguments, data, samples, and pure persuasive power they have in the hope of an order for their products, or an increase in their current order. Almost no matter what you're selling, the gravitational force of Wal-Mart's 3,811 U.S. "doorways" is irresistible. Very few people fly into Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport thinking about telling Wal-Mart no, or no more.
In 2002, Jim Wier's company, Simplicity, was buying Snapper, a complementary company with a 50-year heritage of making high-quality residential and commercial lawn equipment. Wier had studied his new acquisition enough to conclude that continuing to sell Snapper mowers through Wal-Mart stores was, as he put it, "incompatible with our strategy. And I felt I owed them a visit to tell them why we weren't going to continue to sell to them."
Selling Snapper lawn mowers at Wal-Mart wasn't just incompatible with Snapper's future -- Wier thought it was hazardous to Snapper's health. Snapper is known in the outdoor-equipment business not for huge volume but for quality, reliability, durability. A well-maintained Snapper lawn mower will last decades; many customers buy the mowers as adults because their fathers used them when they were kids. But Snapper lawn mowers are not cheap, any more than a Viking range is cheap. The value isn't in the price, it's in the performance and the longevity.
You can buy a lawn mower at Wal-Mart for $99.96, and depending on the size and location of the store, there are slightly better models for every additional $20 bill you're willing to put down -- priced at $122, $138, $154, $163, and $188. That's six models of lawn mowers below $200. Mind you, in some Wal-Marts you literally cannot see what you are buying; there are no display models, just lawn mowers in huge cardboard boxes.
The least expensive Snapper lawn mower -- a 19-inch push mower with a 5.5-horsepower engine -- sells for $349.99 at full list price. Even finding it discounted to $299, you can buy two o
Read the rest of this comment...
The funny part is, how many Walmart frequenters have ever even heard of this brand? (Admittedly, I grew up in a Craftsman household)
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
The bigger problem is having for-profit insurance companies make health care decisions for people. Companies are required by law to maximize profits. These same companies then get to decide what level of medical care you get. If that's not unethical, I don't know what is.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I don't know the best way to fix it, I just know that this particular problem occurs in capitalist countries, but isn't inherently part of capitalism. There are many artificial constraints that could solve it, the question is: Which is the best one, How will we get it passed into law, and most importantly, how will we enforce it?
Well, Lexus *is* Toyota, and I think most people would agree that a Honda Accord is better quality - as in, less prone to falling to bits in normal use - than any modern Audi or BMW.
That actually kind of *earns* Wal-Mart a couple points in my book. :)
Good, if other countries can do it cheaper, better for all involved.
Sure thing. And when nobody has a job...
they have the highest per-capita incomes anyway.
That becomes false! Three cheers for the picket fence!
Manufacturing was the reason for the high incomes. U.S. don't build shit no more. When you don't build nothing, you don't matter in the economy. Simple as that.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Is there anyone to blame here other than the consumers? Personally, I think I may look into one of those Snappers for my next mower (although I totally dig my Black & Decker no-muss no-fuss no-oil no-gas cordless electric mower and may just get the latest version of that), but the consumers want good deals. I like to buy the nicer things, but I get my T.P., tissues and other life basics over at the local K-Mart.
Being vague just in case Wal-Mart ends up buying my current or future employer.
I spent a week at the Home Office in Bentonville assisting with IT issues. At the end of my stay in front of a group of about 20 people they offered me a job.
After I recovered from the initial shock and lack of tact (and being from California, long hair, beard, and a bit too old to do the squiggle part of the company dance) I said the only thing that came to mind...
"Would I have to move to Arkansas?" and laughed. I noticed I was the only one laughing, lol.
Needless to say the offer just kind of went away. I got the feeling a no answer was not what they were used to. Has this happened to anyone else?
p.s. If you are stuck working nights in Bentonville, Waffle House Bad, Waffle Hut good.
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the U.S. is borrowing money to buy products from foreign countries with unemployment checks?
Anyone else bothered by the fact that entire towns are being closed because Wal-Mart says "your product is too expensive?"
Can anyone explain what the fuck "your product is too expensive" has to do with the free market? Isn't "too expensive" the customer's decision?
Anyone bothered by the fact of both record budget and trade deficits while 50% of working-age adults are not employed full-time?
Or is everyone just fine with their neighbors being thrown out of work while they rack up another five figures on the 28% credit card for a plasma TV?
Can anyone tell me what "circling the bowl" means?
