10 ms·

What happens to a tiny town when Walmart disappears

87 points by nkurz 11y ago

everyone 11y ago
Presumably this is a chance for small local shops to come back. Usually the arrival of a large supermarket like Walmart means the death knell for many small local shops in its catchment area, and a savage blow to that areas society.
- kough 11y ago
  Seems like the blow had already come from the closure of the mines in this case. The first paragraph of the article: """ To hear Mary Francis Matney tell it, Walmart didn’t kill the once-vibrant cluster of shops next to a railroad and a creek in the faded old coal town of Kimball, W. Va. — the disappearance of the mines had pretty well taken care of that already. But now that Walmart’s leaving, too, as one of 154 U.S. stores the company closed in January, the town might be snuffed out for good. """
- MCRed 11y ago
  I saw an economic study from several years ago showing that the arrival of a Walmart actually stimulated the growth of "Small shops" around the Walmart. That it stimulated commerce in the area-- in part because walmart brings in people from quite a distance (especially in rural areas) and the stores showed up to capture that traffic.
  - officialchicken 11y ago
    Link, please. Not that I doubt you, but that kind of statement needs to be backed up. Every study and article I've seen over the past 10+ years that concludes the effect is neutral at best. Directly from the federal reserve bank: "Given some positive and some negative outcomes, it's probably safest to say that Wal-Mart's net imprint on a county's health appears to be smaller than most perceive." [1] [1] https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/fedgazette/the-walmart-effect-poison-or-antidote-for-local-communities https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/fedgazette/the-w... [2] https://ag-econ.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/novdec05.pdf https://ag-econ.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/novdec05... [3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/03/31/of-course-walmart-destroys-retail-jobs-thats-the-darn-point-of-it-all/#5f7df6c8152b http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/03/31/of-course...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
DiabloD3 11y ago
My town has about 8k people, and the local Walmart services our tiny micro-metro of about 15k people. If Walmart vanished, almost no one in town would miss it because everyone complains about how high the prices are compared to local stores, and how little there is on store shelves; and what local stores can't sell us, we'd just order online. If someone showed up with a time machine, and told me Walmart went out of business 10-15 years from now, I'd believe it. If all Walmarts are mismanaged as badly as this one, how does that company even exist? The only thing I go there now for is paper towels and toilet paper and cat litter. Everything else I use, they either don't carry, or I can get cheaper elsewhere.
- jonknee 11y ago
  > If Walmart vanished, almost no one in town would miss it because everyone complains about how high the prices are compared to local stores, and how little there is on store shelves; and what local stores can't sell us, we'd just order online. I've read a lot of complaints about Walmart, but never once about how they are expensive. Fascinating.
  - DiabloD3 11y ago
    Apparently it isn't unique, it is a product of Walmart corporate interference into how each store individually operates. Basically, no one, not even the Store Manager, has much flexibility in store pricing. Walmart corporate punishes stores by taking unapproved differences in pricing out of the store budget, and stores are all generally severely under-budgeted to begin with, so no store, especially not ours, is going to do it. In poor areas like mine, Walmart doesn't give the store the flexibility to compete. Not that I care about Walmart's bottom line, but that can't be very cost effective for those stores.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    Almost nothing at my local Walmart is cheaper than it is on amazon prime. UPS and FedEx stop at my house more than the postman.
- coldtea 11y ago
oniMaker 11y ago
Remember this is being published by Bezos. It's a great tactic to frame the closing of these stores as afflicting the poor and downtrodden. Woe to the wretches wrought by way of Walmart. But wait! Perhaps there is a way they can be saved, all without leaving the comfort of their homes...
- chris_wot 11y ago
  You are seriously heartless. Many small communities utterly rely on buying groceries. Can you imagine not having anywhere to buy food and having to drive 3 hours just to get it? Walmart drove into these small communities, destroyed the smaller stores, then realised after deliberately making either a loss or tiny profits it wasn't economically viable, then buggered off. I think the only lesson I can see in this is that small communities should always oppose multinational retailers when there is a local option. Even if they have to spend a few dollars more. Otherwise, they'll be left with nothing.
