24 Sad Photos Of Wal-Mart Doing It Wrong

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-that-show-wal-mart-deteriorating-2013-10

Wal-Mart is America's largest retailer.

But as the American economy declines, Wal-Mart does too.

Brian Sozzi at Belus Capital Advisors recently took a series of photos that he says illustrate how understaffed Wal-Mart locations have become.

"What spurred this investigation?" asked Sozzi. "On Wal-Mart’s recent analyst day, it was shared that the bottom 10% of its U.S. stores (300 or so) were producing a same-store sales result of -7.5%. Umm, wow?!"

***SNIP

[LeftinOH]

1. Certain areas are probably stocked only by vendors (when they visit),

thus further eliminating the need to pay employees to maintain the area. Other areas are stocked by employees *when* there happens to be someone available to do it.

Anyone shopping at WalMart (and some other big boxes) has to understand that the low prices they want to pay comes with a tradeoff - There will be very little customer service (or none at all).

However - in defense of retail establishments everywhere, some of the photos are too "nit-picky"; out-of-place merchandise is a chronic, ongoing situation. Many shoppers regularly get rid of items they suddenly decide they don't want -and they'll ditch them anywhere.

[rurallib]

2. can't imagine there is a lot of desire on the part of employees

to make everything look great when they know the company don't give a fuck about them and would fire them in a second for any little breach.
I understand most stores are way understaffed so an employee is probably expected to run a register and stock shelves at the same time. Oh and Walmart would really like it if it were done off the clock.

[Aristus]

3. You pay minimum wage, you're going to get minimum effort.

Fuck off, Wal-Mart!

Pay your people a living wage...

[Vashta Nerada]

4. The first photo you posted is something vendors stock, not associates.

I worked at Walmart this summer (I was desperate for work) and one of the main complaints was how understaffed the store was. The store manager ignored us and said there were plenty of associates, even though there was never enough people to stock the shelves and the store was making profits.

Not only that, Walmart was hiring people to work as temporary associates, associates who'd get evaluated after 90 days to see if they're worth keeping or not.

[KurtNYC]

5. Wal Mart has about 32% if the grocery business nationwide

and they seem to have topped out there. They came in with low prices and beat up regional groceries but now that they are notching prices up they are losing their advantage. Their model seemed to be to loss leader groceries and try to make it up in the other aisles of the store and they have backed away from that.

WalMart forced food distributors to print their "use by" dates in regular text, not in codes as before and now product labelled that way is sold in all groceries. The net effect has been that customers throw out more food than before which generates more sales. WalMart seemed to see their advantage in this is that they can move their stock around faster and more efficiently than the regionals so they believed this was pressuring their competition which had fewer options for moving stock that was about to expire.

Regionals have pushed back by doing even more customer centric service. More tracking, pre-order, shop-from-home, delivery. More niche filling and going after smaller under served customer segments.

The shelves in these pictures mean nothing though. Some have the layout taped to the shelves meaning that they are moving stock around. The biggest non-gotcha in that photo spread is the Halloween candy -- there is a roll of paper towels right there. They are cleaning the shelves and getting ready to fill them with seasonal candy. How is that evidence of "doing something wrong"?

[CherokeeDem]

6. I very rarely shop at Walmart....

but I find this article suspect...

While I do not doubt Wal-Mart is understaffed, as many retail stores are now, I would love to know the hour of the day these pictures were made. Most of the boxes in the aisles appear to be there during restocking which I understand takes place in the wee hours of the morning. (I called there for boxes when I was moving and was told that was when they restocked and boxes would be available around 4 am.)

As for moving product to the front of the shelves, the Kroger store I go to does it all the time, and they have a very robust business. Specials can be cleared off the shelf in minutes, especially $1/box macaroni and cheese.

My point is, while the premise of this article might be true, there is no way to know how accurate these photos are, of if they are only indicative of a certain area of the country. I don't shop Wal-Mart often, but I was in one a few weeks ago looking at faucets (best buy and best price was at Wal-Mart), and the store was overstocked, if anything.

