I saw this on another BB and can see it happening right here in my little town. It's a shame - but I can't see how small business can survive this onslaught...
The post is very long so please endure...
DrDan
WHERE IT ALL STARTED
Bentonville, Arkansas has, according to its Chamber of Commerce, two claims to fame. It was the sight of the Battle of Pea Ridge - "The battle that saved Missouri for the Union" - during the US civil war. But right on the heels of Pea Ridge is Sam Walton's variety store in downtown Bentonville. This is where the Wal-Mart juggernaut began.
The store that would become the largest retail chain in the world opened its doors in 1953. In less than fifty years, Wal-Mart has opened almost 4000 stores in the US and seven other countries including the People's Republic of China. Wal-Mart has 144 stores in Canada, 12 of them in BC.
Wal-Mart came to Canada through a buy-out of Woolco stores across the country. But Wal-Mart did not buy the whole Woolco chain. Those Woolco stores that were under UFCW contracts were not purchased. Instead, they were closed, throwing hundreds well paid union members out of work. Wal-Mart's notorious anti-union philosophy would not allow the retail giant to keep people employed at fair wages in communities where the jobs were desperately needed. But ignoring the needs and prosperity of the community is a hallmark of Wal-Mart.
A SIMPLE FORMULA
There is nothing complex or mysterious about how Wal-Mart has become the largest retailer in the world. Here is how it generally works:
• Wal-Mart looks for large parcels of land on the outskirts of a community. They look for land zoned for industrial development because it is the cheapest land to buy.
• Most often a community does not even know that Wal-Mart is interested in their community. The company hires developers to act as a front for it, buying the land under the developer's name.
• After the land is either purchased, or an option to buy, for industrial prices, the developer shows up at the local municipal council applying for a zoning change for the land from industrial to commercial. If such an application is successful, two things happen: first, the value of the land Wal-Mart just purchased automatically increases (Wal-Mart has made money before they build a "big box"); even if the community does not want a Wal-Mart, they have one.
• Wal-Mart then builds two things on the land, a big box structure (some as large as 220,000 square feet and more), and a mega-parking lot. Wal-Mart thinks landscaping is kerbs and white lines on blacktop. It is big and it is ugly. Once it has the four walls and the roof up it is ready for business! Sometimes Wal-Mart will scatter a few trees and shrubs around to satisfy city councils, and on occasion they have been forced to change the facade of the big box in order to secure the rezoning.
When the store opens for business it will provide the broadest range of products at the absolute cheapest prices anywhere in the immediate market. Consumers living in communities from up to fifty miles away will travel to shop at Wal-Mart just based upon price alone. And they will travel by car, doubling, even tripling, the traffic experienced by the community before Wal-Mart came along.
What Wal-Mart has built is a huge economic and social vacuum cleaner that will such the socio-economic lifeblood out of communities in a matter of a few short years. The whole economy and social structure of the community is all but destroyed. Virtually nothing goes untouched!
[return to top]
HOW DOES WAL-MART SELL SO CHEAP?
Most retailers purchase the goods they sell from wholesale companies or distributors of specific lines of products. The wholesaler or distributor buys product directly from the manufacturer in much larger quantities than the retailer can so they get a better price form the manufacturer. The wholesaler/distributor then sells the product to the retailers in the smaller quantities they require at a marked up price. That mark-up is the wholesaler/distributor's profit. It is a system that has worked well since the industrial revolution. That is, until Wal-Mart came along.
Wal-Mart is so huge that it buys direct from the manufacturer. In some cases, the retailing monster purchased all the product a manufacturer can produce. In most cases, Wal-Mart buys even more product than a large wholesaler/distributor can buy, allowing it to pay even less for the product than a manufacturer would charge a wholesaler/distributor. Now Wal-Mart can sell the product retail for even less than the wholesaler/distributor can buy the same product and sell it to other retailers.