  - orf 11y ago
    > Can you imagine not having anywhere to buy food and having to drive 3 hours just to get it? But why wouldn't smaller stores open again now walmart is gone? Edit: Say what you want about them being mom & pop stores that somehow cant start up again, if it takes 3 hours to drive to a shop and back there is a market opportunity. People will pay more for groceries when it doesn't involve a 6 hour round trip. I thought the idea of Americas great free market is that this void would be filled?
    - theklub 11y ago
      I smell a startup opportunity.
      - striking 11y ago
        Well, yeah. Starting up a mom & pop grocery store. It very well could 10x on you, too.
      - 11y ago
dghughes 11y ago
Imagine the opposite of a Walmart a store that primarily sold local products.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  Have you been to a farmer's market recently?
  - xeromal 11y ago
    Not trying to be snarky, but the majority of farm markets I've been to are overpriced. 6$ for raspberries, 7$ for a hummus. I know we lived in an era of low-quality, cheap food but for people like my family cheap grocers like Walmart are a necessity. My small town for example. https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+stores+near+Ellijay,+GA/@34.6879091,-84.5081625,14z/data=!3m1!4b1 https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+stores+near+Ellij... These days it has grown a bit, but Walmart is a very important part of the community. Before Amazon, it was the one stop shop for food, guns, toys, toiletries and other categories.
    - bluejekyll 11y ago
      > guns, toys I can't believe I just saw that in the same sentence. Perhaps the guns leaving town is a good thing. Farmers markets can be more expensive, but I generally find the food to be of higher quality, and that money tends to go directly into the community. Also, on the food thread, there are some things that people used to make at home and can significantly reduce overall food costs. Yogurt, as an example, can be made at home (easily) and is less than 25% of the cost. Humus can also be made easily and at lower cost at home.
      - douche 11y ago
        The sporting goods section is always right between the automotive and toy sections in a Walmart.
      - bluejekyll 11y ago
bhartzer 11y ago
Could be a tactic by Walmart get rid of the competition. They open smaller stores, get the small businesses to close. Then by closing their smaller stores they force people to go shop at their larger stores.
diyorgasms 11y ago
I've hit my article quota from WaPo for the month, and as such was unable to view this in my browser. For anyone else having this problem, wgetting the URL worked for me. I'm sure there are more convenient ways of bypassing the paywall, too.
- riebschlager 11y ago
  You can also open the link in an incognito window.
  - diyorgasms 11y ago
    Good call thanks.
    - jlgaddis 11y ago
      The best way I've found is to copy the link from this discussion/comments page you're on now, open a new incognito window, paste the link and pull up this same page in the new window, then click on the "web" link just below the title / above the comment textarea.
- amorphid 11y ago
  When I hit a paywall, I just google the article title. Clicking through via the search result usually gives me a paywall experience.
malandrew 11y ago
I'm wondering if Wal-Mart could allow the community to adopt the stores (without their brand name attached) and manage them as a coop instead of shuttering them. In other words "It's not worth it to us to keep this building around, but if it is worth it to you, feel free to keep it running"
- bobby_9x 11y ago
  Would the community be able to get together and buy the building or take over tge lease? Why would walmart just give away all of that money they invested? Especially in an economy that is starting to decline.
  - funkyy 11y ago
    I dont think changing WalMart in to farmers market would be that expensive. If farmers and small business could get more exposure for a bit of rent, why not. Local governments should be interested in this as this would generate jobs in area.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    Business goodwill is a thing. Empty buildings don't earn rent.
- mdasen 11y ago
  http://wvmetronews.com/2016/01/28/walmart-closes-its-doors-in-kimball/ http://wvmetronews.com/2016/01/28/walmart-closes-its-doors-i... The county is looking into buying the property.
strommen 11y ago
