Walmart Holds 'Idol'-Style Contest for Small Businesses; Winner Will Be Sold in Select Stores
Here are photos of some of the products that have been submitted, see photo above of "Uggs for dogs."
CARPE DIEM
Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Here are photos of some of the products that have been submitted, see photo above of "Uggs for dogs."
About Me
- Name: Mark J. Perry
- Location: Washington, D.C., United States
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
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20 Comments:
I don't care much for Walmart (Wal-Mart) but this is a good idea. New iniatives from Bentonville such as this, should be applauded.
Usually that is the kiss of death for a company. Once they supply that company, all the effort is sucked into Bentonville's increasingly unreasonable demands. Then some Third World effort is given the critical details and makes a knockoff. Finally, the company is chewed up due to the currency dumping, slave labor, and other non-competitive force of the Third World country.
The person that places second will be the real winner - for they won't incur a net loss by having their product get knocked off.
Notice the look on the dog's face"
Really?
Stuff like this is yet another reason I find it hard to believe that the American middle class is sliding into poverty.
Good for Walmart. It's good to see the spirit of competition is not yet dead in America despite the left's best efforts to brainwash American children against it from the time they waddle into pre-school.
Methinks said...
Bentonville is well-practiced in making evil look innocent. That's how they make inroads into places that don't want them.
I'd like to see their PR folks tarred, feathered, and run out of town. Then see a region do the same until Bentonville learns that no means no.
seth-
you are truly a ridiculous parody of yourself.
what is this "evil" of which you speak?
driving a hard bargain? is it evil for you to negotiate down the price of a car or a house you buy?
if driving a hard bargain on merchandise so they can offer low prices to customers is evil, then i hesitate to even ask what you think is "good". buying at whatever price is offered to your customers have to pay top dollar?
so you even listen to yourself?
so suddenly, having the opportunity to sell lots of your product is bad?
getting knocked off happens to ANYONE with a successful product.
others see a big market, and they move in.
blaming walmart for that is absurd.
the same thing happened to every product from the big wheel and barbie doll to the minivan.
Good for Wal-Mart on this one. Who says they don't foster creativity? Another thing, I was reading the contest rules. It doesn't appear to me that Wal-Mart "owns" your product. I don't see any mention of a patent or Wal-Mart exclusivity. I may have missed it, but I don't see it in the rules.
I'd not be surprised if we soon see other stores (Target, for example) doing something similar.
Of course, this is hardly an original idea. Businesses have been doing this forever. This is probably just the first time it's being done on a national scale.
what is this "evil" of which you speak?
The post-Sam Walton version of Wal-Mart.
driving a hard bargain? is it evil for you to negotiate down the price of a car or a house you buy?
If it results in corner-cutting that makes something worse, then yes. The practice of wearing down these suppliers is sociopathic in that it results in worse products overall - in order to meet those bargains.
What you want is more likely to be found in some Third World country where prices are less certain and goods even more shoddy than they are now. That is not the direction the US should go.
if driving a hard bargain on merchandise so they can offer low prices to customers is evil, then i hesitate to even ask what you think is "good". buying at whatever price is offered to your customers have to pay top dollar?
so suddenly, having the opportunity to sell lots of your product is bad?
When it results in the destruction of a company, yes. Does a farmer eat their seed corn and expect to be able to survive the next season? Same concept with a company.
That, and the products are made with lower quality in mind just to meet those price points - crowding out better alternatives for the dollar.
Think about that when you try to get service for something bought at Wal-Mart or Sam's Club and get told that it's a cut-down version of the real product.
seth-
you have really crossed over into wild cultish fantasy.
