for them, it is NOT about the employees or the communityInside the Ticker
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Merrill Edge
Wal-Mart: It came, it conquered and now it’s leaving
Bloomberg
Shannon Pettypiece
13 hrs ago
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The Town’n Country grocery in
Oriental, North Carolina, a local fixture for 44 years, closed its doors
in October after a Wal-Mart store opened for business. Now, three
months later -- and less than two years after Wal-Mart arrived -- the
retail giant is pulling up stakes, leaving the community with no grocery
store and no pharmacy.Though mom-and-pop
stores have steadily disappeared across the American landscape over the
past three decades as the mega chain methodically expanded, there was at
least always a Wal- Mart left behind to replace them. Now the Wal-Marts
are disappearing, too.“I was devastated when I
found out. We had a pharmacy and a perfectly satisfactory grocery store.
Maybe Wal-Mart sold apples for a nickel less,” said Barb Venturi, mayor
pro tem for Oriental, with a population of about 900. “If you take into
account what no longer having a grocery store does to property values
here, it is a significant impact for us.”Oriental
is hardly alone. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said on Jan. 15 it would be
closing all 102 of its smaller Express stores, many in isolated towns,
to focus on its supercenters and mid- sized Neighborhood Markets. The
move, which will begin by the end of the month, was a relatively quick
about-face. As recently as 2014, Wal-Mart was touting the solid
performance of its smaller stores and announced plans to open an
additional 90.That’s a big problem for small
towns, often with proportionately large elderly populations. For the
older folks of Oriental -- a retirement and summer vacation town along
the inter-coastal waterway -- the next-nearest grocery and pharmacy is a
50-minute round-trip drive.Wal-Mart says it is sensitive to the dislocations its business decisions are causing.“In
towns impacted by store closures, we have had hundreds of conversations
with elected officials and community leaders to discuss relevant issues
and we are working with communities on how we can be helpful,” said
Wal-Mart spokesman Brian Nick.Wal-Mart has been
under increasing pressure lately as sales in the U.S. have failed to
keep up with rising labor costs. It’s also been spending more on its Web
operations. In October, the company announced that profit this year
would be down as much as 12 percent. The outlook contributed to a share
decline of 29 percent during the past 12 months.“It
is more important now than ever to review our portfolio and close the
stores and clubs that should be closed,” Wal- Mart’s Chief Executive
Officer Doug McMillon said in a statement on the company’s website.Shuttered StoresTowns
like Clearwater, Kansas, and Merkel, Texas, are among those hit by
Wal-Mart closures. In Godley, Texas, with a population of roughly 1,000,
Wal-Mart opened a small store just a year ago. Within months, the only
other grocery store in town -- Brookshire Brothers, part of an
employee-owned regional chain -- shut its doors. Now with Wal-Mart gone,
the closest full- service grocery store is about a 20-minute drive
away.In some cases, closed businesses may reopen
now that Wal- Mart has left. In Merkel, the Lawrence Brothers grocery
store, which closed two months ago, is planning to reopen now that Wal-
Mart is packing up, said Jay Lawrence, head of the regional chain in
Texas and New Mexico.Resident of Oriental, where
some city officials originally tried to block Wal-Mart from opening, are
hoping for a similar outcome now that the megastore is gone. But for
the moment the damage has been done, they say.Renee
Ireland Smith, who ran Town’n Country, said the store immediately saw
sales fall by 30 percent once Wal-Mart opened in May 2014. Whenever her
store cut prices, Wal-Mart would reduce its prices even more. Smith’s
mother, who owned the store, invested $100,000 in savings into the
doomed effort. But by October, the family decided to cut its losses and
close the business.“They ruined our lives,” said Smith of Wal-Mart. “They came in here with their experiment and ruined us.” 4951