Could Someone Beat Wal-Mart Part 4?

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One of the biggest complaints you hear from Wal-Mart employees is that they are understaffed. They simply do not have enough people to get the job done. In most small towns across America, before Sprawl-Mart came to town, there would be a mom-and-pop hardware store and a mom-and-pop cloth store/craft store. Mom and Pop were experts at their niches. One could go in and visit Mom and Pop and ask questions about anything related to their project. Somewhere in that little hardware store there was a doohickey that would fit the thing-a-ma-jig just right and would make the whole project work. At the cloth/craft shop, Mom could tell you exactly which interfacing to use or how to knit or crochet the item you were trying to complete and could help you fix the boo-boos.

Wal-Mart came in and offered cheap knockoffs of the cloth that mom and pop offered. Wal-Mart only sold the bread and butter items. They did not sell those off-the-wall kinds of things that people sometimes wanted. They only sold the high profit, high turnover items that kept mom and pop in business.

Mom and Pop had to close. They could not afford to stay in business. These were the type of people that gave money to the little league team, the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H, Lion’s, churches, and more. They bought tickets to whatever raffle came along and, yes, even helped with funeral expenses more times than one could imagine.

Today, Wal-Mart makes a big deal about giving $1,000 to one or two charities in the community. Everyone is supposed to say “Hat’s off to Wal-Mart for being so civic-minded. The truth is that giving by local businesses, overall, is way down. There are no more local businesses. Mom and Pop were put out of business.

Not too long ago, my daughter needed a few yards of cloth for a school project. We went to Wal-Mart and waited in the cloth department. No one showed up to cut the cloth. My daughter went to find an employee to get someone to cut the cloth. Ten minutes later, still no one to cut the cloth.

I stopped a department manager who was walking by and asked her to get someone to cut the cloth. She radioed someone who said they would take care of it. Fifteen minutes later still no one to cut the cloth. I have Wal-Mart’s number programmed into my cell phone. Most of my calls to Wal-Mart are placed from inside the Wal-Mart store. The store paged someone to come to fabrics. Finally, thirteen minutes later, a zone manager showed up and she cut the cloth.

While she was cutting the cloth, over ten people lined up to have cloth cut. Imagine what Wal-Mart could do with a crafts department if they had someone who was a crafter in the craft department around the clock. Imagine if they paid her to give classes there in the craft department how much crafting supplies Wal-Mart could sell. But this department is ignored. The selections of cloth and yarn are pathetic. The closest real craft store (Hobby Lobby) is 30 miles away and even they don’t do crafting right.

Over in hardware, if you can’t find it by yourself, you can’t get it. You will not find anyone working in that department. It takes over half an hour to get someone to mix a gallon of paint. Then again, Lowes and Home Depot are no better. You can’t find anyone to wait on you in those stores either.

If a store came along that had adequate, well-trained, staff in each specialty department around the clock, those departments would close any Wal-Mart. 

Disclaimer
The opinions or advice listed in this blog or website should be used as a place to start only. It is not a substitute for the use of a professional.
Please be sure to consult your attorney and/or accountant with any specific questions.
There is no one right answer to any business question that will cover all circumstances.
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