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Leaked Walmart memo reveals competitive threats

252 points by prostoalex 5y ago

mensetmanusman 5y ago
Still annoyed that Target and Walmart refuse to accept Apple Pay so that they can continue to collect identifying data on all the customers that pass through their doors.
- mikelward 5y ago
  Target does accept Apple Pay and Google Pay. https://help.target.com/help/subcategoryarticle?childcat=Accepted+payment+options&parentcat=Payment+Options&searchQuery=search+help https://help.target.com/help/subcategoryarticle?childcat=Acc...
morpheos137 5y ago
most people, outside of the covid event and the HN bubble prefer buying things in person. My issue with walmart has been poor quality items or common items out of stock. I remember a few years ago going to a walmart supercenter and they were out of stock of nutcrackers. This was not during the holiday season but come on people eat walnuts or almonds year round. Additionally walmart could do better with fewer more professional employees and with an app that would help shoppers find merchandise in store without needing to ask an employee.
anonu 5y ago
I think that over time the things these companies need to be successful, vertical integration across concepts like web, mobile, e-commerce, logistics, shipping, personal shopper, curbside pickup, etc etc... Is all going to be fragmented and broken up into it's component pieces. Instacart started the trend in a big way and Shopify is also part of this "disaggregation" framework...
mc32 5y ago
I think Wal*Mart has an image problem. I’ve gone into their stores. Their stock assortment isn’t bad compared to the competition. In fact, aside from Whole Foods on the organic/bio side of things, they measure up very well and better compared to their competition. They are more of a hypermart where you can do one stop shopping ala Carrefour. The issues I see are: very drab color palette. Working class shoppers. Sure, it’s elitist, but people like shopping alongside people in their own stratum. They could likely address this by having a second more upscale brand.
- hahamrfunnyguy 5y ago
  It's not an image problem, shopping there is a terrible experience. The stores are always a mess and the employees are unhelpful. There always seems to be long lines at the front end. They do have a good selection of products, but I avoid shopping there whenever I can because it's so unpleasant.
- VoodooJuJu 5y ago
  This comment is just so wildly delusional. Aristotle was right when he said that most envy and elitism is directed at other members of one's own class.
- mikelward 5y ago
  I went to a Walmart Supercenter this week to try to buy clothes and groceries. No carts or hand baskets available. One employee reprimanding another employee right in front of customers. No bags for produce. Underwear was in a locked cabinet. I pressed the button but nobody came to help. Grumpy attendant at the self checkout. It's no wonder that people who can afford to shop elsewhere do.
- galgalesh 5y ago
  When I visited the US, I went to Walmart just to see how bad it was. I visited the "sick and dead fish" aisle. Incomprehensible how that's even allowed, but ok. This is more subjective, but in every country I go to, I visit a "cheap supermarket chain store" and look at the people working there. Do they look happy? Do they look healthy? Do they look tired? Switzerland was amazing on that front.
- totalZero 5y ago
  > Working class shoppers. Sure, it’s elitist, but people like shopping alongside people in their own stratum. The thing about America is that you honestly cannot tell the social status of a person based on appearance alone. The middle class is large and we value frugality and humility. I think of this as a collective tendency: rich or poor, when you go to Wal-Mart you just wear whatever you're wearing. I don't know if you have ever heard of Chris Arnade but he is an ex Wall Streeter who wrote about the "McDonald's Test," which probably lines up with Wal-Mart too. "Eventually I came up with what I call the McDonald’s test. The broad thesis of my book is that our society sorts people into what I call the front row and the back row – the privileged class to which I used to belong, who are financially secure and live in safe neighborhoods with good schools and public services – and everybody else. The test is to ask a person: how do you view McDonald’s? In my experience, the answer usually reveals whether someone belongs to the front or back row." https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/economic-justice/the-mcdonalds-test https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/econ...
Animats 5y ago
Instacart is a threat to WalMart? That's a surprise. I had no idea Instacart was that big. I think of them as a gig-economy delivery service that delivers only 80% of what you order. The whole business of sending people to do shopping in retail stores seems a temporary business until the grocery industry gets fulfillment figured out. It's like a throwback to the early days of Internet commerce, when the web site didn't talk to the inventory system, so many orders could not be fulfilled properly.
- dogman144 5y ago
  Used to do retail tech work. Instacart collapses brand identities as consumers don’t care where the food comes from. This is very top of mind of whatever reason for retail/grocery execs.
- cogman10 5y ago
  Probably the best thing about COVID is now all stores here do curbside pickup. I don't understand why it took COVID to make companies realize that "hey, a large part of your clientele don't want to wander your aisles."
  - krapp 5y ago
    >I don't understand why it took COVID to make companies realize that "hey, a large part of your clientele don't want to wander your aisles." Because making shoppers wander the aisles leads them to buy more things than they intended to. There's a reason best-selling items are always placed at eye level.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      >Because making shoppers wander the aisles leads them to buy more things than they intended to. There's a reason best-selling items are always placed at eye level. And the dairy or automotive sections are nowhere near the entrance. They want you to impulse buy some cookies or a $5 DVD on your way to get milk or an oil change.