This isn't about low low prices. This is about low low standard of living. It sucks and it's getting worse.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Move to Canada? The problem here is healthcare tends to fix doctors at certain rates. Despite them still being paid well, many skilled physicians would rather try to be millionaires, and move to places like the USA. The hospitals themselves become large burocracies (sp?), with corners being cut everywhere to meet a budget.
Having a countrywide health plan is a good idea in theory, the problem is the concept of everyone actually accepting said plan. Medicaire here depends on your family size (if not paid by the employer) and we still do have 'extended medical' for over-and-above coverage, pills, etc - usually paid by the employer.
Perhaps a better system might be a tiered-level government medical system. If you pay more, you're covered for more. The current system charges based on the number of people in the family unit, not the wealth/coverage of the person himself/herself, and some people under a certain bracket pay nothing at all. Good for them, but not useful for those that pay for the unemployed chain-smoking dope addicts who work for minimum at age 32 or possibly just collect welfare (not to imply that all people in minimum-wage jobs are such, nor are all welfare recipients undeserving).
With any government system, it seems there's a huge potential for it to be abused or taken advantage of, which is a bit part of the problem here in Canada. Personally I'd rather something more along the lines of a well-regulated Crown Corp.
Arkansas has pure quartz. Lovely, lovely stuff. I still have a bucket of nice stones from the time I went there tourist prospecting and camping out. Probably gave away or made into jewelry 150 lbs of nice points. Never did make it to go look at the diamonds though..sometime I will. And last I knew they still had decent affordable prices on nice farmland/small mountains type land. If I wasn't content with where I lived now I would consider northern Arkansas as a very nice place to live, especially if you could score a telecommute job.
I know Wal-Mart sells books. Most book stores that sell books cost too much. So is Wal-Mart going to sell the book? Or did the publisher say "No" to them too?!
While I don't agree with everything the parent poster said, he makes a useful point. Snapper is now essentially a division of the company that makes its engines, and a friend of mine who repairs lawn mowers is quick to point out there are only two manufacturers of lawn mower engines in North America. The pressure they ducked from Wal-Mart could easily come back from Briggs & Stratton.
The parent poster deserves to be modded up Insightful, not down as Troll because you don't like what he has to say or he disagrees with the premise of the article.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
that you are so rich you can afford your misdirected ineffectual idealism
frankly, walmart does more to help the poor in this world than you, by employing them to make the stuff you won't buy
not that walmart is good, walmart is evil, it pays these people shit
but they still do more good than you, however paltry it is
what do you do? you reward ineffectual economic systems, because you are rich, lud, and dumb, like a lot people in the west
your effect on the poor in this world with your actions?
zip, zero, nada
oh why must we suffer the loud ignorant ineffective souls in this world?
who know not one bit of how they and their actions fit in the larger scheme of things
and pat themselves on the back smugly, for actually doing more harm than good, simply because they lack the ability ot think critically about simple cause and effect and their role in it all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's chaise longue, retard.
What you need is incentives to keep costs under control.
Otherwise you will keep the costs under control by rationing care like in Canada and England. That's just the historic record.
People do shop for health care, you're just not in the right age group to notice yet. What do you think old folks talk about (their kids, grandkids and their health/doctors).
Regarding preventive care, sure it's cheaper. But there is more going on then just money. Denial also keeps people away from the doctor untill things become expensive. There is no simple solution. Many insured people don't get their checkups on time.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The problem is that the idealists are in the minority, while the shallow whiners who will do anything to save a buck are the majority.
#1: this is a static state of humanity. this is how it has always been, how it is now, and how it always will be forever more, in all cultures that have ever existed and ever will: idealists are the minority. most people are realists. realism works better than idealism in the world. furthermore, it is the idealists who are often the loudest motherfuckers in the room. they are the whiners. most level headed people go about their lives in peace and quiet. it is the nutbag idealists on the fringes who always are the loudest, screaming the loudest baout whatever loony idea they have or fringe cause they champion
#2: that idealism is the minority is not a bad thing. idealism is often also an oversimplification of how human nature works. a lot of idealistic ideas about how things should be, depend upon people acting in ways they never will. idealists are often ignorant of simple human nature. so, in the end, idealism is nothing more than simple ignorance. and, even in situations where idealists can set the agenda, they often do more harm than good. because any system of how things should work that is at odds with human nature, winds up creating more suffering than any problem the idealists think they are solving. simply look at your friendly religious fundamentalist for an example of what i mean. idealistic attitudes about the "problem" of walmart are the same: the cure is worse than the disease. a teenager knows the answers to all the problems in the world exactly because they have no real life experience. while with more experience you have in real life, the more wisdom you have about real human nature, the less you feel you really know. life is complex. any oversimplification of the complexity of life only leads to suffering. idealism is all about oversimplification
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Employers should have no connection with the health system and neither should individuals. The best system, one that is practised in Canada, Cuba, almost all of Europe and tons of other countries is a government supplied, universal health care. Everybody gets good service and everybody pays equally according to their means. It's about basic human dignity and support of your fellow man. As soon as money gets involved it's survival of the richest.