For example, a small book store located in the downtown shopping area of a community or in a mall may buy two or three dozen copies of the best selling book. Wal-Mart will buy tens of thousands of copies of that same best seller and sell them in their stores for less than what the small bookseller can even purchase them for from the publishing house. Consumers can buy the same book for less than the cost to the local bookstore so they stop shopping there. Slowly the small bookseller goes out of business leaving only Wal-Mart to sell the books. Then Wal-Mart raises the price on the books it sells.
There are variations on this scenario, but the bottom line remains that whatever Wal-Mart sells is cheaper than any other retailer in the immediate market.
There is no doubt that what Wal-Mart does is good for most consumers. But the value the consumer gets is only superficial. What consumers save on their purchases they will pay for later in many different ways!
But at the end of the day, is Wal-Mart really cheaper than other retailers in a community? Studies of Wal-Mart pricing show that initially when a new Wal-Mart opens their prices are lower, but after competition is reduced prices rise to the levels they were at before Wal-Mart opened.
[return to top]
PREDATORY PRICING AND TIME TAKES CARE OF THE COMPETITION
The truth of the matter is that Wal-Mart has no competition. Not even those retailers considered to be large by other standards can compete with Wal-Mart. Not even Safeway, Inc. has been able to successfully compete against Wal-Mart Food Centers in US. How then would Canada Safeway, Overwaitea Food Group, Westfair, IGA, or Coopers compete against Wal-Mart here? The reality is they would probably do no better than their American cousins. The number of retail outlets in a given community is based upon the number of consumers and the amount of disposable consumer income that exists in that community. As the population of a community grows, the number of retailing opportunities increases and new stores and businesses open to supply the needs of the increased population.
In some cases a retailer will find a niche in a market that is not being satisfied by existing retailers and will open a store directed to that niche market.
Wal-Mart operates from a completely different set of rules. Rather than determining whether or not the population of a community, or the projected growth of the population, can sustain another retail operation, Wal-Mart determines how successful it can be pulling the existing consumer bases away from other retailers in the community and driving those retailers out of business by selling products at lower prices.
Studies in the United States show that it takes about three years for Wal-Mart to kill off any retail competition in a given community. The large retailers like Safeway, Inc. and Kroegers are usually the first to go along with the smaller regional chain stores. They have experienced Wal-Mart in other parts of the US and know that competing against the monster retailer is impossible. They've learned the hard way that they are further ahead cutting their losses right at the beginning. They close their store and sell off the land and buildings. When they leave, so do the people they employ and the good wages they earn.
The traditional Mall is usually the second to go. Malls are based upon having a so-called anchor store, like an Overwaitea, that draws consumers to the location. While the consumers are at the Mall doing their grocery shopping, they might as well drop off the dry cleaning, get the shoes repaired, buy that new pair of jeans at the clothing store, and so on. When the anchor store goes, so do the customers, and one by one smaller stores in the Mall close until the Mall is empty. Meanwhile, the stores on Main Street struggle to stay in business. They use different marketing strategies, but they can't market if the consumers are driving to the edge of town to Wal-Mart. When Wal-Mart can sell a bicycle cheaper than the Ye Olde Bike Shop can buy it from the wholesaler, it doesn't take much time before Ye Olde Bike Shop is just a memory. And so goes the clothing store and the hardware store and the department store, slowly turning Main Street, Downtown, or whatever you call it in your community into an urban wasteland.
But who cares? Consumers will get the cheapest underwear they've ever seen at Wal-Mart!
The question is, do you want your community to be a healthy economically vibrant place that offer variety and social settings where people meet, stop and talk to one another? Do you want a community with small businesses that provide a livelihood for people who live in the community? Do you want to have jobs that pay a fair wage, provides benefits and offers a future? Or do you want cheap underwear.
[return to top]
EMPLOYMENT
One of the first arguements you will hear, normally from municipal politicians and others in the community, in favour of Wal-Mart opening one of its big boxes in your community is that the opening of a Wal-Mart will create jobs.
Not true!
In fact, studies show that for every minimum wage part-time job Wal-Mart creates, the community will permanently lose 1.5 full-time jobs over a three year period. These lost jobs are normally ones that pay above minimum wage and provide benefits such as medical coverage for employees.
The jobs offered by the small businesses in your community are normally jobs that pay above minimum wage and offer some level of benefits to employees.
