What Kind Of A Bargain Would It Take?

[pepelect]

What happens if a large retail store suddenly desides that one section of its inventory is not moving very fast? They are not making enough money in that retail section and deside to pull out of it.  Remember large retail stores have a lot of influence with manufactures.  They tell them when to produce what and when to provide it to the store.   We now have no competion because we are so good at our job.  We get the products someone else says we need and when we need them.

When was the last time you were at a locally owned lumberyard?  Big box stores are changing the entire market in that sector also.

Then, as always the lowest prices kill the world, we deside to quit selling fabric.

Where do you get it now?

The mom and pop stores have been long out of business.

You now only have two choices JoAnns or Hancocks.

$4 prescriptions will not build a healthy health care system.

Competition is good.  It keeps the system in check.  If one company gets too much market share it wrinkles the system.  I don't hate Wal-Mart's business plan I hate what else it does.  It damages the manufacturing by lowing the bottom line forcing out of country locations.  It has changed the way people shop.   No one needs a gallon of pickles or can use them before they rot.
Lowering the prices to kill the competition then raising the prices and lowering the quality once it has the monopoly is very bad for the country.

Every dollar you spend on non domesticly produced goods puts us that much more in debt to the foreign markets.


Shop where ever you like but don't be surprised it is a have to situation in the future.

Stay with us as we grow.......


                                                      ..........Wal-Mart is not Elk Konnected.

[bfrankjack]

Good Ol'Wal-Mart!!!
  I have gave my share of money to them.  Not because I want to but because, they have almost left us no other choice.  If I can buy a product somewhere else I do.  And that doesn't mean K-Mart, Sam's, Target and whoever else there is.  I will make one trip a year to shop in Wichita and that is Christmas.

When we first moved down here we needed some LA200 and asked Tom if he had any.  He said that he sold feed and Doc "Williams" sold vaccine. 

I have seen old Vacant Wal-Mart buildings just setting.  Some towns will have more than just one vacant old Wal-Mart building.  As they grow bigger they just take up more land that could be used for something better.  Wal-Mart don't give a hoot about the land.  They will pay the big bucks to buy ranch and farm land to sell you products NOT MADE in the US.  Land used to raise your food and clothing to sell you food and clothing at a cheap price made and raised in other countries.  It's all about greed, and it isn't just Wal-Mart it's the people that sell the land for the big bucks.  Maybe the people selling the land don't have anything to do with the family farm or ranch they just see the rent money every year from the guy working the land.  That check from Wal-Mart is a heck of a lot more than the rent check they get from the farmer or rancher.  Forget about the money he is shorting the renter!  Now he has to try to make a living with less land.  You can buy a lot of stuff at Wal-Mart but last I checked they don't sell land.  You can't manufacture land! When it is gone it is gone.  Do the people selling the land ever think where they are going to get their food and clothing?  Oh they will just go to the Wal-Mart. 

I do my part and buy what I can local.  If not Elk Co, it's Greenwood, Cowley, Sumner, Butler, Chautauqua Counties. 

I don't know about all of you but I like being able to call the local guy that knows you.  If you are running late they will, set out what you need or bring it by the house on their way home.  They will trust your neighbor to pick it up for you and send you a bill.   

I did once while in Amarillo call a feed store and have them set something out for me.  I had to give them my CC# of course and they informed me that I should hurry because they couldn't promise me that it would still be on the step when I got there.  We showed up and that feed store had bars on the windows!   

[greatguns]

I do shop and buy locally alot.  Now Pep just because I shopped on black friday, it doesn't mean I bought a thing.  Of which I didn't at Wal-Mart.  And I will shop in Howard, Kansas for Christmas.  JC Penny's is the only place I have found girls 16 1/2 plus jeans.  Whatever country they are made in, they fit the girl.  By the way what I build at work is all bought by those countries overseas.

[S-S]

I'm not saying I'm a huge Walmart shopper. I said I go there to stock up. If I don't go there then I go to Dillon's. I STILL shop in Howard, I'm there almost every week. As for fabric, I have recently been buying off of Ebay...It's cheaper and there's a bigger selection.  Sometimes I can even get it pre-cut into the size of squares I need which saves me time. Shall we bash Ebay next?

