McDonald's, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Now Foot Locker
NEW DELHI: New York-based $5.75-billion Foot Locker (FL: NYSE), the world’s leading retailer of athletic footwear and apparel, is firming up its India entry plans. According to sources, the U.S. major has started due diligence for the Indian market and is looking at setting up its first store through a franchisee arrangement early next year.
Lou Dobbs and fellow populist protectionists, Listen Up:
Globalization, outsourcing and trade help the U.S. economy. As the Indian economy grows and expands (partly as a result of globalization and outsourcing), and as the Indian middle class grows larger and more prosperous, Indian consumers can afford more products from American companies like Foot Locker (founded in NYC in 1879), which will help support more jobs in the U.S.
(HT: Sanil Kori)
2 Comments:
I agree that increasing your customer base is good. What I am confused about is how you make the connection into assuming it will be American workers helping to provide Indian customers with their shoes.
It seems to me those who will have the jobs will likely be in a country where labor is even cheaper than the Indian market. I don't think jobs will return to the USA until after all other countries are so highly developed that the USA itself becomes the best source of cheap labor.
I suppose it's a good thing in having more white collar finance people crunching numbers in the USA to help facilitate the transactions in India. But that's a select few jobs for a potentially huge Indian market.
Footlocker currently operates about 4,000 stores in 5 countries. Suppose that in 5 years, it has 8,000 stores in 15 countries - that could possibly create hundreds of new jobs at Footlocker's headquarters in NY, for distribution, accounting, advertising, shipping, etc.
For example, since Wal-Mart started expanding globally in the 1990s, it has added 1,500 service-sector jobs at its headquarters in Arkansas just to coordinate the distribution of products to stores in a dozen countries around the globe. Without globalization, none of those 1,500 jobs would exist today for American workers.
With increased global sales, Foot Locker could become a larger, stronger, more stable company, which would justify and support more jobs here in the U.S.
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