    - 5y ago
lolsal 5y ago
The biggest thing keeping me from shopping at Walmart is their anti-competitive and predatory behavior and the way they treat their employees and vendors. Nothing else really matters to me regarding Walmart. There's no subscription service that would get me to shop at Walmart more than I do today (which is zero). There's no competitor that could decline in such a way that I would shop at Walmart. I know many in my social circles feel the same way.
- grillvogel 5y ago
  do you shop at amazon or target?
  - lolsal 5y ago
    No.
- quickthrowman 5y ago
  There are no ethical global multinational companies, sorry to burst your bubble. Every other giant retailer is doing the same to employees, vendors, etc.
  - lolsal 5y ago
    What makes you think I live in a bubble regarding large retail companies?
  - rsuelzer 5y ago
    Walmart really started the race to the bottom, killed countless good paying retail jobs (many union), so I choose to hold them accountable, even if it's irrational at this point given their competition (Amazon) is arguably just as bad or worse.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    Costco treats their employees very well comparitvely.
- ineedasername 5y ago
Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
I want someone, *anyone*, to knock Amazon down. So here’s some free advice to Walmart. Consider Walmart’s weaknesses and how other companies address them. - manually stocked shelves Consider Costco’s model of placing pallets of product on the floor. Most Walmart’s have the vertical space to go up. Obviously redesigning their store experience is expensive and difficult with a stagnating industry and a lot of staff that don’t like tech or change. But these are not hard problems. For large items like boxes of soda and cereal, this is simple, just add some flimsy cardboard shelves holding the rows together. For beauty products and small items like that keep the system and layout the same to keep things simple, but start working with manufacturers on palletized displays that satisfy their in store image requirements. - poor buy online pickup at store experience, both online and in store. Make it easier to shop a particular local Walmart for pickup and only the stock in that store. The same goes for shopping online for shipping and only those products sold by Walmart. Having three different experiences is good for consumers, but make it easier for the customer to specify which one they want. - the notorious Walmart experience, and the notorious people of Walmart This is a tough one that I don’t have a good answer for besides look to target and Trader Joe’s for inspiration while hiring sociologists and the advertising company behind fidget spinners. - online purchase, in store pickup experience In years past it made sense to force customers to walk through the entire store to do some annoying task. These days? I pay more, sometimes a lot, to not have to enter a store, or speak to underpaid and overworked staff there. Punch some new doors on the side of the the building, put in a few reefer fridges, some more shelves, and have the in house developers crank out a contactless pickup web app. Include - innovate For things I buy all the time, I’m not time sensitive. Hook customers on something addictively convenient like weekly grocery delivery of their staples with Walmart’s plus subscription. Stuff like milk, eggs, bread, cheese, deli meat, etc. also, if I know I’m having a big party in two weeks and don’t want to deal with the groceries I’d love a reliable way to 60 fresh avocados, 10 cases of beer, 20 bags of chips, and 30 pounds of meat without going to multiple stores. Right now the only way I can do this is by ringing the manager of the store and placing a special order. It shouldn’t even be that hard to logistically handle the ebbs and flow of demand. Problem is can someone build such a system profitably? If Walmart can’t, I doubt anyone could.
- ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
hogFeast 5y ago
This kind of thinking is why grocery chains have struggled despite having the deck stacked totally in their favour. Online retail, much like offline retail, is about physical infrastructure. You still need warehouses with all the product, you still need fulfilment, all online changes is the balance of those factors. The core assets don't change. I can see how they are losing on branding but losing to Instacart tells you that management lost touch with customers and sat on their laurels. That being said, I have no doubt that they will vanquish Instacart. And they will likely pressure aspects of Amazon's business too. It isn't actually possible to compete with WMT because they such a dense network already (outside the US, AMZN is going to struggle even more, they weren't aggressive enough in building fulfilment centres and they tried to build fewer, larger centres, Amazon will begin exiting some of these markets in the next five years and sell out to local operators with exiting fulfilment networks, an alternative would be they cede control over fulfilment to local operators and just operate the front-end website...either way, their position outside the US is likely unsustainable).
- 542354234235 5y ago
  > Online retail, much like offline retail, is about physical infrastructure. You still need warehouses with all the product, you still need fulfilment, all online changes is the balance of those factors. The core assets don't change. Which is why it is so weird when offline entities adding online lose out over and over to online only. They already have most of the infrastructure and their infrastructure is being paid for by two separate revenue streams (existing in store customers and new online customers). It just shows how often and how prevalent it is for these companies to rest on their laurels and siphon off every available penny of revenue for shareholder and executive profit, rather actually investing real time, effort, and talent into the online space. Which is why online companies can start from such a disadvantaged position and still surpass.
  - hogFeast 5y ago
