codell.. no kidding.. and then Eckerds builds right across the street.. now that cvs is taking over Eckerds though I thinik walgreens will probably be happy.. i think eckerds probably had more customers than cvs that might switch over to walgreens.
I dislike Wal-Mart for many reasons, but mainly because they have destroyed so many small family businesses in little towns across America. I don't have a problem with Target because their aim as a store is just different. They cater to higher end clientele so they really don't compete with mom and pop stores like Wal-Mart does. As a store, I just never found Wal-Mart that appealing. It's noisy and always crowded. They often ban music and movies I might want to hear/see and the place always seems like it needs to be cleaned.
Remembering living in a smallish town before Wal-Mart came, all I remember about mom and pop stores was poor service, very limited selection and high prices. If Wal-Mart hadn't killed them, the rise of mail-order and Internet shopping would have (and in terms of grocery shopping, which is the bulk of my Wal-Mart shopping, the corner grocers were long gone by the time the Wal-Mart Supercenters showed up). Local business can still compete, too, it just takes trying harder than it otherwise would have. Amarillo is a potentially interesting case study in terms of beating the chains. There are several examples of locally owned businesses in Amarillo that have fought the big chains and won, in areas from convenience stores (Toot N' Totum) to banking (Amarillo National Bank) to books and music (Hastings) and any number of restaurants. And people don't shop those stores or use that bank because they have some inner pride that requires them to "buy local". They do it because those businesses are better-run businesses that offer better service, selection, convenience, whatever to their customers. They have the customers they have because they earned them.
You may not have to worry about that Eckerds for much longer. JCPenney sold Eckerds about a month or so ago, part of it to CVS and part of it to The Jean Coutu Group. In all likelihood, the Eckerds stores will be converted to CVS or, in cases like the one MR. MEOWGI describes, closed.
I don't get this complaint about Wal-Mart either. Sure, mom and pop stores can't compete with them, but if their target market is low income people, don't those low prices benefit the market they cater to.
I'll give you a perfect example: record stores. There used to be many independent music chains and nearly as many individual stores. Now, Wal-Mart, represents nearly 25 percent of major label distribution. In some areas of the country, Wal-Mart may be the only place within 100 miles to buy music at all. Now, they carry around 750 titles each year. There are 30,000+ titles RELEASED each year. In addition, they have very strict rules about content meaning that if you live in a small town with a Wal-Mart, you only get a TINY percentage of the music that is available somewhere else and no other music store will attempt to compete with them because of their size. And, I'm not sure what mom and pop stores mrpaige has been to, but when it comes to service, I'll take an independently owned store over a chain every day of the week. The one's in town I frequent know me (often know my name), know the things that I like, point out good deals, etc. I have never gotten that at a big chain.
That's true. I hate that Wal-Mart chooses to sell only censored album and major label albums, it really sucks. The service there is also subpar to what you would find at a localy owned store. Here is am example: At Wal-Mart I asked for a certain item and they didn't even look they just told me "Go to K-Mart and you'll find" At a locally owned stored here named Hays, I ask for the same thing and they are much more pleasant. Like I said the prices though, you just cannot beat. The same product I would have bought at Wal-Mart cost over a dollar more at Hays. Now sure it might not matter when you're buying one or twon items but if you were grocery shopping that could add up to some nice savings.
What a lot of people don't think about is just how Wal-Mart is able to get their prices so low. Although it is fairly well-known that they skimp on their benifits, that's not the only way they cut costs. Due to their enormous size and clout in the industry they are pretty much able to dictate to suppliers what costs they will pay for products. On top of that, they are also powerful enough to dictate what costs suppliers give to other retailers by threatening not to buy if the supplier gives the same cost to somebody else. And since the suppliers have to sell to Wal-Mart at such low costs, they have to do things like skimp on quality just to be able to turn a profit themselves.
The neighborhood that is near that area (Taylor and I-10) is about to 'blow up' - become really popular. Once the yupps start seeing those houses back there and how much they currently are, they are going to start snatching those little houses up, that area will be popular real soon. Mark my words.
codell. exactly. and now that eckards is being taken over by cvs.. well walgreens will be the only one of the 3 I now shop at
I think a lot of them are better now, but when I was growing up, service was often a dirty word at a lot of places, probably because there wasn't a whole lot of choice. No point going the extra yard if you have a captive audience. The mom-and-pop stores that have survived have done so oftentimes by offering better service than one can get from a chain (as a matter of fact, people will often pay a little more in order to get better service). But back when I was younger, you didn't get that kind of service, by and large and then you got higher prices and less selection to boot. To me, it's no crime to make business owners have to work a little harder and to offer something the market wants. Your specific example of a record stores makes me think of the fact that, back in Amarillo, a friend of mine opened an independent record store. He fills a niche that Wal-Mart and Best Buy and even Hastings fails to fill. Four years after opening, he's doing very well despite the competition.
Of course the danger of the extreme influence and buying power of the big chain stores is their ability to squeeze out the little guys in deals such as best buys exclusive deal with the Stones The concentration of power is never a really good thing. I'll continue to buy local -- even if it costs me a bit more.
I guess you and I just had different experiences. I always had MUCH more luck with small stores and compaines than with larger one's. As for your friend, he's a rarity. In Houston, all but about 5 independent record stores have gone out of business. In most small towns, all of them have gone out of business.