This was a very nice read. It told a story that I was interested in, it came across with an interesting and unique viewpoint, and it told the story in a compelling way. I'd love to read more stories just like this one.
I actually really enjoyed the 1000 word summary of the book/story. I found it informative, entertaining and newsworthy. I don't feel the need to read the entire book anymore.
I wonder what the useful life is of a brand that has been Walmartized? Not very long I think, at least it wasn't for Schwinn and Mongoose bicycles after they sold their brands to the dark side. Even though both brands maintain "enthusiast" lines of bikes I never see anyone out on the trails riding either. It didn't take long for the brand's reputation is reversed, bike shops won't carry Schwinn and Mongoose and enthusiast riders won't ride them becuase of the Walmart stigma. Kudos to Mr. Weir for saving the quality and interity of his company.
Most of all, what I can't understand is why people would shop at Walmart for a bike or a lawnmower in the first place. At least for me trying to save money on machines that have engines and whirling blades or that you would potentially travel at high speed on just doesn't make much sense. Oh well, I guess thats just evolution at work.
How many millions did buisnesses kill in the twentyth century? Far fewer then governments.
We still have'nt found a good way to select leaders. All that is apparent is that anybody who wants to lead should not be allowed to. I'm for selecting the president and congresscriters by lottery (of actual voters).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
(somebody had to say it...)
If you are really interested in all things Walmart you might want to visit: http://thewritingonthewall.net/ The site has lots of stories about Walmart and links to various activist sites as well. The topic is much more complex than some might think. The simple questions of quality and labor rights are only part of issue. Before you spout off (when has that ever stopped anyone) read up and then make informed comments...
-- Robert D Feinman Landscapes, Panoramas, Photoshop Tips and Musings on Society
THIS IS NOT A TROLL - I JUST KNOW THAT SOMEONE READING THIS PROBABLY AGREES WITH ME.
Why is it here? Other than to validate the "I HATE WALMART" and "WALMART SELLS CRAP" memes on Slashdot? Is there anything remotely "for nerds" in this article? And does it "mattter" much to anyone other than Snapper and Wal-Mart?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The Wal*Mart Phenomenon is quite real and well documented. The PBS investigative journalism show FRONTLINE paints a very telling picture of Wal*Mart's economic strategies in the show "Is Wal*Mart Good For America?"
What you need is incentives to keep costs under control.
Medicare keeps medical costs under control better than any private insurance company. The government uses the exact same mechanism as the private carriers -- they negotiate specific rates they will reimbuse for a procedure. The only difference is that the government doesn't also need marketing expenses and profit, which takes another 20-50% out of the actual medical care provided by private insurers.
Get a job in a hospital in the US sometime, you'll see that medicare and private insurance operate almost exactly the same, the only difference being that medicare doesn't waste as much money on "other stuff". People complain about government bureaucracy, but Medicare can be a downright easy process compared to most private insurers if you're doing anything more complicated than getting a wart removed.
Otherwise you will keep the costs under control by rationing care like in Canada and England. That's just the historic record.
Health care is always rationed, and it is rationed more by private companies than it is by US government health insurance. Insurers do everything possible to keep you from ever actually getting expensive care. Dealing with Medicare or the Veteran's Administration isn't always convenient, but there is no deliberate hurdle-jumping placed in your way as there is with private care. There are no claims processors looking for excuses to deny coverage so that you're stuck with half a needed treatment and a hundred grand of debt if you want to continue.
People do shop for health care, you're just not in the right age group to notice yet. What do you think old folks talk about (their kids, grandkids and their health/doctors).
I'm not in the right age group as a buyer, but I did work in public/private healthcare for the last decade so I have a more than passing acquantaince with the process. Old folks talk about care, but only the wealthy ones can actually afford to change providers. If you've got a solid retirement savings that covers long-term care, that's great, but that covers maybe 5% of the health care customers in the USA, and they aren't the ones anybody is concerned about.