    Ikea is the example I often cite. I am in the UK. Many of their locations are adjacent to motorways, they literally have a warehouse in the store, and all they need to add is a fulfilment network (which, btw, they already have just not large enough to meet demand). Admittedly, the stuff they carry is pretty heavy/expensive...but they are 99% of the way there. Instead, you go on their website, a lot of the stuff on there doesn't work properly, and delivery times are a month plus. It is deliberate. Wayfair is dropshipping stuff from China, and managing to compete with them...how? It makes no sense. Ikea have a position that no competitor could actually replicate without losing billions of pounds, and they are getting beaten by a company which doesn't manufacture goods, owns one or two warehouses, and doesn't fulfil orders...how? Literally, Wayfair just have a bunch of websites (now consolidated) with good SEO...and Ikea are just handing them market share. And yes, "executive profit" is the key point. Executive comp is set by comp committees who have no clue, and benchmark off whatever they the company is already doing/last year's numbers. Why do execs care if the company blows up in five years through malinvestment? They will have cashed out their options by then and will be lighting their cigars with fifty pound notes. Imo, executive comp structure is 95% to do with why this has happened (in my experience, exec comp in physical retail is structured very poorly across the board, it incentivizes poor ROIC growth).
chidog12 5y ago
Anybody have link to the memo?
ourmandave 5y ago
If they're worried about Instacart, that might be why they deliver things I order on Sunday that afternoon even when I qualify for free shipping by ordering over $45 (or some amount). I don't expect it for a couple days but if it's in the local store they have random people bag and deliver it within hours. Even on a Sunday.
paulpauper 5y ago
According to memo, Walmrt has competitors. who knew Look how well the stock is doing and has done over the past 4 or so years. to say they they are facing challenges or are struggling is overly-dramatic. Online shopping will never replace Walmart completely. Rather both will grow together.They both serve a role. A lot of ppl do not want to use amazon or don't have good internet access or cannot receive mail easily.
Jakobeha 5y ago
I've used both Instacart and Walmart delivery because I don't have a car and live ~3miles from the nearest supermarket. In my experience, Instacart has worked very well: the only issues (2-hour delivery window, tip for delivery) are upfront, but I rarely get messed up / late / bad orders. The website is also great. The only time I used Walmart, my delivery was rescheduled to the next day, something which never happened with 50+ Instacart deliveries. And the website sucks.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  That probably comes down to location and competence+availability of staff. I've had basically equal results from the three different grocery stores I've ordered from in my current location, one of which is Walmart, one is a Kroger subsidiary, and one is a local higher-end chain. But when I was in SF, I had terrible results with Instacart, and resorted to shopping in person.
  - Jakobeha 5y ago
    Honestly I still wish I could shop in person, it's just too far :) Not trying to be rude but maybe you didn't tip enough? The default tip is 5% but I usually do ~20%.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      I usually tipped delivery services 15-20%, more if it was raining, but shouldn't tips be hidden and only given in aggregate? Also I wish a fair wage was just baked into the price and tipping went away.
paxys 5y ago
Walmart gets a lot of flak for being old school and allowing Amazon's rise, but they are one of the very few retailers who have actually been able to respond to competitive threats over the last decade or two. Walmart Labs has some great tech and hires top software talent in the industry. They aren't shy about making large acquisitions when needed (like Jet). They have built out their own delivery and logistics network and now offer 2 day, 1 day or same day shipping. They even have their own "Prime" subscription and grocery deliveries. The business could easily have gone the way of Sears.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  In 1982 Wal-Mart was still exclusively a rural retailer, continuing to build scale but only in towns below a certain size. It was not felt they could yet compete with more well-funded better-established chains. Most stores more closely resembled today's Dollar General than a big box There were not yet "superstores", and most people in big cities had never heard of them. With IBM PC's not yet having a significant impact on business, and almost nobody doing any data networking compared to today, Wal-Mart already had a fully computerized POS/inventory/logistics-management system in every store, integrated into their headquarters in small-town Arkansas in almost real-time, with data-mining informing the financial decision making. No one else had anything close, not Sears, Target, or Kmart, who were obviously going to end up having difficulty when Sam thought the time was right for Wal-Mart to come to the big cities. Even though all these retailers had the same computer hardware in their respective headquarters, IBM's good old "impersonal" mainframes which only big companies could afford. Walton would bus all his managers to Bentonville for a pow-wow every year, scheduled to start at 8 all week. If you got there precisely at 8, you had already missed the most important half-hour with Sam, he would start at 0730. Drove an old pickup truck too, so he could save money.