The title could be changed to: "What happens to thousands of tiny towns when the big business that brought the town into existence stops making money". Old mining and factory towns are extremely sad. When the region stops generating the value that drove its initial growth, the result is an endless downward spiral to widespread poverty. Lots of former workers are unable to make a transition to another job. The only real money left is in the retirement accounts of those who "made it" before the layoffs, and the only jobs available are in the service industry catering to these folks. That money and those jobs eventually fade away. The youngest and most capable workers see the writing on the wall and get out of Dodge. Others hang on as long as they possibly can. Of course Wal-Mart can't make a profit selling a full-size warehouse full of cheap goods in an area like this. Nobody can. But now that they're gone, somebody will succeed with a small, overpriced grocery store that pays local teenagers minimum wage and has a produce section the size of my bathroom. And even that store will go downhill over time as the people with money continue to pass away and move out. I wish I knew the solution to this problem.
- ghaff 11y ago
  I often wonder, when driving through remote rural communities, how the economics work. I expect what you wrote is generally the case. Retired people with some savings and/or pensions, social security, etc. plus a minimal service economy for those people.
  - strommen 11y ago
    Farms (and the supporting industries) make money. Less so today than they used to, but still enough to sustain small rural towns.
    - planteen 11y ago
      By used to, do you mean in 2012 when corn was around $7 / bu? Your typical "field" in the Midwest is a quarter or 160 ac. Iowa has a yield of around 170 bu/ac and a typical farmer might have around 8 quarters. If corn is around $4, that works out to 8x160x170x4 = $870k revenue by a farmer for a year (and almost 2x that in 2012!)
ChuckMcM 11y ago
I noticed that we didn't get any national coverage when Fry's destroyed all the electronics stores in the Bay Area and then decided to stop stocking and selling electronics. JDR, Quest, Jade, Sunnyvale Electronics, and Quement. Ok so I'm still a bit pissed off about that. When I saw the story on Whitewright texas [1] the thing that struck me was not that Walmart leaving would leave them without a grocery, but that the previous store chose not to re-open, nor was anyone stepping up to take over the lease of the Walmart and sell groceries there. So why not? Generally the answer is that they would have to raise prices to make it possible to survive and that the townsfolk would still dive the 22 miles away to the nearest Walmart that was still open to save that money. And since gas has come down in price, probably less than $4 out of pocket to do that. [1] (video) http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/parisattacks/with-no-walmart-texas-town-has-no-grocery-store/vp-BBoSGHg http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/parisattacks/with-no-walmart-t...
- georgeecollins 11y ago
  RE Fry's :You can pick a lot of electronics components up at the Jameco in San Carlos. They don't have it on display but they stock it and you can pick it up right there in a few minutes.
  - seanp2k2 11y ago
    HSC Electronic Supply in Santa Clara is also amazing if you've never been. 3500 Ryder St, Santa Clara, CA 95051. Their hours aren't amazing but the store definitely is.
    - ChuckMcM 11y ago
      Love HSC but since most of their stock was surplus their variety has gotten worse and worse as more and more manufacturing moved out of the Bay Area. But if they have something you might want, better buy it because it won't be there when you need it. This has always frustrated me.
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    Very true, and that Jameco has survived is a testament to their ability to successfully run both a local and mail order business. JDR and Quement used to stock components in Jameco's "Jimpak" format.
mdasen 11y ago
The article points out that in 95% of cases, there's another Walmart within 10 miles of the one they're closing. It seems like the Post is choosing the most extreme case it could find. The article also points out that the town had already shut down before Walmart had come in. But it still seems to take the angry-corporate-greed angle. This wasn't a place where Walmart came in and displaced businesses. This is where Walmart came in where there had been nothing. People always like to play the "there's no way this isn't making money" card like companies like to close things that make money. The article also doesn't really talk about how most of the closures are really Walmart Express stores. If BestBuy decided to end BestBuy Mobile, it's more a decision about the format than locations. Walmart is closing 12 Supercenters and 6 regular