But more than that, they provide entry level jobs for young people in the community. They teach young people how to work. They teach them about small business. Wal-Mart will eliminate this critically important economic benefit from the community.
[return to top]
THE TAX BASE WILL INCREASE
Another arguement from the municipal politicians, and another one that is not true!
First, the community has to pay to service the land Wal-Mart will occupy. Roads, traffic signals, water, sewer, policing costs and fire fighting services all have to be paid for by the taxpayers.
Wal-Mart will pay taxes, but they won't pay enough taxes to offset the tax losses as business after business closes in the community. Empty stores and Malls don't pay taxes.
The tax burden must then shift to homeowners to maintain the services the community needs, or those services have to be reduced.
Wal-Mart wins again!
A relatively new phenomena in land re-zoning and development is the Amenities Package.
The power held by a Municipal Council over the zoning of land within a community can be looked at like an asset in a business. Land zoned industrial is not worth as much as land that is zoned commercial. For sake of argument assume that a piece of land zoned for industrial use is worth $1.00 a square foot; the minute the Municipal Council rezones the land to commercial use the value rises to $3.00 a square foot. Before any buildings go on the land or any other improvements are done to the land its value has increased by $2.00 per square foot. The community receives no revenue at all from this increase, but the purchaser of the property makes a $2.00 per square foot profit based entirely on the rezoning.
A growing number of municipalities believe that the community should receive some benefit from the windfall profit a developer realizes from the rezoning of land. To realize this benefit communities have instituted a policy of receiving from the developer what has come to be called an Amenities Package. The Amenities Package is a sum of money voluntarily given to the community in return for rezoning of land. Some municipalities, like Vancouver, have developed a formal range of value for Amenities Packages based upon a number of criteria. The range is from a low of $3.00 a square foot to a high of $6.50 a square foot with the norm being around $5.50. Other municipalities set Amenities Packages based upon individual cases. For example, Courtenay on Vancouver Island required one developer to pay $700,000 in amenities for property where a Real Canadian Superstore was built, yet, accepted a $50,000 Amenities Package on a much larger piece of land where the developer wants to build a Wal-Mart big box. Courtenay City Council gave no reason for the huge disparity in the two packages. But it would seem that a corporation like Wal-Mart, earning billions of dollars in profit each year would be in a position to pay more than $50,000.
But Wal-Mart sees no point in paying amenities to a community where it may end up closing the store in eight to ten years.
[return to top]
TRAFFIC
Wal-Mart doesn't build a big box store to serve just one community. Part of the plan is to draw customers from other communities within a twenty five to fifty mile radius around the store.
Located on a main highway, the only way for consumers to get to Wal-Mart is to drive. That means the vehicle traffic in the community where the store is actually located can double or even triple overnight.
Traffic moving through a community that was never planned or developed to handle a massive increase in vehicle traffic will create a nightmare for local residents.
To cope with the increased traffic, the community must expend huge amounts of tax dollars to widen and build new roads to ease the pressure the increased traffic will create.
Recently Wal-Mart applied for re-zoning for land located in a residential neighbourhood in Surrey B.C. The traffic study required by City Council showed that traffic would increase in the neighbourhood by an estimated 7000 vehicles each day, seven days a week. Many believe this study was inaccurate and that the increase in traffic would exceed 7000 vehicles a day. Surrey City Council refused to rezone the land and thus protected the neighbourhood.
[return to top]
THE ENVIRONMENT
Internal combustion engines pollute! Even with the major strides made in pollution reduction technology, the family vehicle spews pollutants into the air and leaves a trail of pollution on roads and parking lots wherever it goes.
Motor vehicle pollution hurts the environment and health of people. Gasoline, oil and lubricant that leaks from engines gets washed into the sewers, finds its way into creeks, streams, rivers and oceans.
Doubling the motor vehicle traffic of any community virtually overnight will have a harmful impact on the local environment. In addition to motor vehicle pollution there are other environmental concerns that should be addressed. Large tracts of vacant land on the edge of a community often are home to all kinds plants and creatures.