Many insured people don't get their checkups on time.
Denial and other human foibles are certainly factors, but when it comes to private insurance you also have to realize that people are often genuinely scared of going to the doctor if they think something is wrong. If they find out they are unhealthy, they could lose their job or insurance, because now they are a "risk". God forbid you discover you have diabetes or another chronic but livable condition -- your premiums will become crazy (or you will be outright uninsurable) if you pay for your own coverage, or you will become a huge liability to your employer if you don't.
We've put people in a lose-lose situation where it is BETTER for them to willfully ignore health problems as long as possible, all because we refuse to accept that it makes no sense to make health insurance a market commodity. Nobody can do without it, everybody needs it, and if you tie it to emplyment, all it does is put people's jobs in jeopardy when they do, inevitably, get sick.
It reminds me of the old joke about democracy -- of course government health care is a horrible, horrible idea. But it is still better than all the alternatives.
In theory, everything you say is right. I support the free market, believe it comes up with the best solutions through competition, and find government sluggishness to be incapable of meeting the changing landscape of needs. Unfortunately when it comes to health insurance, for many reasons theory and reality part ways and the free market has somehow managed to provide worse care at higher cost while not even being able to cover those most in need of the service!
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I am proud to say I have only been to a Walmart ONCE (the closest is 45 minutes away) and I didn't buy a thing. I'll shop Target any time. Walmart is way overrated IMHO.
Is he implying Toyota Camry and Honda Accord's are low quality cars by this statement...
HD Trailers
they actually sold American products. But once he passed away they gave up that belief and just started selling cheap goods. I usually shop at Kmart if I have to, not that their really better as far as prices and selection go, but I try to pick the lesser evil. As far as clothes go, well Target, Sears, JCpenny have decent, wearable stuff at least, stuff that isnt Nascar or Western wear. I wont buy stuff from the Gap since they exploit people in other countries (sweatshops) but really the whole clothing industry does to some extent.
Yes, but they don't do edges very well, or handle thick-stemmed or tall weeds, or under low-overhanging shrub branches, or heavy, lush grass growth.
That's why at the time I bought the 5HP battery-powered Black & Decker mower to replace the reel mower.
Nowadays, I just let my sheep take care of things.
My partner works at Wal-Mart and their new policy is that they will not take back iPods nor iPod accessories. Even if you just buy the wrong one or the wrong color, you must deal with Apple. Wal-Mart will not let you return it. Don't get me started on Wal-Mart. It's awful.
Debian unstable Registered Linux user #226117
My blog:Real Health
It's ALL crap.
Worthless trash that will be clogging up land fills in 10 years, or a lot sooner than that.
So yes, it is all crap.
Save your money and invest or take a fun vacation.
Yard Sales are full of crap.
Every Manufacturer should be forced to pay a landfill fee for each product they sell,
in proportion to the size, mass, and toxicity of their products. Perhaps when companies
are forced to pay for the clean up, they will reduce product size and eliminate wasteful packaging.
Make the law retroactive, then bill the f&#kers who built 3 mile island. The clean up costs for dismantling that one facility is estimated to be somewhere above 2 or 3 years of the whole GSP (gross state product). TONS of the site will be classified as toxic waste for millions of years. Where do you put toxic crap?
iPods are toxic crap, Sony makes plastic crap.
If it's not food or clothing, it's crap.
And at least real crap (feces) is biodegradable !
An omniscient man said 'No' to Walmart today. When asked where the local poor people should then go to buy bread, Mr. Omniscient replied that they should eat cake instead; that eating cheap bread was socially irresponsible and causing children in Africa to starve to death.
"Look, I have a degree!" shouted Mr. Omniscient in frustation "so of course I know whats best for you, you fat selfish FOX News watching neo-cons! You should be buying cakse from Patisserie De Snoob, its much more healthy tasty and isnt so low priced as to hurt our local economy. Low prices are bad for everyone. Why do I even try? None of YOU have a degree in gender studies!"
Since saying No to Walmart, Mr. Omniscient's brother in law Mr. I.M Pretentious, owner of Patisserie De Snoob Bakery, reported sales went up a staggering 1.5% in 6 months.
"At this rate, in another year Ill be able to hire an employee and pay them a socially responsible wage of $15 per hour. Much more than they would have gotten at Walmart."
