As with the British Empire, TJ Hooker, Premiership football at Southampton and the use of children as chimneysweeps, all good things must come to an end.
So it is with a heavy heart that I must reveal this as my final Walmart blog here at Planet Retail before I move on to pastures new. Although I cannot see the tears dripping into your keyboard, nor hear your wretched sobs of despair or witness the rending of your garments, I can only guess at the misery that this revelation has caused.
Despite the fact that less than half a dozen of you have bothered to submit comments and that the frantic levels of debate and discussion on this forum have reached a fevered crescendo akin to a narcolepsy convention, there really can be no measure of the yawning chasm that the cessation of this blog will leave in your hollow, tawdry lives.
So, while some of you might consider self-harming or drug abuse in a desperate attempt to alleviate the genuine sense of bereavement that the end of this blog must be causing, I can provide solace through a collection of facts, figures and photographs as scant crumbs of consolation. Some of these facts & figures might even be true. Most importantly, I can also furnish you with one last helping of the searing insight and opinion that has made this blog quite literally one of the least talked about destinations on the internet.
Furthermore, before the battalions of my loyal readers, quite understandably wondering where their next serving of spiritual nourishment and indispensable retail wisdom is coming from, begin to surge lemming-like towards the nearest skyscraper or scenic cliff-top path, I can gleefully announce that there will shortly be two new Planet Retail blogs for you to ignore in your droves. These will be delivered to you with a silver-service flourish by Planet Retail’s Global research directors Robert Gregory and Natalie Berg. You can find them at http://blog.emap.com/Rob_Gregory/ and http://blog.emap.com/Natalie_Berg/ One can only hope that you can find it in your steely hearts to embrace their offerings with somewhat more fervour than the lukewarm indifference with which this blog has been met.
Anyway, on with the swansong.
Walmart net sales per second: $12,844
Ten largest confirmed vendors to Walmart (sales, $ mn)
P&G - $11,854 million
McLane - $10,298 million
Murphy Oil - $8,213 million
Kraft Foods - $6,462 million
PepsiCo - $5,620 million
Tyson Foods - $3,685 million
General Mills - $3,085 million
Kimberly Clark - $2,485 million
Kellogg - $2,641 million
ConAgra - $2,174 million
Walmart has become the leading global retailer in less than 20 years
The first international store was a Sam’s Club that opened in Mexico City in 1991: it now has 4,112 stores and more than 680,000 associates in 14 countries
Walmart’s UK chain Asda was named after former Prime Minister Herbert ASquith and popular British decathlete DAley Thompson
My favourite Walmart stores:
1) Neighborhood Market by Walmart, Rogers, AR
2) Asda, Bootle
3) Walmart supercentre, Port Elgin, ON
Walmart International is now the world’s third largest retailer in its own right
10% of Chinese exports to the USA are to Walmart
All of the discarded ‘*’ components of the old Wal*Mart store front signage have been sent to the Pacific coast to be used as replacement shells for injured leatherback turtles
The new Walmart Canada Perishable Distribution Centre, to be opened in Balzac, Alberta, next month, will be both one of the most sustainable such facilities in North America and one of Canada’s largest refrigerated buildings. Walmart forecasts that LED lighting in Balzac will deliver CAD1 million over seven years in operating cost savings
If it were a country, Walmart would be the 19th largest economy in the world behind Belgium
If all of Walmart’s stores were made out of cheese, it would have required 15 billion elephants – or an astonishing 48 billion narwhales – to provide the necessary amount of milk
The top 10 US retailers spent $8.9 billion on advertising in 2009 – of this, Walmart accounted for $2.4 billion
In 2009, it took Walmart 1.7 days to generate the same sales as Ocado did all year
My favourite Walmart photo:
Walmart has 28 global procurement offices in 25 countries, and it sources from 70 countries around the world.
