Post Scripts: Walmart… a bail-out solution

In most areas of the United States today you do not have to drive very far until you glance out of your car window and see a Wal-Mart store with its parking lot nearly full or irritatingly jam-packed with customer traffic. One cannot become over-irritated at this spectacle but old-fashioned guys like me can, who recall the convenience and friendliness of neighborhood merchants who would actually bring badly-needed items to your front door if needed.

My column is not anti-Wal-Mart but one simply to remind readers that in the good old days neighborhood merchants would actually deliver needed items to your front door with a hand-shake and a smile. In my old neighborhood in east-side Kansas City where just about everybody was poor and my request to my mother to buy me something was met with a sour look and failure, even though down deep in her heart she hated ignoring my request.

But, getting back to big business today and Wal-Mart in particular, I am aware most folks who shop Wal-Mart on a regular basis, do so because it is a pleasant place to shop and it saves them money. How did Wal-Mart get so big and become such a family friend? Because they had smart executives who somehow examined in depth the desires and temperament of the American public.

Kathy and I do shop now and then in a big Wal-Mart super center not far from where we live. It is always busy and their parking lot stays full day after day. How big is Wal-Mart? Take a look at the figures I ran across on the Internet some days ago.

At Wal-Mart, Americans spend $36,000,000 every hour of every day. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute.

Wal-Mart will sell more from Jan.1 to Saint Patrick’s Day than Target sells all year. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot, plus Kroger, plus Target, plus Sears, plus Costco and K-Mart combined.

Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million and is the nation’s largest private employer. And most of them can’t speak English.

Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined. Keep this in mind they did this in only 15 years. During this same period, 31 Supermarket chains sought bankruptcy including Winn-Dixie.

Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world. Wal-Mart has approximately 3,900 stores in the United States of which 1,900 are super-centers. This is 1,000 more than it had five years ago.

This year, 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur in a Wal-Mart store. Earth’s population is about 6.5 billion. Ninety percent of all Americans live within 15 miles of a Wal-Mart store.

So… my thinking is, let Wal-Mart executives bail out the auto-makers and put a few of them in the White House.