Fast Company senior writer Charles Fishman's new book The Wal-Mart Effect -- which FC recently excerpted -- could very well be the most important book about the most important company in the world.
Wal-Mart sells salmon fillets at $4.84 a pound nationwide at its Supercenter fish counters. How can it sell what was once a luxury item at $2 or $3 less than other grocers already low price? Would we purchase and grill up that salmon so happily if we could watch a video of how it was raised and handled before we bought it?
Do consumer product makers really close U.S. factories and open Chinese ones to reduce prices, because of demands from Wal-Mart -- or is that a kind of economic urban legend?
What's the typical workday like, not at a Wal-Mart store, but for the 10,000 people who work at Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, a place surrounded by a wall of silence?
Wal-Mart isn't just the largest store in America, or the largest store in the world, or the largest employer in the world. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world -- and one of the most powerful. It is also one of the most secretive.
In the book, Fishman cracks open Wal-Mart in a way no journalist or insider ever has before, and answers a pair of related questions: What is Wal-Mart doing for America? What is Wal-Mart doing to America?
Wal-Mart is now so large, it has created its own business ecosystem, where Wal-Mart alone sets the tempo, the rules, the economic climate. That ecosystem, Fishman explains, literally allows Wal-Mart to stand outside the very market forces which we rely on to modulate and regulate all companies. Wal-Mart is so dominant, it can reshape even the rules of market capitalism.
Without ever resorting to "unnamed sources," The Wal-Mart Effect uses the stories of real Wal-Mart suppliers, real Wal-Mart executives, and real Wal-Mart shoppers to explain how Wal-Mart delivers "every day low prices." The book shows in fascinating detail what the impact of that unrelenting drive for cheapness has been across the U.S. economy and the around the world, as the Wal-Mart ecosystem gets extended.
In the end, The Wal-Mart Effect marshalls its reporting to make two vitally important points that cut to the heart of business and society:
See if you agree.
Related Stories: | Topics:Work/Life, book discussions, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Nature and the Environment, United States, Wildlife, Charles Fishman |
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Recent Comments | 45 Total
June 14, 2007 at 6:13am by PAul
It’s not greed. : Jim Seybert (on FollsBox) Who are you to judge need? Should people that work 80 hours a week pay twice as much for their food as people who work 40 hours a week? Sounds like you have wallet envy, go get a better job. Why should I pay 20% more for a product because some mom and pop have higher costs per item than Wal-Mart. Size matters! I do not need to support some mom and pop sending their kids to college. I can pay 20% less for the same box from the same manufacturer the only difference is not greed, but me spending my money, on my family in a more efficient and more rewarding manner. If you believe that the world’s problems are caused by Wal-Mart then don’t shop there. If you believe cars cause global warming then don’t drive one. But leave your unscientific observations in your own brain and don’t portray them as facts. The truth is Wal-Mart is just sitting there selling stuff and everywhere else is raising the price and ripping us off.
June 14, 2007 at 6:14am by PAul
It’s not greed. : Jim Seybert (on FollsBox) Who are you to judge need? Should people that work 80 hours a week pay twice as much for their food as people who work 40 hours a week? Sounds like you have wallet envy, go get a better job. Why should I pay 20% more for a product because some mom and pop have higher costs per item than Wal-Mart. Size matters! I do not need to support some mom and pop sending their kids to college. I can pay 20% less for the same box from the same manufacturer the only difference is not greed, but me spending my money, on my family in a more efficient and more rewarding manner. If you believe that the world’s problems are caused by Wal-Mart then don’t shop there. If you believe cars cause global warming then don’t drive one. But leave your unscientific observations in your own brain and don’t portray them as facts. The truth is Wal-Mart is just sitting there selling stuff and everywhere else is raising the price and ripping us off.
September 4, 2007 at 12:26am by Elke
walmart is known as the evil empire in our household...sure, the prices are low...but, and this is a biggie, the quality of these items is equally low...
take electronic items...walmart will NOT refund or exchange these items, even though their guarantee clearly says 90 day refund, if brought back after ten days...
take children's clothing...the seams rip, the cloth is cheap...
people, exactly how do you think that walmart is able to low low price everything?? what is being paid for labour, both at the retail and at the factory levels is a joke, a bad joke...who is making the big bucks at anothers' expense??
my family does not shop at walmart
October 16, 2007 at 6:28pm by KD Priest
This is all lame..
