Former Al Gore senior aide Leslie Dach dared to dream:
In July 2006, Dach was installed as the public relations chief for Wal-Mart. He drafted a number of other progressives into the company, seeking to change the company’s way of doing business: its culture, its politics, and most importantly its products.
Out went drab, inexpensive merchandise so dear to low-income Americans. In came upscale organic foods, “green” products, trendy jeans, and political correctness. In other words, Dach sought to expose poor working Americans to the “good life” of the wealthy, environmentally conscious Prius driver.
How did that all work out?
After suffering seven straight quarters of losses, today the merchandise giant Wal-Mart will announce that it is “going back to basics,” ending its era of high-end organic foods, going “green,” and the remainder of its appeal to the upscale market. Next month the company will launch an “It’s Back” campaign to woo the millions of customers who have fled the store.
Further from the Wall Street Journal:
Starting in May, Wal-Mart shoppers in the U.S. will see signs in stores heralding the return of fishing tackle, bolts of fabric and other ‘heritage’ merchandise that Wal-Mart reduced or cut out altogether as it attempted to spruce up its stores …
There’s a lesson here for all manner of mass-consumer businesses.
h/t to Marc Morano
There are apparently not enough upwardly mobile “want to be’s” trying to impress their neighbors out in “fly over country”.
Too many for my taste, but not enough to propel WM to a yuppie retailer. Are they kidding me? Did they think these people wanted to be trendy?
http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/?page_id=9798
lol, true
I heard a guy describe the average shopper at Wal Mart is wearing shorts with sandals and black socks. He left out beer t-shirts, trailed by four loud kids.
But actually I’m happy there is a store like Wal Mart where people with lots of kids can save some money—even though you have to stand in line for 15-20 minutes. But hey, if unions get their way prices will go up and those shoppers will go to Target instead.
Yep. I’m glad there is both a Target and WalMart. Although, my estimation of WalMart has dropped considerably since Sam Walton died.
Not having fishing tackle or bolts of fabric is part of going green? It’s worse than I thought! These greens are nuts and must be stopped.
As much as I would like to heap more scorn on the lefties/greens I’m not sure if they can take the blame for the hurting that Walmart is experiencing. It’s probably just the bad economy. Get rid of em’ anyway.
#1 I haven’t noticed any difference in Walmart’s fare over the last 10 years.
#2 Most Walmats that I’ve seen still carry fishing tackle and fabric. Actually lately I’ve been seeing a lot of fishing tackle in the discount isle so it must not be selling that well.
The(greens)still don’t get it!! Geez, now we have to work on getting rid of those swiggly light bulbs
Some stories are just a pleasure to read.
I love Wal Mart. It’s a great American success story. Around here they pay about the same as Target. The Commies screech about the Wal Mart health care, but they actually offer a variety of plans. Those plans just don’t meet with the Commie ideology of (a lot of) something (for Me Me Me) for nothing. And who created the $4 list of prescription drugs, cutting the average cost from something like $30? This incredible gift to humanity was made by Wal Mart for every customer in America. All other retailers followed suit, and now all of my prescriptions are $10/3 months, no matter where I buy them.
Recently, a Dem Alderman complained about the pay of WalMart CEO Michael Duke.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/walmart-ceo-pay-hour-workers-year/story?id=11067470
Now I’m no fan of bloated executive pay, but look at the reasoning in this article. If you took Duke’s salary guestimate of 23M and divided it over all 225,000 Wal Mart employees, they could all receive roughly an extra ~$100 per year. At 1500 (part time) hrs per year, that’s $8 per month, less than $2/week, ~7 cents an hour?
I see other problems with vast accumulation of wealth and power, but the message from the Commies is anti free market. Publicly held corporate America shares wealth in a huge way. Just buy some shares. Libs claim to hate private wealth, but many of them already have it, and have no intention of giving up their own.
Why is so much lib hatred directed at Wal Mart? They’re not that much different than a lot of other retailers. I think they see success and covet it, scheme to extort it, hope to destroy it. When Reagan called Communism an evil empire, I thought he was exaggerating. No.
WalMart green? Did not know that. Last time I was in one almost everything was made in China… but wait. That’s right, I forgot, they’re really, really green and a model government to boot, and they probably used sailboats and solar trains to get the stuff over here.
Yet, judging from this story, it seems people just don’t care about the children enough.