In addition development of one piece of land can have a serious environmental impact upon adjacent land.
[return to top]
WAL-MART DOESN'T SELL GROCERIES
The fact of the matter is that Wal-Mart does sell groceries! Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States. Eight years ago, Wal-Mart was not in the grocery business, now the corporation captures fifty percent of the growth in grocery retailing every month. From no market share at all eight years ago to the largest grocery retailer in the country says Wal-Mart does sell groceries.
But Wal-Mart Canada says it is not going into the grocery business. Just like it told the people of Kamloops the company was not interested in building a big box in that community. And, the people in Cranbrook, who asked Wal-Mart to build in their community, that they were not interested in building a store there either! The Wal-Mart in Kamloops is nearing construction and the one in Cranbrook is on the drawing board.
Wal-Mart rarely allows something as simple as the truth to stand in the way of its expansion plans.
Wal-Mart will sell groceries! The stores they propose all have 30,000 to 40,000 square feet of, "future expansion", space noted on the site plans. Just enough space to expand their existing dry grocery sales into full grocery sales. And when they do expand into grocery sales thousands of people across the province will lose their jobs as their employers close, unable to compete with Wal-Mart.
[return to top]
SMALL BUSINESS CAN ADAPT
It's a nice thought. Very entrepreneurial. But it's been tried and it just doesn't work!
Virtually the only way a small retail business can adapt to compete with Wal-Mart is to make sure that it is not selling anything that Wal-Mart sells. The problem is, Wal-Mart sells virtually everything!
Some small businesses manage to hang on for a while. Those that have been is business for ten years or longer can normally survive for up to three years after a Wal-Mart opens.
There are a number of cases in the US where a local family owned retailer has survived two world wars, a couple of major depressions, and a handful of recessions only to collapse under the juggernaut call Wal-Mart!
The myth Wal-Mart tries to sell to small business that it draws more traffic to a community and therefore increases business for small business is just not true! It draws increased consumer traffic all right, but it locates its Big Box so that traffic comes directly to its store and is kept as far away from Malls and Downtown stores as possible. Small business people simply cannot survive against Wal-Mart!
The post is very long so please endure...
DrDan
WHERE IT ALL STARTED
Bentonville, Arkansas has, according to its Chamber of Commerce, two claims to fame. It was the sight of the Battle of Pea Ridge - "The battle that saved Missouri for the Union" - during the US civil war. But right on the heels of Pea Ridge is Sam Walton's variety store in downtown Bentonville. This is where the Wal-Mart juggernaut began.
The store that would become the largest retail chain in the world opened its doors in 1953. In less than fifty years, Wal-Mart has opened almost 4000 stores in the US and seven other countries including the People's Republic of China. Wal-Mart has 144 stores in Canada, 12 of them in BC.
Wal-Mart came to Canada through a buy-out of Woolco stores across the country. But Wal-Mart did not buy the whole Woolco chain. Those Woolco stores that were under UFCW contracts were not purchased. Instead, they were closed, throwing hundreds well paid union members out of work. Wal-Mart's notorious anti-union philosophy would not allow the retail giant to keep people employed at fair wages in communities where the jobs were desperately needed. But ignoring the needs and prosperity of the community is a hallmark of Wal-Mart.
A SIMPLE FORMULA
There is nothing complex or mysterious about how Wal-Mart has become the largest retailer in the world. Here is how it generally works:
• Wal-Mart looks for large parcels of land on the outskirts of a community. They look for land zoned for industrial development because it is the cheapest land to buy.
• Most often a community does not even know that Wal-Mart is interested in their community. The company hires developers to act as a front for it, buying the land under the developer's name.
• After the land is either purchased, or an option to buy, for industrial prices, the developer shows up at the local municipal council applying for a zoning change for the land from industrial to commercial. If such an application is successful, two things happen: first, the value of the land Wal-Mart just purchased automatically increases (Wal-Mart has made money before they build a "big box"); even if the community does not want a Wal-Mart, they have one.