I never bragged about the quality of merchandise from Walmart. We bought a tv there 2 years ago and it didn't even last 3 months. Our next two sets came from Larry at J & L Video - A LOCAL RETAILER - along with our dvd player, fax printer copier, and laptop computer. I really don't purchase anything from Walmart other than groceries when I go. The garden center is a mess and the furniture is a joke.

The deck we added on our house came from Sutherland's. It's put together well and has proved to be very sturdy. Same with the guttering we purchased. I also buy often at Orschelen's. Clothing, farm supplies...etc. I'm not going to run around the tri-county area trying to support everyone. That's going to cost more money than it's worth.

Are you going to tell me next that I should have hired a local contracter to build my house rather than have ordered a pre-fabricated one from a big store on east Kellogg?

[pam]

I buy clothes at wal-mart....I can afford some from there once in a blue moon. That's the "shoppin" I do.
Bout 4 miles from where we live there is a feedstore where I get my feed and know the guys who work there....there is a cafe..an insurance office...a beauty shop...and a general store/lumberyard. We will buy lumber plumbin etc. from him but his groceries are higher than a kite just cause he's the only show around. There's a grocery store east about 20 miles kinda like morrows used to be...one southwest about 18 miles same...and I do shop at them. Other than that you have to go either 35 miles east to cassville, 23 miles to Neosho, 30 miles to bentonville. Just in case y'all don't remember this, wal-mart IS the local guy down here.
When I lived in Severy all them years I bought groceries at morrows every week, feed at the co-op, gas at rockies, insurance from the guy down town, lumber etc. from knights, garden seed and some feed from floyd coble, even bought a beer or two at the tavern back when I still drank beer. I spend my money with the local guy whenever I can.
Yeah the way wal-mart operates SUCKS....when you only got x amount of dollars this week tho and you can't get everything you NEED for it at some small guy then you do what you got to do and you don't apologize for that. You may feel bad about it but you still gotta do what you gotta do.

On another point it ain't just wal-mart takin up land that could be put to better use .......big highways....casino resorts.......titty bars.....shoppin malls........etc....etc..etc...

[Lookatmeknow!!]

You made a funny point PEP.  Some Walmarts have stopped carrying Fabric.  I needed stuff to finish a quilt that I am making and had to go to Walmart in Coffeyville to get the stuff.  But it's funny that they did run out the local people and now you have to drive even further to get the stuff you need.  I checked into getting it quilted locally, but couldn't afford that so decided to do it myself.  But they do run other businesses out of town, look at Independence.  They ran out Kmart, to grocery stores and other mom and pop stores. 

[Tobina+1]

I don't think Patrick was making personal attacks on anyone who shops at Walmart.  Like he said, he's just against the business model that Walmart uses.  One person not shopping at Walmart isn't going to break that store.  I think Patrick was just trying to encourage people to consider shopping locally; where people know you and care for you and will give BACK to you and the community and the schools.  Even if you go to another town to shop, consider shopping in their locally-owned stores.  I find the best gifts (and likely to not get duplicated) come from small-town stores.  And when you shop locally, local business can expand, and then can offer more and more and more (perfect examples:  drug store turned grocery store, and feed mill turned farm store).
I've admitted that I shop for certain things at Walmart and Dillons that I can't get at Family Market.  But I would HATE to return to having to drive to Wichita or El Dorado or Independence weekly to get my grocery shopping done (even when you "stock up" you forget things).  Now, I can save on gas by only going once every 3-4 weeks.  
Also, e-bay is probably a great place for locally-owned stores and businesses to get their goods out to the public, without selling out to Walmart at "always low" prices and with such volume requirements.  I don't consider e-bay to be in the same category as Walmart, at all.

Back to the original conversation, though, I think people are blaming Walmart for the incident because it's easy to blame the big guy rather than to take the blame themselves and admit that the human race and our race for the best deal is really the worst offender.

[srkruzich]

What happens if a large retail store suddenly desides that one section of its inventory is not moving very fast? They are not making enough money in that retail section and deside to pull out of it.  Remember large retail stores have a lot of influence with manufactures.  They tell them when to produce what and when to provide it to the store.   We now have no competion because we are so good at our job.  We get the products someone else says we need and when we need them.