Walmarts. The other closings are other formats. For example, Walmart is killing off their Express stores which number 102. The second most closings is for the Neighborhood Markets which (from the map) are in urban areas where people will have other options. From a PR perspective, Walmart should have announced that it was killing off the Express concept independent of any other closings. Close those now. Then, over the next 18 months, close a single Walmart each month. Saying that you don't like the Express concept is just a business direction. Closing a Walmart each month isn't national news. And just trudge along with some of the rest. By closing 154 all at once, it becomes news and it becomes "Walmarts" that are being closed when the vast majority are Walmart Express stores that were an experiment started in 2011. The majority of the locations being closed are an experiment where Walmart tried to create a CVS-sized store. It's going to be crappy for a few places. But to be fair to Walmart, the residents of Kimball say that all the other shops had left before Walmart even came in. Big numbers make for news and Walmart should have been smarter and shuttered the Express stores independent of any real Walmart closings. If they had shuttered 102 Express locations and then just closed a Walmart here and there, people wouldn't make news out of it because it wouldn't be big numbers. There would be news about how Walmart can't do smaller-format stores, but that's a very different story from the Post article. The real story here is that Walmart didn't manage the closings in a PR-friendly way.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  It depends on Walmart's overall motivation. Maybe they don't care about the short-term bad PR. Maybe they figure they actually benefit from some PR that complains about the bad things that happen to the local economy when Walmarts close. That will help them in negotiating with other towns and employees/unions elsewhere.
lettercarrier 11y ago
The non Express stores were long known as poor performers, even if they were new openings. The newish CEO has razor sharp skills and keeps making decisions that long ago should have been done.
rocky1138 11y ago
Am I the only one okay with small towns which no longer serve a useful purpose closing down? Save some history in a nearby museum and on Wikipedia then turn the lights off on the way out.
- rsl7 11y ago
  Should that be up to Walmart?
- hobarrera 11y ago
  > Am I the only one okay with small towns which no longer serve a useful purpose closing down We're all okay with that. The problem is the people that remain there in poverty.
- jlgaddis 11y ago
  How do you go about "closing down" a small town? The very small city where I grew up (pop. 4,700) had, 25 years ago, a Carpenter school bus manufacturing plant, a limestone company, and (at least) two other small factories. If you didn't work at one of those, you likely worked in the service industry supporting them. First, the school bus plant moved to another location a few hours away. If memory serves, most of the employees were offered the opportunity to transfer but few did. While they could have moved their households, most of their immediate families were there and they didn't want to leave them. Then, the other factories closed down one by one. One was purchased and its operations moved to Mexico for the cheaper labor. The other factory was shut down as well, its operations moved to a different state where another factory was expanding. The limestone company still exists but there are no new jobs there. The folks who do work there mostly started right after high school when, for example, dad (who worked at the company) got his son a job there. The jobs are all gone but, somehow, the city remains. Myself, I moved out of town as soon as I had the chance. I live 45 minutes away in a city 15x the size. I drive past there occasionally, when I have to go to my company's office for some reason (I work remotely). I usually stop by and see my grandmother who still lives there. Everyone else in my family has pretty much left. The population has mostly stayed the same. In my opinion, this small town no longer serves a useful purpose. It has been overrun with drugs. The only "jobs" available there are in the service industry and anyone with a "good job" works out of town and commutes. That brings me back to your question. How does one just close it down? You just can't tell thousands of people to get out, that "we're turning the lights off on June 30th so you better be gone by then".
patleeman 11y ago
"For her granddaughter Hailey Noe, a high-schooler with long hair and heavy eyeliner, the Walmart was the last thing that made staying in the immediate area even viable. "You want to leave,” she said. "You feel like, what is there for me now?”" I hope you get out Hailey.