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  >> Walmart gets a lot of flak In a way, it reminds me of "MSFT is Dead" stuff from circa 2008. Google had taken email by storm, was moving on office and seemed to be making web into their own OS. Windows Vista & IE sucked. Google just seemed so much nimbler. Apple had risen from the dead, and was reinventing consumer electronics. MSFT was looking decrepit, the next IBM. MSFT never panicked. Software was a great business to be in, and the pressure was never financial. Meanwhile, they maintained their own ways and their own cultural advantages, long term perseverance, reverse compatibility, etc. They didn't win every race. Google won mobile OS, the "browser war. MSFT's attempts at a search business didn't succeed. They did win enough though, plenty. Google was better at web based software earlier, but MSFT held on to Office/Productivity. Office 365 wasn't as slick as early, but it was/is the product businesses will pay for. Most notably, they beat Google on cloud. Cloud was in Google's wheelhouse, and emphatically not in MSFT's. They started late. Google's "paradigm" mentality was great for the early part of the game. Getting where we are today though, that required carrying old paradigms into the new world. It required lots of mess, details, requirements that don't really make sense... That is MSFT's wheelhouse. Meeting companies where they are. Its a foreign concept to Google. Today, Google is the one that seems weaker. They're plenty rich, and plenty capable technologically. They aren't very good at building businesses though. It's still all about adwords. MSFT could have gone the way of IBM.
Firebrand 5y ago
I wonder what happened with Walmart’s partnership with TikTok and if they’ve given up on their social media/e-commerce ambitions: https://www.vox.com/recode/21448460/walmart-tiktok-amazon-deal-partnership-oracle-trump-ban-bytedance https://www.vox.com/recode/21448460/walmart-tiktok-amazon-de... They were very eager to beat Amazon on bringing the QVC style online video commerce that’s super popular in China to the U.S., but I haven’t seen much about it since. I guess like convincing teens to buy clothing that their favorite influencer was wearing from Walmart.com was too tall an order.
jh0486 5y ago
This has been the story for the last 8 years at minimum. There's nothing new here. They have still found a way to survive and grow during this time.
rsuelzer 5y ago
I avoid Walmart because of their absolutely terrible treatment of their employees, the fact the have failed to provide decent wages or benefits for their workers, drove a race to the bottom in retail and did this almost entirely to the benefit of five children who were lucky to be born with the last name Walton and are now the richest family in America. The corporation is seared in my mind as the ugliest side of American corporate greed with a total disregard of social responsibility. Only very recently did Walmart even attempt to bring up wages, and it's not because they felt some accountability for decimating small towns and family owned businesses, but because they were becoming a dinosaur and suddenly had to compete for workers who would rather work someplace that paid more, even if only marginally and exploited them a little less brazenly.
- galgalesh 5y ago
  When I visit other countries, I always visit the Cheapest supermarkets, just to see the people working there. Zwitserland was amazing: happy, healthy people who clearly loved their job. The US much less so.
- frankish 5y ago
  To your point, Dan Price recently posted some related stats and perspective: > Minimum wage > Costco: $16 > Walmart: $11 > > Average pay > Costco: $24 > Walmart: $15 > > Employees on food stamps (subsidized by you) > Costco: Virtually none > Walmart: More than any other company > > Founder net worth > Costco: not a billionaire > Walmart: $220+ billion; up $30 billion in the pandemic > > Both companies have similar business models and charge the same low prices. One decided to treat its employees like humans and forgo enormous profits, and the other one took the opposite track. > > Business is about choices.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Costco’s customers are the top 3 socioeconomic quintiles, Walmart’s customers are the bottom 3 (or middle 3). Either way, Costco’s customers are richer, and they have a different business model. They are objectively a good employer, but a lot of that has to do with their customer not being extremely price sensitive and being able to afford to buy large quantities, which also results in less loss due to theft. You can find the richer parts of any town by searching for Costco. As for founder net worth, it’s not very meaningful if a founder owns it or others own it in 401k. Divide the Walmart founder net worth by employees and it still would not give them a meaningful improvement in wages for long. They’re simply a low margin business selling to customers who cannot afford to spend extra.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dwighttk 5y ago
I wish walmart would buy barnes and noble, let me add a book to clear the free shipping bar
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
yalogin 5y ago
It’s great to see they are brutally honest with themselves, I didn’t expect anything else. Walmart’s problem is with urban and close urban centers. Their image in these areas is in the dumpster. I don’t know how they can improve it either. The one thing that could help is to throw their color palette out and pick a vibrant one. Their stores look really dull.
velgewp 5y ago
Walmart can do anything to tacle this threat as they are now creating their own ecosystem of devices like laptop, smartphone, smart tvs and will sell in their stores to maximize profit... Reference - Walmart's first Android TVs will be officially released next week - https://techplanet.today/post/walmarts-first-android-tvs-will-be-officially-released-next-week https://techplanet.today/post/walmarts-first-android-tvs-wil...
innocentoldguy 5y ago
I don’t shop at Walmart for three reasons: 1. They always have boxes of un-stocked products stacked in the aisles, making it hard to navigate my shopping cart through the store. 2. Their food selection isn’t as good as other local retailers. 3. The Walmart near me locks the door near the handicap parking after 10:00 pm, even though they are open all night. I’ve been forced on multiple occasions to walk all the way to the other end of the store to get out and then walk all the way back to my car again, which is painful for me and why I have a handicap tag in the first place. Two of those issues seem fairly easy to fix, yet they never do.