Economically, we have a long way to recover, and while I accept some of the arguments here, I don't think these pictures necessarily reflect the truth.

[Ron Green]

11. Chances are that faucet was a look-alike built especially for

Wal-Mart (and Home Depot and Lowe's), with the same branding and packaging but cheaper materials, and not one that a real hardware store would sell to a (reputable) contractor.

[CherokeeDem]

16. No it wasn't....

it was a brand name faucet, in original packaging with the same item number as I saw at a 'reputable' real hardware store for nearly $10 less. Since my family has been in the commercial construction business for many years, I can tell the difference in quality and materials. Otherwise, I wouldn't have bought it.

Geez... can't believe I'm having to defend Wal-Mart here... but not everything they have is cheap. How Wal-Mart acquire the rights to sell products and the underhanded way they do it is the real issue, not the products.

[Link Speed]

21. The manufacturers use the same item numbers and packaging on both

their crappy product and the product they sell to premium accounts.

Some of our businesses are hearth, patio and BBQ. The reason you can buy the same grill at half price thru WM is that the WM product is crap - lighter-gauge metal, crappy controls, shitty burners, brittle casters, etc. They are allowed to use the exact same packaging and item model number as the same mfr uses on premium product.

This is across the board and doesn't apply to only WM. Home Depot, Lowe's, all of the Boxes do it (at least with BBQ grills and smokers) and I'll bet WM does it with plumbing fixtures.

We have St Ronnie to thank for that exemption.

[Vashta Nerada]

13. Walmart associates stock shelves at all hours of the day.

As items sell, the system is supposed to let the backroom know when the item is low on the shelf. The item is then picked from the backroom and placed on a cart. A cart could sit in the backroom for several hours if the store is understaffed.

[tableturner]

8. As a former independent supermarket owner.....

The merchandise lines serviced and stocked by direct vendors is the same at all supermarkets regardless of size and volume. For example, brand name chips and snacks, brand name bread in the bread aisle (excluding private label breads, plus those from the bakery dept.), beer, wine, and brand name fluid milk/dairy products (but not items such as yogurt, cheeses, cottage cheese, etc.) are stocked directly by vendors.

However, 90% of all other items are stocked by store personnel. Most of the areas shown in the photos are stocked by store personnel. Therefore, the empty areas you see in the photos have to be caused in part by not having enough labor scheduled to fully stock shelves.

Another probable reason would be incompetent ordering. The automatic reordering that we sometimes read about is not used in the grocery department because sales of those lines and items vary so much day to day that humans need to do the ordering. With groceries, people expect everything to be on hand and on the shelves every time they visit. Automatic ordering works well with hard goods you find in those stores, but not with food. For example, take coffee makers not on sale. They may stock 20 or 30 of these, and while it is never good to have any out of stocks, it is less problematic to be out of one type of coffee maker compared to one popular Stouffer's product, for example.

The management at most supermarkets closely monitors the ordering done by store personnel, plus, mainstream grocers tend to keep their personnel for longer periods of time, and the more a person orders products in an area, the more accurate the orders, which lessens out of stocks.

The problems you see in the photos are a result of too little labor, plus incompetent ordering.

Edited to add the word "most" in the second sentence of the second paragraph.

[Sheldon Cooper]

9. The author is trying way too hard to prove some sort of point.

I've worked in retail (not Walmart) and sometimes the shit in these photos just happens. It could be time of day, it could be prepping for a new sale, it could be a multitude of different things.

Which is not to defend Walmart, but honestly, the author is really stretching it here.

[tableturner]

10. You are correct to some degree, but, as a former independent supermarket owner......

......in my stores you would never, ever see shelves looking like that, and here in Florida, never would you see that in a Publix, nor in most of the other mainstream supermarkets.