87 points by nkurz 11y ago

Presumably this is a chance for small local shops to come back. Usually the arrival of a large supermarket like Walmart means the death knell for many small local shops in its catchment area, and a savage blow to that areas society.

kough 11y ago
Seems like the blow had already come from the closure of the mines in this case. The first paragraph of the article: """ To hear Mary Francis Matney tell it, Walmart didn’t kill the once-vibrant cluster of shops next to a railroad and a creek in the faded old coal town of Kimball, W. Va. — the disappearance of the mines had pretty well taken care of that already. But now that Walmart’s leaving, too, as one of 154 U.S. stores the company closed in January, the town might be snuffed out for good. """
MCRed 11y ago
I saw an economic study from several years ago showing that the arrival of a Walmart actually stimulated the growth of "Small shops" around the Walmart. That it stimulated commerce in the area-- in part because walmart brings in people from quite a distance (especially in rural areas) and the stores showed up to capture that traffic.
- officialchicken 11y ago
  Link, please. Not that I doubt you, but that kind of statement needs to be backed up. Every study and article I've seen over the past 10+ years that concludes the effect is neutral at best. Directly from the federal reserve bank: "Given some positive and some negative outcomes, it's probably safest to say that Wal-Mart's net imprint on a county's health appears to be smaller than most perceive." [1] [1] https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/fedgazette/the-walmart-effect-poison-or-antidote-for-local-communities https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/fedgazette/the-w... [2] https://ag-econ.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/novdec05.pdf https://ag-econ.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/novdec05... [3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/03/31/of-course-walmart-destroys-retail-jobs-thats-the-darn-point-of-it-all/#5f7df6c8152b http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/03/31/of-course...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

DiabloD3 11y ago

My town has about 8k people, and the local Walmart services our tiny micro-metro of about 15k people. If Walmart vanished, almost no one in town would miss it because everyone complains about how high the prices are compared to local stores, and how little there is on store shelves; and what local stores can't sell us, we'd just order online. If someone showed up with a time machine, and told me Walmart went out of business 10-15 years from now, I'd believe it. If all Walmarts are mismanaged as badly as this one, how does that company even exist? The only thing I go there now for is paper towels and toilet paper and cat litter. Everything else I use, they either don't carry, or I can get cheaper elsewhere.

jonknee 11y ago
> If Walmart vanished, almost no one in town would miss it because everyone complains about how high the prices are compared to local stores, and how little there is on store shelves; and what local stores can't sell us, we'd just order online. I've read a lot of complaints about Walmart, but never once about how they are expensive. Fascinating.
- DiabloD3 11y ago
  Apparently it isn't unique, it is a product of Walmart corporate interference into how each store individually operates. Basically, no one, not even the Store Manager, has much flexibility in store pricing. Walmart corporate punishes stores by taking unapproved differences in pricing out of the store budget, and stores are all generally severely under-budgeted to begin with, so no store, especially not ours, is going to do it. In poor areas like mine, Walmart doesn't give the store the flexibility to compete. Not that I care about Walmart's bottom line, but that can't be very cost effective for those stores.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  Almost nothing at my local Walmart is cheaper than it is on amazon prime. UPS and FedEx stop at my house more than the postman.
coldtea 11y ago

oniMaker 11y ago

Remember this is being published by Bezos. It's a great tactic to frame the closing of these stores as afflicting the poor and downtrodden. Woe to the wretches wrought by way of Walmart. But wait! Perhaps there is a way they can be saved, all without leaving the comfort of their homes...

