Home Depot - what a bunch of maroons

To make sure there is no hidden words in your text that I am missing, I will write it out in exact terms...

-It is a fact that Wal Mart moved into Bixby.

-It is a fact that shortly there after, a large number of the small privately owned retailers (Mom and Pop shops if you will) located in and near the town closed up shop and ceased to operate as a business entity.

-It is a fact, that less than 5 years after opening, Wal Mart pulled up stakes and left.

Those are the facts of one small rural town. Call it a falisy if you like.

To say ALL mom and pop shops are gone is not accurate. This is most likely true in ANY of the cases... But it certainly did have a negative impact on the number of small retailers in the town.

Mike Alexander PP-ASEL Temecula, CA See my online aerial photo album at

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Reply to
Mike 'Flyin'8'
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Bixby is a suburb of Tulsa. It looks like Home Depot still has eight stores in the Tulsa area.

Reply to
Nova

Right from the wabbit's mouth:

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Reply to
Buddy Matlosz

Reply to
Doug Brown

Not a Bugs Bunny fan, I take it.

Reply to
CW

The word is "fallacy". And speaking of fallacies... it is NOT a fact that Bixby OK is a "small rural town". Bixby OK is a suburb of Tulsa, with a population of some 16 or 18 thousand.

Bixby is right on the Arkansas River. There are four or five WalMart stores just across the river from Bixby.

So... if you couldn't get even that little bit right, it doesn't seem there's much reason to put any stock in your other claims, either. Care to substantiate them? Note: "everybody knows it happened" won't fly. Let's see some actual, you know, *proof*.

Reply to
Doug Miller

Thanks - that makes your comment from the previous post easier to understand - lends context.

I'd sure have to understand more about this decision to close a brand new Wal Mart. This is an anomoly in the world of Wal Mart. There certainly had to be factors surrounding the decision to close this particular store that you left out, either because you're not aware of them or you are trying to skew a point by limiting the "facts" to an abreviated list of occurances.

Never said that your claim was false. What I said was that the ever-present "drove all of the mom-n-pops out of business" was a false claim. In fact, every place that a Wal Mart or a Home Depot exist, small business exists too which compete at some level with the Wal Mart or the Home Depot. I've posted here before that Ace Hardware tells their franchise owners who are worried about a new Wal Mart coming into their area that the best thing that could happen for their business is that Wal Mart would open right across the street from them.

As in the case of many locations, some small businesses do fold when a big store moves in. They typically don't have the ability to compete with anyone, let alone Wal Mart, because they only existed based on a stranglehold they had on the area prior to Wal Mart coming along. It is common to find these types of enterprises crying that Wal Mart is going to run them out of business, and then close immediately upon the opening of Wal Mart. In fact, Wal Mart did not run them out of business, but was a convenient excuse and even more conveniently, Wal Mart provided them with a nice David and Goliath story.

Reply to
Mike Marlow

Correction noted and appreciated.

Reply to
Mike Marlow

There is a Super Walmart in Beatrice, Nebraska population 12,000. Also a Tractor Supply and a few few other chain stores.

My friend and I were visiting town a few years back and needed some plumbing parts for my RV. We drove all over town looking for a hardware store. We finally stopped at a small CO-OP for directions and were told that both hardware stores had gone out of business since Walmart opened.

There may have been other reasons besides Walmart that both hardware stores failed, but it seems awful coincidental.

We ended up buying some fuel hose and clamps from Autozone for a temporary fix.

Brian Elfert

Reply to
Brian Elfert

It is not at unusual for Walmart to close an existing Walmart store and open a brand new Supercenter a few miles away. In some cases, they can't get approval to renovate an existing store into a Supercenter so they just close it and build new elsewhere.

I personally know two locations where Walmart built a new Supercenter within one block of an old store.

I read somewhere that Walmart has around 30 million square feet of empty buildings they are trying to market. I'm sure the majority are old stores replaced by new Supercenters. I've personally never heard or read of any Walmart that closed without being replaced except a store in Canada that formed a union.

I don't see a big market for closed Walmarts since not too many stores are looking for a 75,000 square foot building.

Brian Elfert

Reply to
Brian Elfert

Correct. That's the point I was trying to steer the other poster to. Growth is one thing but to posture so as to make that growth look like abandonment is something entirely different. At one time Wal Mart's store model was that of a discount store. Today it is that of a Super Center - because the supercenter model has been hugely successful. This is a natural evolution of a successful venture and far from the abandonment that the other poster implied.