[kydo]

15. that's true

I also noticed recently the what seems like an all out assault on Publix by walmart over the last few months. Tons of money spent by walmart on radio ads specifiably targeting Publix. I shop at Publix and Costco. The tv ads trying to show walmart as some type of good guy about buying local is such a joke. Same with that whole "we replaced this fruit stand in GA with fruit from walmart and asked experts what they think Awesome peaches says people from GA" In California it was grapes. And the people are supposed to be shocked this came from walmart.

I hate walmart. I haven't willfully set foot in walmart since summer of 2001.

Publix and Costco also use local sources for fruits and vegies. And the Costco stuff is always bigger. I refuse to buy chicken wings from anywhere else.

[L0oniX]

12. I see this at the super center too (always pisses me off) but not at the grocery only stores.

[taught_me_patience]

14. Walmart probably has VMI with most of these manufacturers

so they are the ones dropping the ball on the out-of-stocks. This article is completely wrong.

[Glitterati]

17. These photos are true of my local Walmart

on ANY given day. ANY time I attempt to shop there, the damned shelves are practically bare; the store is so spread out, you walk half a mile across the store to get something that turns out to be OUT OF STOCK, then back across the store to look for something else OUT OF STOCK.

As an example - I went to grab cat food the other day. Simple, bagged cat food. Nothing in stock but the most expensive brand.

I don't shop at Walmart simply because everything I try to buy is out of stock and I wear my old, granny butt out walking across the nasty cavern they call a store to discover the thing I'm looking for is out of stock.

I just walk away from the cart and get in my car, leaving whatever I DID manage to find.

And the $1.00 pasta photo above? That's not a SALE - that's the everyday price of Walmart brand pasta. Except that it's ALWAYS out of stock.

[HillWilliam]

19. Same here

I'd never set foot in that nasty zoo of a store in Danville if I weren't occasionally forced to, for something they've made sure that no one else in the area can get hold of. Then they're out of it. Or they've quit carrying it. Or something.

Wal-Mart and Food Lion are two examples of the same retail model. I can go to Food Lion (the only store anywhere near close to me) with a list of 10 items. They'll be out of or will have quit carrying 8 of them. That means I have to travel miles out of my way to get to a Harris Teeter (the closest thing we have to Publix here). If HT is out of something, they'll make sure it's on the next truck and will let you know when it arrives. If they don't carry something you can ask the grocery manager if they can get it. The answer is almost always "yes" and they will.

Try that at Food Lion or Wally's and you get a stupid look or the brush-off. Farg 'em both.

[SharonAnn]

22. Friend bought me 2 pkgs. of pasta for a recipe. They were each 7 ounces! Unbelievable.

Pasta (spaghetti) used to come in one pound packages and that's what my recipes expect. These weren't even 1/2 a pound. Perhaps cheaper per package, but not per noodle.

[NickB79]

18. Jives perfectly with other news articles reporting troubles

http://business.time.com/2013/03/27/hey-walmart-its-hard-to-make-sales-when-store-shelves-are-empty/

One way that Walmart keeps prices low is with minimal staffing levels in stores. But shoppers and workers alike are complaining that Walmart is understaffed, and the results include annoyingly long checkout lines and shelves that are barren—because there’s no one available to restock them.

A new Bloomberg News article lays out the argument that Walmart stores just don’t have enough employees on the job:

In the past five years, the world’s largest retailer added 455 U.S. Wal-Mart stores, a 13 percent increase, according to filings and the company’s website. In the same period, its total U.S. workforce, which includes Sam’s Club employees, dropped by about 20,000, or 1.4 percent.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

20. without context the photos don't mean anything

they could be rotating stock out... they could be preparing to replace a display... someone could have just bought all of some item like the t-shirts they are showing missing. also, wal-marts in my area are a 24/7 shop... so some of this may be legit buy-down of some stock.

no one likes wal-mart... but this kind of crap is just stretching.

sP