Thats called freemarket.    IF your widget doesn't sell then you need to come up with a better widget.

When was the last time you were at a locally owned lumberyard? 

Actually not too long ago.  their prices are double what another locally owned lumberstore in goddard sells for. IT pays me to drive to Goddard to get the lumber there, or to lowes or sutherlands since they price match.
If there was a local sawmill here that had airdried lumber and reasonable prices i would buy there. Quite frankly buying from a sawmill is the only way i get good lumber. 

Big box stores are changing the entire market in that sector also.

IF there wasn't a market for big box stores then they would be out of business.

Then, as always the lowest prices kill the world, we deside to quit selling fabric.

Where do you get it now?

I get mine from a distributor. I never pay retail on fabric.   I buy it by the bolt when i do buy it and sell the excess on ebay.

The mom and pop stores have been long out of business.

Thats not true! Walmart came into dahlonega in 1996. There was the typical wailing and gnashing of teeth from ALL of the small businesses mom and pop stores and everyone else.. they were screaming they can't compete.  Hockypucks!  two months later a small business came in, j&J groceries and they put the hurt to walmart!  They spanked walmart good on the groceries. ON top of that, that owner took care of his customers.  I would say that his store was about the size of howards over in eureka.   
Then you had charlies meats and groceries who was smaller than batsons.  THey sold good meat and lower than wally worlds prices.   What they did was cut prices offered service and they made their profit in volume sales and service.

$4 prescriptions will not build a healthy health care system.

Why not?  Lets take one of my meds for example, lopressor.  30 tabs probably and i am being liberal here, costs the pharmacy maybe 1.50 for 30 pills.  so they make 2.50 profit. I might be wrong. But quite frankly, life saving maintenance drugs, should be 2% markup over cost and no more.   When you have a senior citizen sitting there having to choose between eating and the meds that keep them alive, then that med after it hits generic should be low as possible so they can afford it.
Besides, if a pharmacy sells lopressor or other drugs like that for 4 dollars, theres no loss in that for the pharmacy.  Thats something that draws your customers in.  Would you rather have high drug costs or customers coming in to get the low cost drug and shopping in your store because now they can buy something to eat.

Competition is good.  It keeps the system in check.  If one company gets too much market share it wrinkles the system.  I don't hate Wal-Mart's business plan I hate what else it does.  It damages the manufacturing by lowing the bottom line forcing out of country locations.  It has changed the way people shop.   No one needs a gallon of pickles or can use them before they rot.

ROTFL wanna bet!   LOL
I buy my pickles mustard mayo and everything like that in gallon containers. Bulk prices can save soo much money and its less trash in our landfills. 

Lowering the prices to kill the competition then raising the prices and lowering the quality once it has the monopoly is very bad for the country.

I saw walmart TRY to do that in dahlonega, they failed miserably at it.  When J&J came in, walmart dropped prices on coke products, and meat products.  J&J matched them.  Every single time wally world tried to undercut J&J, J&J matched them. Within 3 months walmart quit and raised prices back to their normal markup and J&J kept prices low.  IT was funny. 

Every dollar you spend on non domesticly produced goods puts us that much more in debt to the foreign markets.

I don't disagree. 

I try to do business where i live, but sometimes the prices make it really hard for me to do that. 

[Tobina+1]

Just like in any store, big or small, the more people shop there, the more the demand increases for certain types of good, the more the store can buy from their distributor, and the less they have to pay for the product, and they'll pass the savings on to the customer. 
Family Market is a prime example of that; the food prices used to be quite high when there was only an aisle or two of food items, but now that they have more customers and can move product faster, the prices have decreased dramatically. 
Remember, for any community or county or Elk Konnected area to work, we not only have to support ourselves, but support each other!  Walmart may (?) support local organizations and groups in the towns where they are located, but only Elk County stores are going to support Elk County organizations and schools... and only Elk County people are going to support Elk County stores.

[bfrankjack]

Sorry that I got off the subject....but it does come back to GREED, and Priorites.  Sad but true.