Walmart .. you gotta love this..

MarvelousMark

Senior Member
Last i heard Wallmart was buying out massmart, who is makro, game and Dions here in South Africa. So maby we will get lucky too.
 

Gertus

Senior Member
Guys.. for the record.. If anyone on this site has anything to do with the deal about Walmart comming to SA .. STOP THEM... trust me you dont want it...

All the other stores will die.. and you will have no choice but to buy one brand cheap low quality goods... all made in china..

do yourself a favour.. watch Walmart the high price of low cost.. A documentary..

They are here and they are not leaving the states.. but lets not get them in SA you will see what i mean few years after they are there.. MARK MY WORDS..

G

 
 

Fanie

Sealiner
Maybe Wallmart per se' won't be a good shop to have here, but we have enough monopolies bullying the market alseady, half their stuff comes from the east any way, only at a much higher price.

I went to buy a lantern, R35 at one shop. Yesterday I saw a very similar lantern for R160 in one of these big shops.

I bought some fishing stuff at one of the China mart's a while back. The same rod I paid R150 for sells in some fishing shops R500 to R700. They probably paid the same price.

Nobody likes to be ripped of, and we are being ripped of in SA, big time. I saw some meat here is now R120/kg. Funny how the R/$ always gets blamed but when the R improves the prices remains stuck up there. SA is fast becoming one of the most expensive countries to live in in the world.

If you want to blame anyone, blame the government. It is them that fuels this way to do business in SA. You older chaps can think back a bit and remember what things were like before. Seems like you are a good businessman if you can get away ripping someone off rather than just charging fair prices. Everyone here wants to get rick quick and be an overnight billionaire.

Well, wait till the R goes the same way the zim $ did, we'll find something to blame for it.

Too many monopolies in SA !
 

Gertus

Senior Member
Fanie..

Trust me .. you have not seen a monopoly yet...

Watch the movie.."WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price" and re-read your post...

G
 

Fanie

Sealiner
Maybe we're talking past each other. Just to mention a few,

Highest phone charges in the world ?
Compare our bank charges to overseas banks ?
Power cuts to force us to pay more ?
Farmers get squat but we pay very high prices ?
Frequent fuel hikes ?
Vehickles & boats ~40% more than elsewhere ?

Who gets all the money !!! Count the houses in your street, then see how much your street pay for rubbish removal alone. Then calculate your suburb... it gets scary, and then ask the rubbish removers how much they get paid... Who gets all this money !!!

They WANT you to believe you should pay more and they will have sound reasons why. What they want you to believe is you should buy at the most expensive (their) shops and not the ones with fair markup - and usually with that you get the poorest services as well.

Why do you think the middle class in SA is deminishing... only rich or poor. There is no opportunity for competition in SA, the big guys takes everything.

ABSA bank is sponsering the rugby this year, blue balls or something. I (AYE) am paying for that. WTF, aren't they a bank, why don't they just charge fair fees and stick to banking ?

I say lets get a bit of competitive pricing in SA so the rippers can be subdued a bit.
 

Fanie

Sealiner
Think about this for a second -

If our local pricing was fair then it would not be economical for a US company to open their doors here !
 

kaboem

Sealiner
Hi Guys

Unfortunatly the deal has already been done  and signed... WM now owns 49% of Massmart and the guys who live down in Durban and Capetown should have seen some of the changes been made to 2 of the biggest Game stores in the two city's......

Guys go and look closely i wont mention the areas of the stores but its not rocket science these guys have never sold Fresh produce or  meat and grociaries along with everything else they sell TV's ext...

I can tell you this with confidence as i deal with General Merchandise & Toy Buyers on a daily basis at H/O level. This deal might have much bigger implications  than you think... WM beeing so big they litteraly destroy the smaller guys where ever they go.

In America there is a little town close to the Mexico border that refused to accept them into their town. It has been proven that where ever these guys go everything else in the region fails. They have huge buying power and no one can compete with their pricing.

For the guys who say bring WM i say think carefully about it, The guys who have been overseas would know that WM is alot like ouR Shoprite stores here in Africa only difference is they keep anything you can think of in their super stores. From plumbing equipment to audio ANYTHING... Now you might say thats awesome a complete shopping experiance under one roof. But think about the implications think about the man that has had his little hardwear store in the nabourwood for 30 years has always given you excellent service and you always got what you want. If WM moves in then this will be gone within months....and they will only be a memory.

I can also tell you that you wont see the name Wallmart in SA soon as this was part of the deal with MM also they know alot of suppliers are not happy about this deal and unfortunatly no one trusts them because of the track record they have in the USA.

So long story short they are here to stay nothing is going to change that... In my personal and humble opinion i believe its putting all of the Proudly South African companies and suppliers at risk. But hey who am i to say anything.......

I just got here....