chris_wot 11y ago
You are seriously heartless. Many small communities utterly rely on buying groceries. Can you imagine not having anywhere to buy food and having to drive 3 hours just to get it? Walmart drove into these small communities, destroyed the smaller stores, then realised after deliberately making either a loss or tiny profits it wasn't economically viable, then buggered off. I think the only lesson I can see in this is that small communities should always oppose multinational retailers when there is a local option. Even if they have to spend a few dollars more. Otherwise, they'll be left with nothing.
- orf 11y ago
  > Can you imagine not having anywhere to buy food and having to drive 3 hours just to get it? But why wouldn't smaller stores open again now walmart is gone? Edit: Say what you want about them being mom & pop stores that somehow cant start up again, if it takes 3 hours to drive to a shop and back there is a market opportunity. People will pay more for groceries when it doesn't involve a 6 hour round trip. I thought the idea of Americas great free market is that this void would be filled?
  - theklub 11y ago
    I smell a startup opportunity.
    - striking 11y ago
      Well, yeah. Starting up a mom & pop grocery store. It very well could 10x on you, too.
    - 11y ago

dghughes 11y ago

Imagine the opposite of a Walmart a store that primarily sold local products.

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
Have you been to a farmer's market recently?
- xeromal 11y ago
  Not trying to be snarky, but the majority of farm markets I've been to are overpriced. 6$ for raspberries, 7$ for a hummus. I know we lived in an era of low-quality, cheap food but for people like my family cheap grocers like Walmart are a necessity. My small town for example. https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+stores+near+Ellijay,+GA/@34.6879091,-84.5081625,14z/data=!3m1!4b1 https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+stores+near+Ellij... These days it has grown a bit, but Walmart is a very important part of the community. Before Amazon, it was the one stop shop for food, guns, toys, toiletries and other categories.
  - bluejekyll 11y ago
    > guns, toys I can't believe I just saw that in the same sentence. Perhaps the guns leaving town is a good thing. Farmers markets can be more expensive, but I generally find the food to be of higher quality, and that money tends to go directly into the community. Also, on the food thread, there are some things that people used to make at home and can significantly reduce overall food costs. Yogurt, as an example, can be made at home (easily) and is less than 25% of the cost. Humus can also be made easily and at lower cost at home.
    - douche 11y ago
      The sporting goods section is always right between the automotive and toy sections in a Walmart.
    - bluejekyll 11y ago

bhartzer 11y ago

Could be a tactic by Walmart get rid of the competition. They open smaller stores, get the small businesses to close. Then by closing their smaller stores they force people to go shop at their larger stores.

diyorgasms 11y ago

I've hit my article quota from WaPo for the month, and as such was unable to view this in my browser. For anyone else having this problem, wgetting the URL worked for me. I'm sure there are more convenient ways of bypassing the paywall, too.

riebschlager 11y ago
You can also open the link in an incognito window.
- diyorgasms 11y ago
  Good call thanks.
  - jlgaddis 11y ago
    The best way I've found is to copy the link from this discussion/comments page you're on now, open a new incognito window, paste the link and pull up this same page in the new window, then click on the "web" link just below the title / above the comment textarea.
amorphid 11y ago
When I hit a paywall, I just google the article title. Clicking through via the search result usually gives me a paywall experience.

malandrew 11y ago

I'm wondering if Wal-Mart could allow the community to adopt the stores (without their brand name attached) and manage them as a coop instead of shuttering them. In other words "It's not worth it to us to keep this building around, but if it is worth it to you, feel free to keep it running"

bobby_9x 11y ago
Would the community be able to get together and buy the building or take over tge lease? Why would walmart just give away all of that money they invested? Especially in an economy that is starting to decline.
- funkyy 11y ago
  I dont think changing WalMart in to farmers market would be that expensive. If farmers and small business could get more exposure for a bit of rent, why not. Local governments should be interested in this as this would generate jobs in area.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Business goodwill is a thing. Empty buildings don't earn rent.
mdasen 11y ago
http://wvmetronews.com/2016/01/28/walmart-closes-its-doors-in-kimball/ http://wvmetronews.com/2016/01/28/walmart-closes-its-doors-i... The county is looking into buying the property.