And it tastes like glue.
It is an inferior product and ultimately probably not very good for you. So it might be leading to more health issues that we will all (in the long run) need to pay for.
And it may have long term implications for the grain industry (farmers, grain coops etc).
So, to what extent are we subsidising the "crap bread" industry?
Wal-Mart we know about - studies have indicated that each year in California alone and for health care alone, taxpayers are subsidising Wal-Mart to the tune of $800,000,000 per year. (Did any voters approve that?) (This leaves out things like having to upgrade roads to service Wal-Mart stores, traffic costs, costs in "quality of life" that come to a neighborhood when Wal-Mart moves in and so on ....)
I'm not sure that subsidies are entirely a Bad Thing - but shouldn't we really get to decide somehow which ones are good? And if we must subsidize Wal-Mart, shouldn't they put more of the profits back into taxpaying workers instead of tax-avoiding managers?
Why do I suspect that the parent poster owns Wal-Mart stock?
I agree with most of what you're saying, but something needs to be cleared up here. I've worked as a general cashiering peon at two Wal-Marts, one in Utah and one in California. I've had health insurance through them both times. It isn't particularly great health insurance, and varies by state, but it also isn't non-existant. I also get dental, paid vacation, sick days, and personal leave. I get a profit sharing bonus, a 401k, and if I want stock they'll contribute. The wages aren't particularly livable, but they compare favorably to any other starting retail job in the area. There are opportunities for advancement and I've never caught them altering my time punches in any way.
This doesn't excuse any of the greater negative societal impact Wal-Mart has, nor does it apply to every Wal-Mart everywhere, or even every Wal-Mart in the United States. Like any chain store, individual people in management at the local and semi-local level have ample opportunities for screwing their employees and creating future lawsuits. The company as a whole has had some really hideous policies in the past, but as far as I'm aware lawsuits and general public outcry have forced it to shape up its treatment of employees in the USA.
to switch-over to foreign made goods. For a LONG time, they chose US made products over others, but finally economic reality (or lack of caring on the part of US consumers) forced them to give that up.
I DARE you to look at ANY store's goods and see where it is made. Unless you look really hard almost everything is made overseas.
While admittedly not being the definitive expert in lawn equipment, I do not consider Snapper to be a premium brand. In fact, this article strikes me as a combination of Walmart bashing and Snapper advertising.
Anyone who has ever actually had to live in a small town (where there wasn't much competition in retail) will tell you that the local stores charged a huge premium for their goods and the entry of (in my case Kmart) a big-box type retailer into the local market was a godsend.
As far as Walmart being unfair to their workers, I suspect alot of this comes from the labor unions who were used to obscene wages for grocery clerk type jobs. Now, don't get me wrong, they deserve a decent wage, but the wages they were earning were out of control. I remember union cashiers making ~ $18.00/hr to start back in the late 1980's. This was more than the average new engineering grad would earn at the time. This situation needed a correction and I suspect that alot of the anti-Walmart talk is just sour grapes from those who were used to that kind of excess.
As far as premium lawn mowers, why would I buy from snapper when it sounds like (from the post) that they use the same engines as everyone else. I mean the engine is the most likely part to fail, so who wants to spend 3x the price for the rest. It would have to be a LOT better for that kind of price delta. Now if they used some super duper different engine (or electric motor with comparable power to a gas engine or maybe biodiesel or methanol) and industrial diamond coated blades or some other revolutionary stuff fine, I'd consider it worth the money.
>and hippies are the cure.
I took two hippies and I am calling you in the morning! Of course if it does not make me better, I am gonna SUE!!!
I don't have a lawn and after to reading that article, I want to buy a Snapper, but if I had a lawn, I'd have an illegal imigrant do it, who probally got his mower at Walmart.
"I don't agree with that at all. All cars today are so similarly designed, with bits here and there often engineered by the same people, and even come out of the same plant. Durability wise, you'd be hard pressed to find a car that just doesn't keep up with any other."
/even when they come from the same supplier/. For instance, I know of one tire where company A paid more, in order to have the higher quality ones (each tire is tested for balance and force uniformity), whereas company B accepted the next 25%. Things lke wheel bearing assemblies are usually custom designed for each application, so similar parts from the same supplier could have different specs and tolerances.
Check out JD Powers surveys of reliability. They more or less agree with the confidential industry supported surveys. For instance - my 21 year old Toyota is still trundling along. I doubt many 10 year old Hyundais are. Hyundai's quality has improved massively just recently, not really possible if they all started at the same level.