Reply to
Mike Marlow

Mike Marlow wrote: [brevitized]

I know of a few examples in this area where hard working families slugged it out to have a few quality stores which serviced the community quite well. Many plowed a lot back into the community. Many did a lot of work through service clubs. The families did well because they filled a need. One of them would drive an hour to another town and back every other morning at 4 AM so that his customers could have a fresher banana. Sometimes, on his way back, he'd stuff a few bananas in the mailbox of some customers who he felt should stay in that day because the weather sucked. Meanwhile, his own kids were shopping at the huge K-Mart SuperMegaGinormous Centre across the river. It ain't fair and it ain't right.

Very few give a fark about values any more.

*cues some vinyl LP*

"Soon the pines will be falling everywhere Village children fight each other for a share And the 6:09 goes roaring past the creek Deacon Lee prepares his sermon for next week

I saw grandma yesterday down at the store Well she's really going fine for eighty four Well she asked me if sometime I'd fix her barn Poor old girl she needs a hand to run the farm

And it's good old country comfort in my bones Just the sweetest sound my ears have ever known Just an old-fashioned feeling fully-grown Country comfort's in a truck that's going home

Down at the well they've got a new machine The foreman says it cuts man-power by fifteen Yeah but that ain't natural well so old Clay would say You see he's a horse-drawn man until his dying day

Now the old fat goose is flying cross the sticks The hedgehog's done in clay between the bricks And the rocking chair's creaking on the porch Across the valley moves the herdsman with his torch"

Reply to
Robatoy

I'm not sure that means anything. In the Chicago suburban area, going to a store in a nearby suburb can easily be a half hour drive. Gurnee is a suburb of Chicago. But it's also about 40 miles north.

And Wal Marts have closed after just a few years when they felt the store volume wasn't sufficient. Unfortunately the small bus> Mike 'Fly>> Bixby, Oklahoma for one...

Reply to
M Berger

I still think it's amazing how many people completely misunderstand capitalism. Walmart and HD do not drive *ANYONE* out of business. If anything, it's the CUSTOMERS who choose, of their own free will, to shop at Walmart and HD, that do it. Walmart and HD don't herd customers at gunpoint into their stores, they simply offer lower prices, because of their size and buying power, and people make the CHOICE to shop there. So anyone who claims that Walmart and HD drive anyone out of business is a bald-faced liar.

And if they moved out of Bixby, it's likely they couldn't make enough money to make a profit, what do you expect them to do? They leave and anyone else who wants to start a business again is welcome to.

It's called competition. It's the cornerstone of the economic system of capitalism.

Reply to
Brian Henderson

Then please show us just *ONE* documented example of HD or Walmart forcing customers to shop in their stores. Just one. Put up or stick a sock in it.

Reply to
Brian Henderson

Gotcha.

Because their customers chose, of thier own free will, to shop somewhere else. The mom & pop stores closed because they couldn't compete. Competition is the cornerstone of capitalism.

Likely because they weren't making a profit. Are you saying that the mom & pop stores can't re-open now that they can compete again?

Reply to
Brian Henderson

Stinky wrote in news:390cn2dmcik2rmjdl15uasp3hh3dbm71l5@

4ax.com:

No, it's not. It's a contraction of "cimaroon", which in turn is an Anglized version of "cimarrones", which is a Spanish term for escaped slaves.

It's not really a politically correct term any more, but the censors seem to be too busy cutting out all the occurances of Yosemite Sam blowing himself up to worry about Bugs's language.

John

Reply to
John McCoy

Says the Wal-Mart apologist. Kind of hard to compete with an operation that is several orders of magnitude larger than yours unless you can find some way other than price to differentiate yourself, and that is difficult with mass-market consumer goods.

Which system in its unfettered state proved to be an unmitigated disaster hence the Sherman Antitrust Act and other legislation.

Reply to
J. Clarke

Maybe we need federal regulation on the price of the toilet paper and power drills?

Reply to
Locutus

Better service is certainly one way that small operations can compete with the big box stores. Some small businesses understand that, some don't -- and it's the latter, IME, that can't survive competition with the big boxes.

Nonsense -- the Sherman Antitrust Act bans ANTIcompetitive business practices. It was passed specifically to put an end to businesses conspiring to stifle competition.

Reply to
Doug Miller

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