strommen 11y ago

The title could be changed to: "What happens to thousands of tiny towns when the big business that brought the town into existence stops making money". Old mining and factory towns are extremely sad. When the region stops generating the value that drove its initial growth, the result is an endless downward spiral to widespread poverty. Lots of former workers are unable to make a transition to another job. The only real money left is in the retirement accounts of those who "made it" before the layoffs, and the only jobs available are in the service industry catering to these folks. That money and those jobs eventually fade away. The youngest and most capable workers see the writing on the wall and get out of Dodge. Others hang on as long as they possibly can. Of course Wal-Mart can't make a profit selling a full-size warehouse full of cheap goods in an area like this. Nobody can. But now that they're gone, somebody will succeed with a small, overpriced grocery store that pays local teenagers minimum wage and has a produce section the size of my bathroom. And even that store will go downhill over time as the people with money continue to pass away and move out. I wish I knew the solution to this problem.

ghaff 11y ago
I often wonder, when driving through remote rural communities, how the economics work. I expect what you wrote is generally the case. Retired people with some savings and/or pensions, social security, etc. plus a minimal service economy for those people.
- strommen 11y ago
  Farms (and the supporting industries) make money. Less so today than they used to, but still enough to sustain small rural towns.
  - planteen 11y ago
    By used to, do you mean in 2012 when corn was around $7 / bu? Your typical "field" in the Midwest is a quarter or 160 ac. Iowa has a yield of around 170 bu/ac and a typical farmer might have around 8 quarters. If corn is around $4, that works out to 8x160x170x4 = $870k revenue by a farmer for a year (and almost 2x that in 2012!)

ChuckMcM 11y ago

I noticed that we didn't get any national coverage when Fry's destroyed all the electronics stores in the Bay Area and then decided to stop stocking and selling electronics. JDR, Quest, Jade, Sunnyvale Electronics, and Quement. Ok so I'm still a bit pissed off about that. When I saw the story on Whitewright texas [1] the thing that struck me was not that Walmart leaving would leave them without a grocery, but that the previous store chose not to re-open, nor was anyone stepping up to take over the lease of the Walmart and sell groceries there. So why not? Generally the answer is that they would have to raise prices to make it possible to survive and that the townsfolk would still dive the 22 miles away to the nearest Walmart that was still open to save that money. And since gas has come down in price, probably less than $4 out of pocket to do that. [1] (video) http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/parisattacks/with-no-walmart-texas-town-has-no-grocery-store/vp-BBoSGHg http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/parisattacks/with-no-walmart-t...

georgeecollins 11y ago
RE Fry's :You can pick a lot of electronics components up at the Jameco in San Carlos. They don't have it on display but they stock it and you can pick it up right there in a few minutes.
- seanp2k2 11y ago
  HSC Electronic Supply in Santa Clara is also amazing if you've never been. 3500 Ryder St, Santa Clara, CA 95051. Their hours aren't amazing but the store definitely is.
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    Love HSC but since most of their stock was surplus their variety has gotten worse and worse as more and more manufacturing moved out of the Bay Area. But if they have something you might want, better buy it because it won't be there when you need it. This has always frustrated me.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  Very true, and that Jameco has survived is a testament to their ability to successfully run both a local and mail order business. JDR and Quement used to stock components in Jameco's "Jimpak" format.

