(11-25-2024, 10:11 AM)TDOSS Wrote:

(11-25-2024, 12:06 AM)Jag149 Wrote: https://corporate.walmart.com/about/inte...t/sourcing

That link is corporate-paid Walmart PR. There is another view of Walmart. It's not good. Walmart runs small business out of business. Walmart is a small-business eating monster.

If a small American manufacturer lives the American Dream and comes up with a new product idea, Walmart will try to steal it. They might initially do business with the small supplier, but that will only be to get their hands on the product and figure out how to copy it. Then the cheaper knock-off will be manufactured overseas by cheap oppressed labor. If the small business has a patent on their product, they will have to sue Walmart to get them to stop. Walmart will use high dollar lawyers to fight the small business every step of the way, hoping to bankrupt them. Every type of Trump-style legal delay will be used in order to bankrupt the small business before they can finally prevail. Trials will be stalled. Motions will be filed. Time is money. The more time that goes by, the closer the small business is to folding. This game is nothing to Walmart. They do it all the time. It is part of their business plan.

The worst thing a small business can do would be to invent a new product, manufacture it, and end up with Walmart as the sole marketer. Walmart will want exclusive marketing rights. They will pay the lowest price they can negotiate for the product, promising volume. Then, after Walmart begins to market knock-off copies they will hold the small business to the sole marketing agreement with their own lawsuit (s). The small business won't be able to sell product anywhere else, and Walmart will stop ordering from them. Their income will vanish right when they need it most to pay the lawyers to fight Walmart.

When Walmart comes to a small town, it drives local businesses out of business. Walmart will come in and sell product at a loss just to drive the local business out of business. They will steal all the customers. Then, after the local supplier is gone, and a local family is bankrupted and looses their home, Walmart raises it's prices to recoup the losses. For example, Walmart will sell hardware items for a loss to run a local hardware store out of business. Then, after there is no more locally owned hardware store, that same Walmart raises the prices on all hardware items above what it really needs, just to recoup the losses. Those prices never come back down. After the losses are recouped, the rest after that day is gravy for the super-rich owners of Walmart from then on.

Walmart fights dirty. Any time American consumers can get something at another local small business instead of Walmart, it is a good thing. When we shop at locally owned stores, the money stays in the local economy. When we shop at Walmart, or any other big box, the money gets sucked out of the local economy and goes into the pockets of the super-rich. We have just contributed to the growing wealth gap in America and done our part to kill our local town.