252 points by prostoalex 5y ago

Still annoyed that Target and Walmart refuse to accept Apple Pay so that they can continue to collect identifying data on all the customers that pass through their doors.

mikelward 5y ago
Target does accept Apple Pay and Google Pay. https://help.target.com/help/subcategoryarticle?childcat=Accepted+payment+options&parentcat=Payment+Options&searchQuery=search+help https://help.target.com/help/subcategoryarticle?childcat=Acc...

morpheos137 5y ago

most people, outside of the covid event and the HN bubble prefer buying things in person. My issue with walmart has been poor quality items or common items out of stock. I remember a few years ago going to a walmart supercenter and they were out of stock of nutcrackers. This was not during the holiday season but come on people eat walnuts or almonds year round. Additionally walmart could do better with fewer more professional employees and with an app that would help shoppers find merchandise in store without needing to ask an employee.

anonu 5y ago

I think that over time the things these companies need to be successful, vertical integration across concepts like web, mobile, e-commerce, logistics, shipping, personal shopper, curbside pickup, etc etc... Is all going to be fragmented and broken up into it's component pieces. Instacart started the trend in a big way and Shopify is also part of this "disaggregation" framework...

mc32 5y ago

I think Wal*Mart has an image problem. I’ve gone into their stores. Their stock assortment isn’t bad compared to the competition. In fact, aside from Whole Foods on the organic/bio side of things, they measure up very well and better compared to their competition. They are more of a hypermart where you can do one stop shopping ala Carrefour. The issues I see are: very drab color palette. Working class shoppers. Sure, it’s elitist, but people like shopping alongside people in their own stratum. They could likely address this by having a second more upscale brand.

hahamrfunnyguy 5y ago
It's not an image problem, shopping there is a terrible experience. The stores are always a mess and the employees are unhelpful. There always seems to be long lines at the front end. They do have a good selection of products, but I avoid shopping there whenever I can because it's so unpleasant.
VoodooJuJu 5y ago
This comment is just so wildly delusional. Aristotle was right when he said that most envy and elitism is directed at other members of one's own class.
mikelward 5y ago
I went to a Walmart Supercenter this week to try to buy clothes and groceries. No carts or hand baskets available. One employee reprimanding another employee right in front of customers. No bags for produce. Underwear was in a locked cabinet. I pressed the button but nobody came to help. Grumpy attendant at the self checkout. It's no wonder that people who can afford to shop elsewhere do.
galgalesh 5y ago
When I visited the US, I went to Walmart just to see how bad it was. I visited the "sick and dead fish" aisle. Incomprehensible how that's even allowed, but ok. This is more subjective, but in every country I go to, I visit a "cheap supermarket chain store" and look at the people working there. Do they look happy? Do they look healthy? Do they look tired? Switzerland was amazing on that front.
totalZero 5y ago
> Working class shoppers. Sure, it’s elitist, but people like shopping alongside people in their own stratum. The thing about America is that you honestly cannot tell the social status of a person based on appearance alone. The middle class is large and we value frugality and humility. I think of this as a collective tendency: rich or poor, when you go to Wal-Mart you just wear whatever you're wearing. I don't know if you have ever heard of Chris Arnade but he is an ex Wall Streeter who wrote about the "McDonald's Test," which probably lines up with Wal-Mart too. "Eventually I came up with what I call the McDonald’s test. The broad thesis of my book is that our society sorts people into what I call the front row and the back row – the privileged class to which I used to belong, who are financially secure and live in safe neighborhoods with good schools and public services – and everybody else. The test is to ask a person: how do you view McDonald’s? In my experience, the answer usually reveals whether someone belongs to the front or back row." https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/economic-justice/the-mcdonalds-test https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/econ...

Animats 5y ago

Instacart is a threat to WalMart? That's a surprise. I had no idea Instacart was that big. I think of them as a gig-economy delivery service that delivers only 80% of what you order. The whole business of sending people to do shopping in retail stores seems a temporary business until the grocery industry gets fulfillment figured out. It's like a throwback to the early days of Internet commerce, when the web site didn't talk to the inventory system, so many orders could not be fulfilled properly.

dogman144 5y ago
Used to do retail tech work. Instacart collapses brand identities as consumers don’t care where the food comes from. This is very top of mind of whatever reason for retail/grocery execs.
cogman10 5y ago
Probably the best thing about COVID is now all stores here do curbside pickup. I don't understand why it took COVID to make companies realize that "hey, a large part of your clientele don't want to wander your aisles."
- krapp 5y ago
  >I don't understand why it took COVID to make companies realize that "hey, a large part of your clientele don't want to wander your aisles." Because making shoppers wander the aisles leads them to buy more things than they intended to. There's a reason best-selling items are always placed at eye level.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >Because making shoppers wander the aisles leads them to buy more things than they intended to. There's a reason best-selling items are always placed at eye level. And the dairy or automotive sections are nowhere near the entrance. They want you to impulse buy some cookies or a $5 DVD on your way to get milk or an oil change.
  - 5y ago

lolsal 5y ago

The biggest thing keeping me from shopping at Walmart is their anti-competitive and predatory behavior and the way they treat their employees and vendors. Nothing else really matters to me regarding Walmart. There's no subscription service that would get me to shop at Walmart more than I do today (which is zero). There's no competitor that could decline in such a way that I would shop at Walmart. I know many in my social circles feel the same way.