While Walmart US has seen sales grow by 7.8% over the last three years, its grocery sales have grown by 17% to $132 billion
My favourite Walmart private brands:
1) George
2) Great Value (new version)
3) Marketside
After the escape of a breeding pair from a private aviary in nearby Fayetteville, Bentonville is home to the world’s largest colony of ptarmigans
117 listed US vendors name Walmart as a major customer in their 10Ks - on average Walmart accounts for 20.7% of their sales. The highest percentage is 55%
Number of customers per week: Walmart - 200 million; McDonalds - 420 million
Over the last three years, many vendors have seen their sales to Walmart increase substantially. Some of the big winners include: McLane +$1 billion; PepsiCo +$883 million; Kraft +$876 million; General Mills +$597 million; ConAgra +$473 million; Kellogg +$404 million; P&G +$383 million
72% of Walmart cashiers are women; 14% of store managers are women
The George clothing range was named after Allan Leighton’s favourite railway locomotive engineer George Stephenson
Walmart spends USD100 billion a year on sourcing private label
My least favourite Walmart stores:
1) Any Walmart location in Germany. Really, take your pick
2) Walmart, Square One Mall, Mississauga, ON
3) Asda, Slough
42% of Walmart’s sales are from families making less than $40K pa
Average Walmart salary: $20,774
My favourite Walmart store concepts:
1) New versions of Neighborhood Market
2) Asda Living
3) Bodega Aurrera
During fiscal 2010, approximately 79% of the Walmart Stores segment’s purchases of merchandise was shipped from the retailer’s distribution centres. The Walmart
operations are supported by 120 distribution facilities as of 31 January 2010, located strategically throughout the continental United States. Of these 120 distribution facilities, Walmart owns and operates 105
76% of patrons at SmartStyle hair salons in Walmart Supercenters are women. Their average bill is $19
My favourite Walmart trailer:
90% of all Americans live within 15 miles of a Walmart.
Walmart processes 22.5 million job applications a year, equivalent to the entire population of Australia
If all of the peanut butter sold by Walmart Mexico was used as paint, it would be enough to cover 1,450 brontosauruses
10 most Walmart-reliant vendors by % of total sales (company / sector / %):
DAC Technologies Group / Gun accessories / 55.0
Emerson Radio / Electricals / 53.0
CPI / Photographic studios / 52.0
Crown Crafts / Baby products / 47.0
Tandy Brands / Fashion accessories / 43.0
Frederick’s of Hollywood / Intimate apparel / 39.0
HBB (Nacco Industries) / Kitchenware & small appliances / 38.0
R. G. Barry / Footwear & accessories / 38.0
CCA Industries / HBC / 36.0
Del Monte Foods / Food & petcare / 35.0
Lions Gate Entertainment / Films & DVD / 35.0
A recent poll among Walmart employees has revealed the most popular acts to have performed at the annual shareholders meeting over the last 10 years:
1) Massed Pipe Bands of Scottish Army Regiments
2) The cast of ‘Saved by the Bell’
3) Slipknot
Walmart purchases goods from more than 68,000 US suppliers and claims to support more than 3.5 million supplier jobs. Over USD150 billion is spent with US suppliers
The power for the Walmart Supercenter in Winnemucca, Nevada, is provided by tidal turbines located in the huge subterranean lake under the store
on Sep 15th, 2010 at 10:55 am
Thanks for the link Bryan and a fantastic blog. Be sad to see it go. My own personal favourite WMT stat is that if you lined up all the hot dogs it sold annually end-to-end, they would be longer than all the string there ever was in the world.
on Sep 15th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Bryan, I know it’s a bit too late to increase the comments; therefore, increasing the likelihood of keeping your blog around, but I hate to see your writing and the blog go. Your blog also allowed me to proliferate my English language skills.
on Sep 16th, 2010 at 1:15 am
Hey Bryan,
Thanks for the semi-occasional postings on this blog. I enjoyed looking forward to them, and found them very informative. I always enjoyed the dry British humor. Sorry for the lack of artful responses and comments that would have made the blog even better.