Quality/reliability is split into several phases - 3 MIS (3 months in service) through to five and ten year surveys. Unfortunately most of the low MIS stuff is dominated by paint faults and so on, the really interesting thing is how the mechanical relaibility shapes up over 5 years - that is where the US makes generally catch up.
I'd also disagree about the quality of parts
Why should the employer pay for health insurance? Where is this written? Should he pay your car insurance too?
.. especially since an employer with multiple employee's is going to be responsible for a *lot* of cumulative health, and can thus use this to its advantage in getting its employees superlative insurance.
since you're spending a great deal of time using your health to bring profit to your employer, why shouldn't the employer have at least *some* responsibility for ensuring that you stay healthy?
your health is something that is vital to your employer. without it, they don't have an employee. this is why there should be some involvement in health insurance
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
In the unlikely event that such a thing was enacted, they'd only pass the cost onto the consumers anyway - exactly what happens with the Belgian recupel.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Actually, Australia had exactly this scheme and it worked for many decades until we got a government who has tried to move us in the direction of the US system. I know many people who have come here from the US and commented on how simple and effective the heatlh system is (I believe canada has the same system?).
I just stopped reading at this point. This article is so saturated with artificial sweeteners it makes me gag.
Oh the humanity! The end of the Proud and Tall US worker! Everything is outsourced, nothing is left to the common man!
Boo-fucking-hoo. It's your own damn fault. Welcome to the end of your era.
Bot Assisted Blogging
I'm surprised they had room to print this among LaRouche's claims about aliens and Queen Elizabeth dealing drugs. If true, it turns out to be a meaningless bankruptcy: Vlasic is still selling pickles all over.
Yeah, sadly I still need to use a noisy weed eater for edging and such. I'm going to go with something battery powered one of these days, although currently I'm using a crappy second-hand wired one. I am entirely sheep-less.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I've got a Scotts Classic. It was $120 at home depot, it's adjustable height, feels plenty solid, and according to my quick and dirty internet research, is reasonably well regarded. It's worked well enough for me, although I have no prior reel mower experience to base my opinion on.
Basic maintenence consists of rinsing it off with a hose, and then spraying it down with WD-40 after each use. The blades will eventually need to be sharpened, and since they're complicated curves, it's supposedly hard enough to do that you're better off having a professional do it with the proper jig. I forget how much you can cut before they suggest you get that done, but I did the math for my small yard, and it ended up being like 3 years worth of mowing for me. Score.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
You forget one of the players. A corporation is a social construct created under the laws of the state in which it incorporated, with certain rights and privileges only as granted by the state. (EG: that creditors cannot usually go after shareholder's individual assets if the company cannot pay its debts.) It is equitable for the state to be able to impose duties, since it has granted rights.... duties such as requing them to pay for employee health insurance, since otherwise it will increase the state's medicare costs.
Alternatively, you can take a more practical answer. A corporation is a part of society. Large segments of society feel people should be able to get health insurance. If they get unhappy enough for long enough, you get a revolution, either legal or violent. If your corporate policies don't help the problem, you get viewed as part of the problem. If you're the target of the revolution's ill-will, that's bad for the corporation's continued prospects. Or survival. Or the survival of the major stockholders... depending on the nature of the revolution.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Welcome to the welfare state. Is what many of us aim for, actually.
The filesystem is the package manager
"I guess it's a real statement about US society that people have become so short-sighted, that they only look at short-term cost rather than long-term value." In the long term, if you keep buying overpriced stuff just because of the country that makes it, you end up losing a lot of money. That is more short-sighted.