"If it results in corner-cutting that makes something worse, then yes. The practice of wearing down these suppliers is sociopathic in that it results in worse products overall - in order to meet those bargains."
if the products are not good value for money, no one will buy them. walmart serves the demand of customers, not some bizarre ideal in your head. they fact that they have grown so much means they serve it well. i don't shop there, but clearly, lots of people do. they must like something about it.
you seem determined to force your values onto everyone. you want sociopathy, look in the mirror. you're the one demanding that everyone like what you like and telling them what product they should want.
and this:
"When it results in the destruction of a company, yes. Does a farmer eat their seed corn and expect to be able to survive the next season? Same concept with a company."
is just paranoid fantasy. so what should they do? not sell any products? who said anything about selling seed corn? this isn't seed corn, it's just corn. what's he supposed to do, sell nothing?
suddenly selling your product is bad? if you don't like the price, sell it somewhere else.
the rest is just paranoid persecution fantasies. you really are losing the thread seth. whatever condition you have, it's getting worse. you might wanna see someone.
you have this bizarre and unfounded illusion that there are no good quality products for sale. there are. there are tons.
name one product you cannot get a high quality version of. seriously. name one. i've asked you this 100 times and you have never done it. that's because you can't.
and they are easier to get than ever. perhaps you've heard of online shopping? hell, i can get live maine lobsters delivered to my house. this "the local shops went away" argument is totally meaningless in the face of that.
if you can't find quality, it's because you are not willing to pay for it, not because it's not there.
Variety is good, it increases freedom.
Walmart offers very low cost, sometimes lower quality goods. There is obviously a market for that considering how well they have done. There are plenty of stores offering higher quality goods at higher prices, and not all of Walmart's merchandise is low quality.
Seth keeps complaining about the quality, but obviously plenty of people want low quality items at cheap prices. Seth, who are you to say only what you consider high quality should be sold? How is offering cheap, low quality goods evil? I could see if they were offering low quality goods at high prices and claiming they were high quality (Brookstone and Sharper Image anyone?)that you might consider that evil. In fact, that was the situation at most big box stores 20 or more years ago. There is demand for cheap goods, and Walmart is fitting it exceptionally well.
if the products are not good value for money, no one will buy them. walmart serves the demand of customers, not some bizarre ideal in your head. they fact that they have grown so much means they serve it well. i don't shop there, but clearly, lots of people do. they must like something about it.
Then all those defunct suppliers never even existed in the first place?
This happens without any consumer input. The company cares not about that, since they have billions of folks in the Third World that effectively silence their voice.
"This happens without any consumer input. The company cares not about that, since they have billions of folks in the Third World that effectively silence their voice."
Speaking of poor quality, there's that bad language translation software at work again.
What did you really mean to write?
This happens without any consumer input. The company cares not about that, since they have billions of folks in the Third World that effectively silence the voice of those in the First World.
FTFM.
"This happens without any consumer input. The company cares not about that, since they have billions of folks in the Third World that effectively silence the voice of those in the First World.
FTFM."
No help there, that's no improvement. I guess there's no chance your incoherent ramblings will ever make sense.
Ron H. comes to the correct conclusion - yet again.
Only in America would we have the arrogance to suggest low prices hurt the poor and that everyone should pay higher prices. No wonder why the rest of the world hates us.
That's not why the rest of the world hates us, Jon Murphy, but I agree with your sentiments.
The rest of the world hates everyone. Ever lived in Europe?
Methinks: "Ron H. comes to the correct conclusion - yet again."
Ever the optimist, my hopes have been cruelly dashed yet again, by sethstorm's perverse insistence on destroying his irrefutably logical comments by pressing the "convert to nonsense" button.
Ron, you dont even try to make sense of anything, you just see the name and instinctually reply with that kind of attack.
"Ron, you dont even try to make sense of anything, you just see the name and instinctually reply with that kind of attack."
I used to try to make sense of your comments, but I quickly learned that anything with your name at the top was guaranteed to be meaningless nonsense.
I must say, though, you have provided some good laughs on occasion.
Sethstorm, you apparently have never sold to Walmart. Walmart is one of my employer's biggest customers. But I remember when we first started doing business with them. We were a relatively small company (lees than $100 million annual sales) at the time but growing fast. The president of the company (who by the way is very liberal) said she had learned more from Walmart about making our company more efficient than she had learned any other way. Yes, it was a pain at first, but they definitely helped us become a better company. Even during this tough economy, we are growing and making money. Walmart is part of the reason.
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