grillvogel 5y ago
do you shop at amazon or target?
- lolsal 5y ago
  No.
quickthrowman 5y ago
There are no ethical global multinational companies, sorry to burst your bubble. Every other giant retailer is doing the same to employees, vendors, etc.
- lolsal 5y ago
  What makes you think I live in a bubble regarding large retail companies?
- rsuelzer 5y ago
  Walmart really started the race to the bottom, killed countless good paying retail jobs (many union), so I choose to hold them accountable, even if it's irrational at this point given their competition (Amazon) is arguably just as bad or worse.
- xeromal 5y ago
  Costco treats their employees very well comparitvely.
ineedasername 5y ago

Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago

I want someone, *anyone*, to knock Amazon down. So here’s some free advice to Walmart. Consider Walmart’s weaknesses and how other companies address them. - manually stocked shelves Consider Costco’s model of placing pallets of product on the floor. Most Walmart’s have the vertical space to go up. Obviously redesigning their store experience is expensive and difficult with a stagnating industry and a lot of staff that don’t like tech or change. But these are not hard problems. For large items like boxes of soda and cereal, this is simple, just add some flimsy cardboard shelves holding the rows together. For beauty products and small items like that keep the system and layout the same to keep things simple, but start working with manufacturers on palletized displays that satisfy their in store image requirements. - poor buy online pickup at store experience, both online and in store. Make it easier to shop a particular local Walmart for pickup and only the stock in that store. The same goes for shopping online for shipping and only those products sold by Walmart. Having three different experiences is good for consumers, but make it easier for the customer to specify which one they want. - the notorious Walmart experience, and the notorious people of Walmart This is a tough one that I don’t have a good answer for besides look to target and Trader Joe’s for inspiration while hiring sociologists and the advertising company behind fidget spinners. - online purchase, in store pickup experience In years past it made sense to force customers to walk through the entire store to do some annoying task. These days? I pay more, sometimes a lot, to not have to enter a store, or speak to underpaid and overworked staff there. Punch some new doors on the side of the the building, put in a few reefer fridges, some more shelves, and have the in house developers crank out a contactless pickup web app. Include - innovate For things I buy all the time, I’m not time sensitive. Hook customers on something addictively convenient like weekly grocery delivery of their staples with Walmart’s plus subscription. Stuff like milk, eggs, bread, cheese, deli meat, etc. also, if I know I’m having a big party in two weeks and don’t want to deal with the groceries I’d love a reliable way to 60 fresh avocados, 10 cases of beer, 20 bags of chips, and 30 pounds of meat without going to multiple stores. Right now the only way I can do this is by ringing the manager of the store and placing a special order. It shouldn’t even be that hard to logistically handle the ebbs and flow of demand. Problem is can someone build such a system profitably? If Walmart can’t, I doubt anyone could.

ApolloFortyNine 5y ago

hogFeast 5y ago

This kind of thinking is why grocery chains have struggled despite having the deck stacked totally in their favour. Online retail, much like offline retail, is about physical infrastructure. You still need warehouses with all the product, you still need fulfilment, all online changes is the balance of those factors. The core assets don't change. I can see how they are losing on branding but losing to Instacart tells you that management lost touch with customers and sat on their laurels. That being said, I have no doubt that they will vanquish Instacart. And they will likely pressure aspects of Amazon's business too. It isn't actually possible to compete with WMT because they such a dense network already (outside the US, AMZN is going to struggle even more, they weren't aggressive enough in building fulfilment centres and they tried to build fewer, larger centres, Amazon will begin exiting some of these markets in the next five years and sell out to local operators with exiting fulfilment networks, an alternative would be they cede control over fulfilment to local operators and just operate the front-end website...either way, their position outside the US is likely unsustainable).