Wal-Mart shouldnt carry specialty store goods (lawnmowers, sewing machines, water softeners, dishwashers, larger furniture, pools, etc). if a manufacturers has to create something blatantly inferior just to sell at Wal-Mart, they shouldn't. eventually it will get to the point that the manufacturer cannot produce anything other than the cheap wal-mart crap version (since there would be no other outlets), which cant be repaired at all. only thrown away. plus, by carrying "knock off" specialty store goods, wal-mart drives these specialty stores out of business. once the specialty stores are gone, they'll set their sights higher up on the food chain. remember those small scale computer stores that actually fix the products they sell? those will be gone. grocery stores? those will be gone. corner stores? gone too (or bought out and renamed "Mini Wal-Mart"). in a small community, a wal-mart kills off the competition slowly. to the point where there is just wal-mart, some restaurants, and some kind of factory. wait, not even a factory. it closes down because that company has to move production overseas to cut costs and meet wal-mart's price demand. then wal-mart leaves because the only people in the community with income are those working at wal-mart. wal-mart is a parasite. but a parasite we're hooked on. kicking the habbit will bring pain and sacrifice, but we'll come out better for it. either wal-mart has to change, or wal-mart has to go. on another note, i was once a wal-mart employee. its a tough life. having to give 4 to 5 week notice for any time you want off, being told the policies and then being told to do things contrary to them (and then being scolded for either going against policy or following it), being treated like crap by people who smile and tell you you're the most important person. and then they tell you you're being paid a top-notch rate and have lots of room for improvement meanwhile people there for 4 years still havent been upgraded to full time, then the full time people still have to get welfare from the government so they can affoard food and a place to live. only the managers could affoard to have their own home. i left when my requests for safety improvements in the stock fridge and freezer went ignored(its a scary thing when you realize that you could be buried in a fridge or freezer for an entire shift before anyone would find you, possibly longer if they weren't stocking that stuff that night). they still ignored it even after a worker's comp incident. let me tell you, milk crates stacked a dozen high are mighty tipsy. and mighty cold when they're on top of you. luckily i could reach my cell phone after working at it for an unknown length of time, or i really would have been there all shift. in a way, a call center is better, because they don't disguise the fact that you're temporary, unimportant, and in a crap job. so in conclusion, this article tells it like it is. i think i'll print the entire thing out and read it whenever i feel the need to go shopping. boo wal-mart.
No they don't. It is their choice to demand welfare. Wal-Mart certainly pays the full-timers enough to live on, as long as they don't want filet mignon every night and a house with a huge yard. The poverty is not a result of the adequate pay. It is the result of the wage-earner wasting money and living extravagently. You can save a lot of money if you get a used car to avoid car payments, go in with a roommate to avoid expenses, and stop buying the latest DVDS and ipods. If there is any good point to be made here, it is that there should be welfare reform so people who make such an adecquate full-time living are barred from receiving welfare payments.
Bought a Snapper at WalMart about year before the meeting in TFA. Marked down $50 to $250. I'd walked down the road to a locally owned farm supply/authorized Snapper dealer where I saw the same mower for $100 more. YTF would I would I pay the highest price? Maybe the anti-walmart wackos would be placated if I remitted $100 to Mom&Pop FarmSupplier so they can live their lavish lifestyle I can't possibly hope to afford. Don't worry, Mom&Pop are going to get that money anyway because the seam on the fuel tank split and gas leaks out onto the motor.
Stihl sells through a dealer network like Snapper. Everyone pays MSRP. Three years after spending $360 on a Stihl trimmer and $220 for its attachment I now have a piece of scrap metal that an additional $230 will turn back into a running trimmer. Could've lived the rest of my days destroying one big box trimmer after another and come out ahead.
"Quality baked goods are expensive - and they don't taste much like what most people think they should."
You sound like someone who is sore that few people want to buy vastly overpriced baked goods, as if you tried to run one of these boutique bakeries. Bread is bread: the difference you see is evidence that you are duped by market deception, not of any difference in quality.
Has anyone been to a National Park managed by the United States/federal-appointed United Nations parks management service? Yosemite is one such park. A Mom 'n' Pop's two-topping large Pizza in a town would cost USD 11, while a two-topping large Pizza of the park managment service monopoly in Yosemite costed uS(A) USD 19.00. A popular explanation is they have to incur greater shipping and handling costs due to the isolated nature of the park. That is bogus, because Yosemite has a long established postal route and road alongside the common ways, and is the career height of every trucker to lumber through the narrow winding asphault on the asscrack of the mountain. It's a luxurious way to enter the anti-federal Federal Wilderness area encroached upon within a State of the state. Yosemite is just another incorporated land for a development project that is producing such large amount of revenue; regardless of what is said, it is stolen from the native indians that the US Army threatened and raped from the area. There are new buildings being constructed every month, and there are residents with complete community development plans for the YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARKS SERVICE employees to rent. By the "employee qualifications" for YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARKS SERVICE, there needs not be a state Citizen or federal State citizen to qualify.