On a final note, any comment on the rumors that Walmart is ending its MarketSide by Walmart stores in the Arizona market?
on Sep 16th, 2010 at 7:28 am
Kind of inevitable if they are closing. WMT could never hope to service that kind of store profitably, but I don’t really think that was the point. The company has learnt so much about product and private label that the investment has been more than worthwhile. Small stores have a future for WMT US - but they look more like Neighborhood Market than Marketside.
on Sep 16th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
“You can’t leave…..the plants will die!” taken from the legendary movie STRIPES and said by Bill Murray as his wife is leaving him!
on Sep 18th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
We’ll miss your blog!
And a belated - although we think we have thanked you before but like with those good things you mention that inevitably come to an end, many good things also deminish over time, in our case memory - we thank you for listing us among the few in your blogroll as favorites. A high honor. OK, since it’s your swan song… “favourites and honour.”
{Will you be remaining at the pasture called Planet Retail…but leaving the grazing land called ‘Bryan’s Blog’…or departing both the pasture (PR) and the leased plot (the blog)?}
We have heard a rumor (OK, rumour) that you may be moving to Bentonville, Arkansas as the curator of the Sam Walton/Walmart museum and historical center, which another rumor has it will have a close relationship with the Bill Clinton Presidential Library and Center in Little Rock. After all, Sam was a Clinton man (George Bush Sr. lost him when he couldn’t figure out that supermarket scanner) and Hillary was a Walmart board member. By the way, according to our sources, that infamous little blue dress worn by Miss Lewinsky was not ‘George’ brand.
If this is true - and we have not yet confirmed it - we respectfully suggest one of your first tasks as curator should be to preserve one of the ‘marketside by Walmart’ stores that, as we’ve both predicted, and as we’ve recently written about again in this story[http://freshneasybuzz.blogspot.com/2010/09/walmart-plans-to-close-its-arizona.html], will soon be history.
May we respectfully suggest you preserve the Mesa, Arizona ‘marketside by Walmart’ unit. Why? Having visited all of the stores a number of times, for some reason the coffee, although identical in brand and content, has always seemed to taste better in that particular store, compared to the other units. That’s as good a reason as any, after all.
If our source is wrong about your new position at the Walton Center, we are sorry. We aren’t trying to start a rumor. (Opps, rumour.) However, if correct, we hope you will consider “Saving a marketside’ (store).
As you know, very little in food retailing is really new.
As such, 20 or 30 years from now a retailer that either doesn’t exist today, or has only a few stores in some small part of the United States - maybe even in a tiny southern city better known for Elvis-loving and deep-fried food than it is for power retailing - might have grown so big that it’s looking for a new format to test.
If so, the preservation of ‘marketside by Walmart’ would not only be the right thing to do from a historical perspective, it could also have very practical implications.
For example, the hypothetical retailer mentioned above, 20-30 years hence, just might try harder than Walmart did to make the format and stores a success, not to mention test it in an urban location or two, along with doing so in the four Metro Phoenix Arizona suburbs. Water under the bridge now though.
Who knows? But if you preserve a marketside store - again assuming the rumor (damn, rumour) about your new position is true - you just might end up going down in U.S. food and grocery retailing history. That would be a huge achievement - not to mention one no British grocery chain has yet to accomplish. Well, at least in a positive way.
In closing, without a doubt you’re going to experience blogging withdrawl. In fact, it’s probably already starting to hot you a bit, perhaps in the physical form of frequent air typing, and/or intellectually - you hear or read something, particularly about Walmart, and say to yourself: “I’m going to blog on that,” only to then realize you have ended your blog. If so, we would be honored (and in your case, honoured) to invite you to drop us a note at freshneasybuzz@yahoo.com if you ever have the desire to write a guest piece in Fresh & Easy Buzz.
We are a simple little blog - although we have some mightly readers - so we can’t offer you cash for your blog posting, although PR probably didn’t either. But we can offer you well-read outlet should you desire. (Some editorial control of course:)
We’ve never offered a guest blogger slot before, in the nearly 3 years the blog has been around - not even to a Yankee - but in many ways it seems fitting our first offer should be extended to a subject of the Queen and a cross-pond hopper.
And, by the way, the good thing about our offer is - It is an offer you CAN refuse, unlike so many in life, that are the opposite.
Cheers!