mdasen 11y ago

The article points out that in 95% of cases, there's another Walmart within 10 miles of the one they're closing. It seems like the Post is choosing the most extreme case it could find. The article also points out that the town had already shut down before Walmart had come in. But it still seems to take the angry-corporate-greed angle. This wasn't a place where Walmart came in and displaced businesses. This is where Walmart came in where there had been nothing. People always like to play the "there's no way this isn't making money" card like companies like to close things that make money. The article also doesn't really talk about how most of the closures are really Walmart Express stores. If BestBuy decided to end BestBuy Mobile, it's more a decision about the format than locations. Walmart is closing 12 Supercenters and 6 regular Walmarts. The other closings are other formats. For example, Walmart is killing off their Express stores which number 102. The second most closings is for the Neighborhood Markets which (from the map) are in urban areas where people will have other options. From a PR perspective, Walmart should have announced that it was killing off the Express concept independent of any other closings. Close those now. Then, over the next 18 months, close a single Walmart each month. Saying that you don't like the Express concept is just a business direction. Closing a Walmart each month isn't national news. And just trudge along with some of the rest. By closing 154 all at once, it becomes news and it becomes "Walmarts" that are being closed when the vast majority are Walmart Express stores that were an experiment started in 2011. The majority of the locations being closed are an experiment where Walmart tried to create a CVS-sized store. It's going to be crappy for a few places. But to be fair to Walmart, the residents of Kimball say that all the other shops had left before Walmart even came in. Big numbers make for news and Walmart should have been smarter and shuttered the Express stores independent of any real Walmart closings. If they had shuttered 102 Express locations and then just closed a Walmart here and there, people wouldn't make news out of it because it wouldn't be big numbers. There would be news about how Walmart can't do smaller-format stores, but that's a very different story from the Post article. The real story here is that Walmart didn't manage the closings in a PR-friendly way.

sokoloff 11y ago
It depends on Walmart's overall motivation. Maybe they don't care about the short-term bad PR. Maybe they figure they actually benefit from some PR that complains about the bad things that happen to the local economy when Walmarts close. That will help them in negotiating with other towns and employees/unions elsewhere.

lettercarrier 11y ago

The non Express stores were long known as poor performers, even if they were new openings. The newish CEO has razor sharp skills and keeps making decisions that long ago should have been done.

rocky1138 11y ago

Am I the only one okay with small towns which no longer serve a useful purpose closing down? Save some history in a nearby museum and on Wikipedia then turn the lights off on the way out.

rsl7 11y ago
Should that be up to Walmart?
hobarrera 11y ago
> Am I the only one okay with small towns which no longer serve a useful purpose closing down We're all okay with that. The problem is the people that remain there in poverty.
jlgaddis 11y ago
How do you go about "closing down" a small town? The very small city where I grew up (pop. 4,700) had, 25 years ago, a Carpenter school bus manufacturing plant, a limestone company, and (at least) two other small factories. If you didn't work at one of those, you likely worked in the service industry supporting them. First, the school bus plant moved to another location a few hours away. If memory serves, most of the employees were offered the opportunity to transfer but few did. While they could have moved their households, most of their immediate families were there and they didn't want to leave them. Then, the other factories closed down one by one. One was purchased and its operations moved to Mexico for the cheaper labor. The other factory was shut down as well, its operations moved to a different state where another factory was expanding. The limestone company still exists but there are no new jobs there. The folks who do work there mostly started right after high school when, for example, dad (who worked at the company) got his son a job there. The jobs are all gone but, somehow, the city remains. Myself, I moved out of town as soon as I had the chance. I live 45 minutes away in a city 15x the size. I drive past there occasionally, when I have to go to my company's office for some reason (I work remotely). I usually stop by and see my grandmother who still lives there. Everyone else in my family has pretty much left. The population has mostly stayed the same. In my opinion, this small town no longer serves a useful purpose. It has been overrun with drugs. The only "jobs" available there are in the service industry and anyone with a "good job" works out of town and commutes. That brings me back to your question. How does one just close it down? You just can't tell thousands of people to get out, that "we're turning the lights off on June 30th so you better be gone by then".

patleeman 11y ago

"For her granddaughter Hailey Noe, a high-schooler with long hair and heavy eyeliner, the Walmart was the last thing that made staying in the immediate area even viable. "You want to leave,” she said. "You feel like, what is there for me now?”" I hope you get out Hailey.