As part of its promotion for senior writer Charles Fishman's book, The Wal-Mart Effect, Fast Company is running some excerpts from the book. The latest issue includes a story called," The Man Who Said No To Wal-Mart"
"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."
According to the excerpt, Weir said no to Wal-Mart for one key reason: it conflicted with his business strategy,
"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."
It is a fundamental business concept: know who you are and what you stand for.Some people call that having a brand strategy.What takes your breathe away in reading this excerpt is the realization that few businesses are willing to defend that brand when someone is waving millions of dollars in their face.
Over at the Wal-Mart Watch, which a joint project of The Center for Community & Corporate Ethics, devoted to studying the impact of large corporations on society, and its advocacy arm, Five Stones, Dr.Jonathan Rees of Colorado State University, reviewed the book saying,
"Fishman, a Senior Editor at Fast Company magazine, has done an extraordinary job at coaxing Wal-Mart suppliers to talk about their experiences even though the company seems to have imposed an unofficial code of silence on them. Here you can read about how companies like Vlasic and Levi Strauss essentially destroyed their own markets by caving in to Wal-Mart’s demands for constantly lower prices, as well as why Jim Wier of Snapper mowers refused to do the same. "
Over at Fast Company's Blog which seems to promote a lot of the magazine contributor's books, they not so humbly say,
"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."
The post later explains,
"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."
So far 37 people have posted comments on this entry. There is the requisite post from busines owners who are now out of business thanks to Wal Mart and of course there is also the online squabbling over capitalism vs. fascism. Great Reading. Great Article.
Haven't read the book, but will be ordering it today.
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