542354234235 5y ago
> Online retail, much like offline retail, is about physical infrastructure. You still need warehouses with all the product, you still need fulfilment, all online changes is the balance of those factors. The core assets don't change. Which is why it is so weird when offline entities adding online lose out over and over to online only. They already have most of the infrastructure and their infrastructure is being paid for by two separate revenue streams (existing in store customers and new online customers). It just shows how often and how prevalent it is for these companies to rest on their laurels and siphon off every available penny of revenue for shareholder and executive profit, rather actually investing real time, effort, and talent into the online space. Which is why online companies can start from such a disadvantaged position and still surpass.
- hogFeast 5y ago
  Ikea is the example I often cite. I am in the UK. Many of their locations are adjacent to motorways, they literally have a warehouse in the store, and all they need to add is a fulfilment network (which, btw, they already have just not large enough to meet demand). Admittedly, the stuff they carry is pretty heavy/expensive...but they are 99% of the way there. Instead, you go on their website, a lot of the stuff on there doesn't work properly, and delivery times are a month plus. It is deliberate. Wayfair is dropshipping stuff from China, and managing to compete with them...how? It makes no sense. Ikea have a position that no competitor could actually replicate without losing billions of pounds, and they are getting beaten by a company which doesn't manufacture goods, owns one or two warehouses, and doesn't fulfil orders...how? Literally, Wayfair just have a bunch of websites (now consolidated) with good SEO...and Ikea are just handing them market share. And yes, "executive profit" is the key point. Executive comp is set by comp committees who have no clue, and benchmark off whatever they the company is already doing/last year's numbers. Why do execs care if the company blows up in five years through malinvestment? They will have cashed out their options by then and will be lighting their cigars with fifty pound notes. Imo, executive comp structure is 95% to do with why this has happened (in my experience, exec comp in physical retail is structured very poorly across the board, it incentivizes poor ROIC growth).

chidog12 5y ago

Anybody have link to the memo?

ourmandave 5y ago

If they're worried about Instacart, that might be why they deliver things I order on Sunday that afternoon even when I qualify for free shipping by ordering over $45 (or some amount). I don't expect it for a couple days but if it's in the local store they have random people bag and deliver it within hours. Even on a Sunday.

paulpauper 5y ago

According to memo, Walmrt has competitors. who knew Look how well the stock is doing and has done over the past 4 or so years. to say they they are facing challenges or are struggling is overly-dramatic. Online shopping will never replace Walmart completely. Rather both will grow together.They both serve a role. A lot of ppl do not want to use amazon or don't have good internet access or cannot receive mail easily.

Jakobeha 5y ago

I've used both Instacart and Walmart delivery because I don't have a car and live ~3miles from the nearest supermarket. In my experience, Instacart has worked very well: the only issues (2-hour delivery window, tip for delivery) are upfront, but I rarely get messed up / late / bad orders. The website is also great. The only time I used Walmart, my delivery was rescheduled to the next day, something which never happened with 50+ Instacart deliveries. And the website sucks.

nitrogen 5y ago
That probably comes down to location and competence+availability of staff. I've had basically equal results from the three different grocery stores I've ordered from in my current location, one of which is Walmart, one is a Kroger subsidiary, and one is a local higher-end chain. But when I was in SF, I had terrible results with Instacart, and resorted to shopping in person.
- Jakobeha 5y ago
  Honestly I still wish I could shop in person, it's just too far :) Not trying to be rude but maybe you didn't tip enough? The default tip is 5% but I usually do ~20%.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    I usually tipped delivery services 15-20%, more if it was raining, but shouldn't tips be hidden and only given in aggregate? Also I wish a fair wage was just baked into the price and tipping went away.

paxys 5y ago

Walmart gets a lot of flak for being old school and allowing Amazon's rise, but they are one of the very few retailers who have actually been able to respond to competitive threats over the last decade or two. Walmart Labs has some great tech and hires top software talent in the industry. They aren't shy about making large acquisitions when needed (like Jet). They have built out their own delivery and logistics network and now offer 2 day, 1 day or same day shipping. They even have their own "Prime" subscription and grocery deliveries. The business could easily have gone the way of Sears.

fuzzfactor 5y ago
In 1982 Wal-Mart was still exclusively a rural retailer, continuing to build scale but only in towns below a certain size. It was not felt they could yet compete with more well-funded better-established chains. Most stores more closely resembled today's Dollar General than a big box There were not yet "superstores", and most people in big cities had never heard of them. With IBM PC's not yet having a significant impact on business, and almost nobody doing any data networking compared to today, Wal-Mart already had a fully computerized POS/inventory/logistics-management system in every store, integrated into their headquarters in small-town Arkansas in almost real-time, with data-mining informing the financial decision making. No one else had anything close, not Sears, Target, or Kmart, who were obviously going to end up having difficulty when Sam thought the time was right for Wal-Mart to come to the big cities. Even though all these retailers had the same computer hardware in their respective headquarters, IBM's good old "impersonal" mainframes which only big companies could afford. Walton would bus all his managers to Bentonville for a pow-wow every year, scheduled to start at 8 all week. If you got there precisely at 8, you had already missed the most important half-hour with Sam, he would start at 0730. Drove an old pickup truck too, so he could save money.
dalbasal 5y ago
>> Walmart gets a lot of flak In a way, it reminds me of "MSFT is Dead" stuff from circa 2008. Google had taken email by storm, was moving on office and seemed to be making web into their own OS. Windows Vista & IE sucked. Google just seemed so much nimbler. Apple had risen from the dead, and was reinventing consumer electronics. MSFT was looking decrepit, the next IBM. MSFT never panicked. Software was a great business to be in, and the pressure was never financial. Meanwhile, they maintained their own ways and their own cultural advantages, long term perseverance, reverse compatibility, etc. They didn't win every race. Google won mobile OS, the "browser war. MSFT's attempts at a search business didn't succeed. They did win enough though, plenty. Google was better at web based software earlier, but MSFT held on to Office/Productivity. Office 365 wasn't as slick as early, but it was/is the product businesses will pay for. Most notably, they beat Google on cloud. Cloud was in Google's wheelhouse, and emphatically not in MSFT's. They started late. Google's "paradigm" mentality was great for the early part of the game. Getting where we are today though, that required carrying old paradigms into the new world. It required lots of mess, details, requirements that don't really make sense... That is MSFT's wheelhouse. Meeting companies where they are. Its a foreign concept to Google. Today, Google is the one that seems weaker. They're plenty rich, and plenty capable technologically. They aren't very good at building businesses though. It's still all about adwords. MSFT could have gone the way of IBM.