• Wal-Mart then builds two things on the land, a big box structure (some as large as 220,000 square feet and more), and a mega-parking lot. Wal-Mart thinks landscaping is kerbs and white lines on blacktop. It is big and it is ugly. Once it has the four walls and the roof up it is ready for business! Sometimes Wal-Mart will scatter a few trees and shrubs around to satisfy city councils, and on occasion they have been forced to change the facade of the big box in order to secure the rezoning.
When the store opens for business it will provide the broadest range of products at the absolute cheapest prices anywhere in the immediate market. Consumers living in communities from up to fifty miles away will travel to shop at Wal-Mart just based upon price alone. And they will travel by car, doubling, even tripling, the traffic experienced by the community before Wal-Mart came along.
What Wal-Mart has built is a huge economic and social vacuum cleaner that will such the socio-economic lifeblood out of communities in a matter of a few short years. The whole economy and social structure of the community is all but destroyed. Virtually nothing goes untouched!
[return to top]
HOW DOES WAL-MART SELL SO CHEAP?
Most retailers purchase the goods they sell from wholesale companies or distributors of specific lines of products. The wholesaler or distributor buys product directly from the manufacturer in much larger quantities than the retailer can so they get a better price form the manufacturer. The wholesaler/distributor then sells the product to the retailers in the smaller quantities they require at a marked up price. That mark-up is the wholesaler/distributor's profit. It is a system that has worked well since the industrial revolution. That is, until Wal-Mart came along.
Wal-Mart is so huge that it buys direct from the manufacturer. In some cases, the retailing monster purchased all the product a manufacturer can produce. In most cases, Wal-Mart buys even more product than a large wholesaler/distributor can buy, allowing it to pay even less for the product than a manufacturer would charge a wholesaler/distributor. Now Wal-Mart can sell the product retail for even less than the wholesaler/distributor can buy the same product and sell it to other retailers.
For example, a small book store located in the downtown shopping area of a community or in a mall may buy two or three dozen copies of the best selling book. Wal-Mart will buy tens of thousands of copies of that same best seller and sell them in their stores for less than what the small bookseller can even purchase them for from the publishing house. Consumers can buy the same book for less than the cost to the local bookstore so they stop shopping there. Slowly the small bookseller goes out of business leaving only Wal-Mart to sell the books. Then Wal-Mart raises the price on the books it sells.
There are variations on this scenario, but the bottom line remains that whatever Wal-Mart sells is cheaper than any other retailer in the immediate market.
There is no doubt that what Wal-Mart does is good for most consumers. But the value the consumer gets is only superficial. What consumers save on their purchases they will pay for later in many different ways!
But at the end of the day, is Wal-Mart really cheaper than other retailers in a community? Studies of Wal-Mart pricing show that initially when a new Wal-Mart opens their prices are lower, but after competition is reduced prices rise to the levels they were at before Wal-Mart opened.
[return to top]
PREDATORY PRICING AND TIME TAKES CARE OF THE COMPETITION
The truth of the matter is that Wal-Mart has no competition. Not even those retailers considered to be large by other standards can compete with Wal-Mart. Not even Safeway, Inc. has been able to successfully compete against Wal-Mart Food Centers in US. How then would Canada Safeway, Overwaitea Food Group, Westfair, IGA, or Coopers compete against Wal-Mart here? The reality is they would probably do no better than their American cousins. The number of retail outlets in a given community is based upon the number of consumers and the amount of disposable consumer income that exists in that community. As the population of a community grows, the number of retailing opportunities increases and new stores and businesses open to supply the needs of the increased population.
In some cases a retailer will find a niche in a market that is not being satisfied by existing retailers and will open a store directed to that niche market.
Wal-Mart operates from a completely different set of rules. Rather than determining whether or not the population of a community, or the projected growth of the population, can sustain another retail operation, Wal-Mart determines how successful it can be pulling the existing consumer bases away from other retailers in the community and driving those retailers out of business by selling products at lower prices.
Studies in the United States show that it takes about three years for Wal-Mart to kill off any retail competition in a given community. The large retailers like Safeway, Inc. and Kroegers are usually the first to go along with the smaller regional chain stores. They have experienced Wal-Mart in other parts of the US and know that competing against the monster retailer is impossible. They've learned the hard way that they are further ahead cutting their losses right at the beginning. They close their store and sell off the land and buildings. When they leave, so do the people they employ and the good wages they earn.
