On Sunday, February 8, 2015 at 7:47:11 PM UTC-6, Julie Bove wrote:
> "George Leppla" > wrote in message
> ...
> > On 2/8/2015 9:27 AM, William wrote:
> >> just curious Jill, what arguement did your group use to successfully
> >> block Wally's move on to the island? A small town council near my
> >> house refused to allow Wally World in a few years ago and what did
> >> Wally do? Instead of one SuperCenter they built three surrounding the
> >> town! The world's largest capitalist pig marches forward...the 800
> >> pound gorilla of retailing. Can you believe K-Mart did'nt even notice
> >> those country bumpkins back in the eighties.
> >>
> >> William
> >
> > I worked in management at Kmart back in the late 70's and early 80's and
> > they were very aware of Walmart. They even had a committee to study
> > Walmart and a lot of their recommendations about display and merchandising
> > and distribution were implemented.
> >
> > Kmart would have been successful competing with Walmart except that the
> > upper management changed from marketing people to people with accounting
> > backgrounds. When the bean-counters took over, things started going
> > downhill fast. Walmart was always run by people whose background was in
> > marketing... and the bean counters were no match.
> >
> > You build a business from the front door in (from the customer's point of
> > view), not from the back office out (the accounting management point of
> > view).
> >
> > George L
>
> I worked for K Mart during those years too and then some. We did not have
> Walmart in this area then. In fact we didn't get it until I moved away.
> But one of my coworkers had worked for Walmart prior so people were always
> asking her about the differences. We also made it a point to find Walmarts
> when we were on vacation so we could report things back.
>
> This is just my opinion but I think K Mart's biggest mistake was to try to
> be more upscale. We were told that they wanted to be more like the Bon
> Marche. That really backfired on them. People wanted the cheap, Dollar
> Days stuff like Landers cosmetics and poor quality tools. Not all were poor
> quality. I still have a $1 hammer.

Oh yeah. Upscale. That's why they hired really classy broads as their
spokespersons. They found women who were as trashy and nasty as you,
Penny Marshall and Rosie O'Donnell.

--Bryan