PS. Guys listen to Gertus the man knows what he is talking about you guys dont know what a Monopoly is.....

I have been overseas a few times particularly in America and i have seen first hand what these guys do. No matter what type of market you are in YOU WILL BE AFFECTED IN ONE WAY OR THE OTHER....
 

christopheradam

New member
All the unions will make it impossible for them here. SA is just the stepping stone for expansion into other African countries where the labour legislation is less draconian.
 

errant

Member
christopheradam wrote:
All the unions will make it impossible for them here. SA is just the stepping stone for expansion into other African countries where the labour legislation is less draconian.

Unfortunately that will still impact a lot of the large South African retailers as their game plans follow the same treasure hunt.
 

Stephen.JG

New member
this anti-Walmart talk is so dated people, its scary how it still gets repeated...

it may have been true 25 - 30 years ago but not now...

all the "little hardware stores" have long since been closed down by Massmart with their Builders Waehouses and other group hardwares franchises..

Pick n pay, Shoprite Checkers and Hypers have long since gotten rid of the corner green grocer

Likewise Virgins and Planet Fitness have long ago closed down most of the small privately owned gyms... its called progress... sad for the little guy , but it happened ages ago already..

Walmart are taking over the excisting Massmart stores - makros etc.. they not coming here and building up huge new shops right next to the little guy - that has taken place 25 years ago already by other large corporates...

whatever little town and dorpie that has any remote possiblility of returning big money for the big stores has long since been raped up by Pick n Pay and shoprite.

 

so really, I fail to see why walmart is seen as this big bad devil coming this way.. to do what pnp and others have done 30 years ago already..  all this scare talk comes out of mid-america towns whose situation is nothing like that of south africa.
 

Gertus

Senior Member
I understand that the bigger fish have over time consumed the small fry.. this is not something new..

My concern is choice.. and range.. this is quite tough to explain but here goes.

As much as I support capitalism in its true form there is a point where you no longer win as the consumer due to good competition.

Consumer demands have always created a market for a service or product. In a free market the entrepreneurial spirit will step up and come into the market with a product or service. This becomes more difficuilt when you are competing with the big guns. This means that specialist shops will be the only shops that prevail. However you cannot maintain a specialist shop based on geograpical location. This decreases the market that will drive there to shop at that store. I.e. Cost of purchase. You simply do not have enough people in one area that need 70-200mm VR-AF F2.8 lenses in Brakpan CBD to support a specialist camera shop.

So the only other option is to go online and ship products. This is what most speciality stores are doing in the states. This enables the shop to increse the span of the stores "virtual geograpical footprint" the issue here is that one, SA does not have the infrastructure to courier goods cheap and two we do not have not yet taken to online shopping.

So we are back to basic goods and complementary items that most of SA's market consume on a daily basis. Maize meat bread milk. THis is where i am concerned. Walmart has most of its goods that come from one or two suppliers. Mainly based in china. They do not care about Marmite from UK or having Stroopwafles from holland. We will be so limited for choice not to talk about the manufacturing standards of foods that we import form china. The FDA and USDA very often fail to screen products that are harmfull and even deadly to consumers. Daily I see recalls on TV of FDA approved drugs from china that cause anything from chronic conditions to birth defects. Who knows how easy goods will make it through corrupt officials in SA. I have also never seen so many "disabled" parking spaces at a shopping centre. This could mean that A: the other countries i have been to do not make provision for the disabled or B: there is a higher rate of disabled people per capita in the US. You decide.

On the topic of the wallmart BRAND in SA. Yes I know that they are not going to build NEW stores, why would they? Why would they spend money on building a new brand? They can just leach on a good brand that most of us trust. My issue is the supply chain and choice which is not good for the consumer. First they flush out all competition then they give us a one product one brand "selection" which is not determined on the demands of the consumer rather the businesses they accuire which are part of their supply chain.

So belive all you want friends .. I see this everyday.. I live in small town america and I see how it limits choice of the consumer. We could only get a Samsung or nokia phone with our Sprint contracts. We could only use this phone and cant convert my SA phone to use on this contract. In Khols(like edgars) you can get Nike, Addidas and Scetchers shoes, maybe two other brands. Clothing is limited to 3-4 Major brands. In Checkers you can get moirs, robbersons and several other brands of essence here, at wallmart you get the local brand and that is it. You get ONEor two brands of sugar, and its based on corn sugar.. you do get cane sugar but it is more. The flour tastes like ground cardboard. I had to go to a SA shop in atlanta to get some Illovo Syrup and Snowflake. I dont even want to talk about the "fresh"(GM) foods.

I trust you get my point. Yes its nice having cheap goods as I initially posted. And my initial post was tounge in cheek. So yes cheap does come at a price. But then again what do I know, have only been a business consultant for a few years.. ;-)

Regards,

Gertus

 
 
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