The traditional Mall is usually the second to go. Malls are based upon having a so-called anchor store, like an Overwaitea, that draws consumers to the location. While the consumers are at the Mall doing their grocery shopping, they might as well drop off the dry cleaning, get the shoes repaired, buy that new pair of jeans at the clothing store, and so on. When the anchor store goes, so do the customers, and one by one smaller stores in the Mall close until the Mall is empty. Meanwhile, the stores on Main Street struggle to stay in business. They use different marketing strategies, but they can't market if the consumers are driving to the edge of town to Wal-Mart. When Wal-Mart can sell a bicycle cheaper than the Ye Olde Bike Shop can buy it from the wholesaler, it doesn't take much time before Ye Olde Bike Shop is just a memory. And so goes the clothing store and the hardware store and the department store, slowly turning Main Street, Downtown, or whatever you call it in your community into an urban wasteland.
But who cares? Consumers will get the cheapest underwear they've ever seen at Wal-Mart!
The question is, do you want your community to be a healthy economically vibrant place that offer variety and social settings where people meet, stop and talk to one another? Do you want a community with small businesses that provide a livelihood for people who live in the community? Do you want to have jobs that pay a fair wage, provides benefits and offers a future? Or do you want cheap underwear.
[return to top]
EMPLOYMENT
One of the first arguements you will hear, normally from municipal politicians and others in the community, in favour of Wal-Mart opening one of its big boxes in your community is that the opening of a Wal-Mart will create jobs.
Not true!
In fact, studies show that for every minimum wage part-time job Wal-Mart creates, the community will permanently lose 1.5 full-time jobs over a three year period. These lost jobs are normally ones that pay above minimum wage and provide benefits such as medical coverage for employees.
The jobs offered by the small businesses in your community are normally jobs that pay above minimum wage and offer some level of benefits to employees.
But more than that, they provide entry level jobs for young people in the community. They teach young people how to work. They teach them about small business. Wal-Mart will eliminate this critically important economic benefit from the community.
[return to top]
THE TAX BASE WILL INCREASE
Another arguement from the municipal politicians, and another one that is not true!
First, the community has to pay to service the land Wal-Mart will occupy. Roads, traffic signals, water, sewer, policing costs and fire fighting services all have to be paid for by the taxpayers.
Wal-Mart will pay taxes, but they won't pay enough taxes to offset the tax losses as business after business closes in the community. Empty stores and Malls don't pay taxes.
The tax burden must then shift to homeowners to maintain the services the community needs, or those services have to be reduced.
Wal-Mart wins again!
A relatively new phenomena in land re-zoning and development is the Amenities Package.
The power held by a Municipal Council over the zoning of land within a community can be looked at like an asset in a business. Land zoned industrial is not worth as much as land that is zoned commercial. For sake of argument assume that a piece of land zoned for industrial use is worth $1.00 a square foot; the minute the Municipal Council rezones the land to commercial use the value rises to $3.00 a square foot. Before any buildings go on the land or any other improvements are done to the land its value has increased by $2.00 per square foot. The community receives no revenue at all from this increase, but the purchaser of the property makes a $2.00 per square foot profit based entirely on the rezoning.
A growing number of municipalities believe that the community should receive some benefit from the windfall profit a developer realizes from the rezoning of land. To realize this benefit communities have instituted a policy of receiving from the developer what has come to be called an Amenities Package. The Amenities Package is a sum of money voluntarily given to the community in return for rezoning of land. Some municipalities, like Vancouver, have developed a formal range of value for Amenities Packages based upon a number of criteria. The range is from a low of $3.00 a square foot to a high of $6.50 a square foot with the norm being around $5.50. Other municipalities set Amenities Packages based upon individual cases. For example, Courtenay on Vancouver Island required one developer to pay $700,000 in amenities for property where a Real Canadian Superstore was built, yet, accepted a $50,000 Amenities Package on a much larger piece of land where the developer wants to build a Wal-Mart big box. Courtenay City Council gave no reason for the huge disparity in the two packages. But it would seem that a corporation like Wal-Mart, earning billions of dollars in profit each year would be in a position to pay more than $50,000.