Firebrand 5y ago

I wonder what happened with Walmart’s partnership with TikTok and if they’ve given up on their social media/e-commerce ambitions: https://www.vox.com/recode/21448460/walmart-tiktok-amazon-deal-partnership-oracle-trump-ban-bytedance https://www.vox.com/recode/21448460/walmart-tiktok-amazon-de... They were very eager to beat Amazon on bringing the QVC style online video commerce that’s super popular in China to the U.S., but I haven’t seen much about it since. I guess like convincing teens to buy clothing that their favorite influencer was wearing from Walmart.com was too tall an order.

jh0486 5y ago

This has been the story for the last 8 years at minimum. There's nothing new here. They have still found a way to survive and grow during this time.

rsuelzer 5y ago

I avoid Walmart because of their absolutely terrible treatment of their employees, the fact the have failed to provide decent wages or benefits for their workers, drove a race to the bottom in retail and did this almost entirely to the benefit of five children who were lucky to be born with the last name Walton and are now the richest family in America. The corporation is seared in my mind as the ugliest side of American corporate greed with a total disregard of social responsibility. Only very recently did Walmart even attempt to bring up wages, and it's not because they felt some accountability for decimating small towns and family owned businesses, but because they were becoming a dinosaur and suddenly had to compete for workers who would rather work someplace that paid more, even if only marginally and exploited them a little less brazenly.

galgalesh 5y ago
When I visit other countries, I always visit the Cheapest supermarkets, just to see the people working there. Zwitserland was amazing: happy, healthy people who clearly loved their job. The US much less so.
frankish 5y ago
To your point, Dan Price recently posted some related stats and perspective: > Minimum wage > Costco: $16 > Walmart: $11 > > Average pay > Costco: $24 > Walmart: $15 > > Employees on food stamps (subsidized by you) > Costco: Virtually none > Walmart: More than any other company > > Founder net worth > Costco: not a billionaire > Walmart: $220+ billion; up $30 billion in the pandemic > > Both companies have similar business models and charge the same low prices. One decided to treat its employees like humans and forgo enormous profits, and the other one took the opposite track. > > Business is about choices.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Costco’s customers are the top 3 socioeconomic quintiles, Walmart’s customers are the bottom 3 (or middle 3). Either way, Costco’s customers are richer, and they have a different business model. They are objectively a good employer, but a lot of that has to do with their customer not being extremely price sensitive and being able to afford to buy large quantities, which also results in less loss due to theft. You can find the richer parts of any town by searching for Costco. As for founder net worth, it’s not very meaningful if a founder owns it or others own it in 401k. Divide the Walmart founder net worth by employees and it still would not give them a meaningful improvement in wages for long. They’re simply a low margin business selling to customers who cannot afford to spend extra.

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dwighttk 5y ago

I wish walmart would buy barnes and noble, let me add a book to clear the free shipping bar

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yalogin 5y ago

It’s great to see they are brutally honest with themselves, I didn’t expect anything else. Walmart’s problem is with urban and close urban centers. Their image in these areas is in the dumpster. I don’t know how they can improve it either. The one thing that could help is to throw their color palette out and pick a vibrant one. Their stores look really dull.

velgewp 5y ago

Walmart can do anything to tacle this threat as they are now creating their own ecosystem of devices like laptop, smartphone, smart tvs and will sell in their stores to maximize profit... Reference - Walmart's first Android TVs will be officially released next week - https://techplanet.today/post/walmarts-first-android-tvs-will-be-officially-released-next-week https://techplanet.today/post/walmarts-first-android-tvs-wil...

innocentoldguy 5y ago

I don’t shop at Walmart for three reasons: 1. They always have boxes of un-stocked products stacked in the aisles, making it hard to navigate my shopping cart through the store. 2. Their food selection isn’t as good as other local retailers. 3. The Walmart near me locks the door near the handicap parking after 10:00 pm, even though they are open all night. I’ve been forced on multiple occasions to walk all the way to the other end of the store to get out and then walk all the way back to my car again, which is painful for me and why I have a handicap tag in the first place. Two of those issues seem fairly easy to fix, yet they never do.