Wal-Mart is opening 282 stores.
Don't fall prey to click-bait.
50 year old stores get closed.
Walmart strategy drives growth and sustainable returns, Plans $20 billion share repurchase program over two years
I work for Walmart. The past few years they talked up the Walmart Express as the next big thing at our meetings. Lately it's about competing with Amazon.
So, I needed an HDMI cable yesterday. Walmarts site. Found what I wanted, showed in stock at my local store for $6.93. I could of course buy it online and pickup in store, or since we were going there anyway, I decided to just stop in and get it. I should have known better.....
Back to electronics, looked at the selection in the HDMI cable section, cheapest cable hanging there was $19.99. I pull up the one for $6.93 on my phone, to double check it was shown as available at my store, it was.
A walmart worker comes by and I asked if I needed help. Told him and showed him the HDMI cable on my phone which had a walmart number attached to it.
Got the look of a deer in headlights. He had no idea where that HDMI cable may be. So, I deduced that the only way to get that cable at that price, was to stand in their electronics dept, order the cable online with my phone for $6.93, then walk up front to customer service to pick it up.
But by this point I was ticked off, left the cart with other items in it we were going to purchase and went to target.
I could of easily ordered it from Amazon, got it in two days with free shipping at the same or lower price. Walmart is the reason I started reloading, I got sick of going down there and not able to find anyone that had a key to the ammo case. Yet they think Amazon is their entire sales decline problem.
My wife has worked for Walmart the last 20 plus years. Over those years many of their benefits have steadily declined. I love how the company proclaimed in a lot of commercials lately about giving their associates pay raises and that they were thinking about them. Since that time many stores have started to cut their hours to make up for those pay raises. So now they make more pay an hour but the same as they did before the pay raises because they are working less hours. Then today the wife was telling me that more pay was being cut. Years ago employees were paid time and a half on Sundays, then it was changed to an extra dollar an hour for Sundays and then that was taken away. Those employees that were already receiving that pay for Sundays were still getting it. Now they are going to take that away from long term employees. My wife collected time and a half for Sundays, but not no more.
The major reason Walmart has gone down hill the last few years is because of manning reductions in their stores. There is just not enough people to get the job done. Super Centers had over 500 employees 15 years ago now they have 350 to 400. Another way to cut cost is to reduce manpower.
It is sad that a multi billion dollar company has so many employees that receive public assistance. These public subsidies are what allows them to keep their overhead costs down.
As a company they have also driven many companies out of business and pushed others overseas to compete. They have such a market share they have the ability to dictate to their vendors what they will pay them for their product to be put on their shelves. What are their suppliers to do - reduce cost or not have their product on shelves in over 1,000 US stores. They are the bully on the block.
I am a big fan of Amazon. They are competitive with almost everyone and they deliver. I do not even have to leave the house. Amazon may become the next bully on the block but for now I like them.
So you raise the wage of your employees without adjusting other factors and end up closing stores under the guise that they weren't performing well. Again they say they will raise wages and not adjust other factors so who knows maybe this is their way of pushing people to their website while keeping those stores that sell sell sell open while closing ones that are mediocre.
If they didn't increase prices they were thinking more people would shop due to the fact they pay more now. It was like the pizza joint in Cali the guy started paying his employees 15/hr or what they want to raise it ended up having to raise prices on his food and cut out the lunch buffet before closing down completely. I think walmart was gambling they would get more shoppers to offset the raise in wages, but after holding out and seeing it not work had to close those stores.Not adjusting other factors? Seems like they are doing exactly that by closing less profitable stores that can't support the wage increases. Increasing prices in a competitive environment (both brick & mortar retailers and online) is a losing strategy for a company that has built their customer base on a low-price, low-service model. Those customers will quickly run to other retailers if they become less price competitive. What other factors can they adjust?
Betting a $200 billion business on an example from a small software company? If so, the entire management should be fired.