At "the gate", I spoke with a few federal-employed subjects of the Crown when I was there and they confirmed this. I suppose that treaty signed for the conlusion of the Revolutionary War for Independence qualifes Yosemite as one of the navigable rivers from where the Crown can navigate onto. Story short: Walmart is the weapon of the grand ol' USA. I say we advocate The Company (CIA) to begin its Patriot Training Network to air-lift a WALMART right in the middle of that hip/moist crater of grass and trees we call Yosemite. The park service should be bankrupt in a Year. The federal government (plural United States) is only allowed to exist durring war, and with all it entering commerce, when is the United States not violating its sacred public trust of the people when it competes with a corporation the people have a right or security interest within (such as interest in Walmart corp stock, not just buying the crap-stock on the store shelves)?
In related news, Walmart is not the only body corporate to hurt the interests of ventures of body politic; Walmart is nothing more than the hermaphrodite (I can't determine if it's either brother or sister to) relatives Homo Depot, (hung)Lowe's, Ace Hardware, Osh, IKea, Mars, etc. They are all equal blame in deplating the nutritional value of foods and the quality of tools. Show me a tool fabricated, assembled, and marketed in America that is not a monopoly. That's why I save my precious aluminum and Sandcast my own tools to sell. All the specialty jobs that are drying-up in America need specialty tools that aren't available at the national monopolies.
without prejudice
You think the NSX is the acme of all things mechanical? Wow. I've dropped turds that performed and looked better. The only wise choice you've made thus far was to post as an AC to spare yourself from humiliation. NSX? Hah. They were cool when they first came out
Take a gander at all of the 6 cylinder sports cars you find, and you'll find that the Germans make cars (naturally aspirated Porshce 911 Carrera, BMWs, and Audi B5 platform S4 twin turbo) that not only have stronger engines than the NSX, despite being just a tad larger but have just a little more weight! Then the extra weight shouldn't be a suprise, as two of the three have comfortable room for FOUR AVERAGE PEOPLE, and despite being made of STEEL, one of them actually having (4) doors!
You know why they've stopped making NSXs? They've finally realized that their pathetic midengine offering was being out performed as a sports car by cars costing many thousands less, having more people and luggage room, and being infinitely more drivable at the same time! They've gone back to the drawing boards to make a car that is less sucky!
You can keep your 90 grand jap POS... I could go out and by an Evo or an Subaru Impreza STI for about the same and not have to do a bit of anything, and still be faster around the corners. Furthermore, It's only a tiny bit faster than a stock M3--I'd much rather get a $50,000 kraut burner, slap some stiffer and lower suspension and better tires on it, throw out the back seats, and proceed to humiliate your dream car in the straights, and in the corners.. And best of all, not look like a tool doing it.
I know why you posted AC--simply to spare yourself the humiliation your stupidity will bring upon you.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Good answer...I wasn't expecting one. :)
The closest thing we have to Walmart is probably the grocery chain Woolworths. They were a great supermarket when I was growing up. Then they started undercutting small business. They started a petrol (gas) station chain that was several cents cheaper, with special offers (spend $30 at the supermarket, save 4c/litre at the pump). The smaller stations without the buying power struggled or closed. Then Woolworths started buying the local liquor stores, some of them just so they could close them. They would sell wine at lower prices than the local restaurants could get wholesale. Then their major competitor, Coles, had to start using similar tactics. I think it stinks. You shop with the big boys to save money, you send money out of town, and surrounding local economies suffer, not to mention the families that have spent generations building the local businesses.
Poker machines have arguably had a similar effect on pubs/bars and sports clubs, although they don't belong to any particular institution. Once they were legalised about ten years ago they became the main revenue-raisers, and the hotels couldn't compete just with drink sales any more. Now you're hard-pressed to find one without them, and they wreck thousands of families through gambling addiction. One of South Australia's most respected politicians (he received more votes than the whole of the main opposition party) is called "No pokies". The pokies are not quite Walmart, but they seem to have a similar effect.
This sig is covered under the GPL.
Wal-Mart doesn't play dirty. Serving the customer better can never be called playing dirty. They don't do what Woolworth does: buy competitors and close them.
"You shop with the big boys to save money, you send money out of town"
This happens with any company. The little "mom and pop" place might be sending money to a retirement home in another state, for all you know. The "big boys" pay local employees a lot of money, and they spend a lot in local taxes.
The US didn't, and that's why we have both the most expensive health care on the planet and the largest percentage of people who don't have medical coverage at the same time.
Are we better off? Only the people who have major financial interests in medical insurance companies can honestly say "yes".
Tech Public Policy stuff