Who cares, not me..
Walmart should burn.
November 5, 2007 at 4:42pm by DLT
I have to say that I see (some) of the points on both sides of the argument:
1 - Sure, I drive an pricey car and shop at Walmart, why shouldn't I? For things like Pine-sol, tp, paper towels, mustard and ketchup, who cares if it came from Giant (in the No VA area)Target or Walmart? It's all household stuff or basic items. The cheap price is what I am looking for, because believe me, French's Dijon Mustard tastes the same whether it came from Target, Giant or Walmart (it's only the price that differs).
2 - Walmart real estate sitting around collecting dust? My Heavens, have any of you been to downtown Baltimore, MD? You remember Montgomery Ward from the 80s? Well it left years ago a big, monstrous behemoth of a warehouse sitting in the southern area of Baltimore City picking up dust, dirt, decay and vandalism...and yes, Baltimore City has been "carrying" it for years! If you do not live near Baltimore, check out DC's eastern corridor on New York Avenue near the DC-Maryland line, go to Richmond, VA, visit NYC (down by the docks especially), northern NJ (Piscataway, Passaic, Hoboken to name a few), eastern Pennsylvania, hell, go to Philly and so many others, and you will see the same thing - so don't hate Walmart!
3 - Healthcare issues -it's not a Walmart thing, it's the cost of blasted healthcare in this country (yes, in part because of capitalism). I speak from experience I used to work as an IT contractor (and I was making dollars!), but there were times when I went without healthcare because it was too bloody expensive to buy out of pocket for just one person, never mind if I had a whole family to buy healthcare for!! Ever heard of COBRA (your tax dollars at work once more)? my goodness, you could go bankrupt making two (2) COBRA payments for a family of 4!
4 - Unions & their Anti-Walmart Lobby - perhaps if the unions invested those millions of dollars in training their members to have a broader range of skills, then maybe they will not need to gripe and moan about Walmart. And, no, the unions do not only complain about Walmart, they complain about the automakers, the telelcomm industry, the airline and every other bloody industry they suck the blood out of, oops, I mean work for (not to mention their members are the biggest proponents of "that's not in my job description"). The blasted unions have a bloody choke-hold on the companies they are suppsoed to assist, and they will not let go to even save the company! How much have GM, Ford and the others had to pay out to the unions, even though they are all bleeding horribly (perhaps the idiot unions do not realize that due to their increasing costs, the union members will not be sent overseas to work - only their jobs will go OR if the companies they bleed go out of business, their members will be out of jobs too?? Go figure).
5 - Quality - darlings, I see more "Made in China" labels at Target, Macy's, Bloomie's and Lord 'n' Taylor's than anywhere else (yes, I have seen it at Neiman-Marcus and Saks also). Ever gone to Toys'R'Us? I don't think ANY toys have been made in the US in decades (and yes, we are paying the price now for not monitoring the quality, but you know, Mattel had to know what was going on...they just chose to ignore it for the sake of the almighty dollar!)
Bomttom line here: people just hate Walmart because they're large and do "large" well (you guys remember Bill Gates I'm sure, they hate(d) him to, but he keeps getting bigger and better, bugs and all!)
But you know, on the serious side, if you pull off the covers of just about every major company in the US, be it, GM, HP, Food Lion, Walmart or Macy's, you will find all of their dirty little secrets are exactly the same, it's just more convenient to hate Walmart because they (for the most part) have been so successful.
BTW, speaking of catering to the people, Food Lion LLC's dirty little marketing strategy these days is they call their stores "Bloom" in the upscale suburbs, but in the inner cities, they call the same bloody store "Bottom Dollar". Guess the yuppies, DINCs and stay-at-home moms frequenting the 'burbs don't want to shop in the same stores they do in the trailer parks, ghettos, barrios and 'hoods, do they? Little do they know...