But Wal-Mart sees no point in paying amenities to a community where it may end up closing the store in eight to ten years.
[return to top]
TRAFFIC
Wal-Mart doesn't build a big box store to serve just one community. Part of the plan is to draw customers from other communities within a twenty five to fifty mile radius around the store.
Located on a main highway, the only way for consumers to get to Wal-Mart is to drive. That means the vehicle traffic in the community where the store is actually located can double or even triple overnight.
Traffic moving through a community that was never planned or developed to handle a massive increase in vehicle traffic will create a nightmare for local residents.
To cope with the increased traffic, the community must expend huge amounts of tax dollars to widen and build new roads to ease the pressure the increased traffic will create.
Recently Wal-Mart applied for re-zoning for land located in a residential neighbourhood in Surrey B.C. The traffic study required by City Council showed that traffic would increase in the neighbourhood by an estimated 7000 vehicles each day, seven days a week. Many believe this study was inaccurate and that the increase in traffic would exceed 7000 vehicles a day. Surrey City Council refused to rezone the land and thus protected the neighbourhood.
[return to top]
THE ENVIRONMENT
Internal combustion engines pollute! Even with the major strides made in pollution reduction technology, the family vehicle spews pollutants into the air and leaves a trail of pollution on roads and parking lots wherever it goes.
Motor vehicle pollution hurts the environment and health of people. Gasoline, oil and lubricant that leaks from engines gets washed into the sewers, finds its way into creeks, streams, rivers and oceans.
Doubling the motor vehicle traffic of any community virtually overnight will have a harmful impact on the local environment. In addition to motor vehicle pollution there are other environmental concerns that should be addressed. Large tracts of vacant land on the edge of a community often are home to all kinds plants and creatures.
In addition development of one piece of land can have a serious environmental impact upon adjacent land.
[return to top]
WAL-MART DOESN'T SELL GROCERIES
The fact of the matter is that Wal-Mart does sell groceries! Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States. Eight years ago, Wal-Mart was not in the grocery business, now the corporation captures fifty percent of the growth in grocery retailing every month. From no market share at all eight years ago to the largest grocery retailer in the country says Wal-Mart does sell groceries.
But Wal-Mart Canada says it is not going into the grocery business. Just like it told the people of Kamloops the company was not interested in building a big box in that community. And, the people in Cranbrook, who asked Wal-Mart to build in their community, that they were not interested in building a store there either! The Wal-Mart in Kamloops is nearing construction and the one in Cranbrook is on the drawing board.
Wal-Mart rarely allows something as simple as the truth to stand in the way of its expansion plans.
Wal-Mart will sell groceries! The stores they propose all have 30,000 to 40,000 square feet of, "future expansion", space noted on the site plans. Just enough space to expand their existing dry grocery sales into full grocery sales. And when they do expand into grocery sales thousands of people across the province will lose their jobs as their employers close, unable to compete with Wal-Mart.
[return to top]
SMALL BUSINESS CAN ADAPT
It's a nice thought. Very entrepreneurial. But it's been tried and it just doesn't work!
Virtually the only way a small retail business can adapt to compete with Wal-Mart is to make sure that it is not selling anything that Wal-Mart sells. The problem is, Wal-Mart sells virtually everything!
Some small businesses manage to hang on for a while. Those that have been is business for ten years or longer can normally survive for up to three years after a Wal-Mart opens.
There are a number of cases in the US where a local family owned retailer has survived two world wars, a couple of major depressions, and a handful of recessions only to collapse under the juggernaut call Wal-Mart!
The myth Wal-Mart tries to sell to small business that it draws more traffic to a community and therefore increases business for small business is just not true! It draws increased consumer traffic all right, but it locates its Big Box so that traffic comes directly to its store and is kept as far away from Malls and Downtown stores as possible. Small business people simply cannot survive against Wal-Mart!
