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Wal Mart seems to have a very bad reputation as a company and, from what one seems to hear, appears to be one of the worst companies to work for out there. While it might be so for regular employees, I know that my uncle, who worked at a distribution center, made enough money to support a family of seven (though I think he was ill used after being let go due to on the job injuries but as he's in an at-will state and doesn't have too too much money (about $50,000 or so among a family of 7 isn't that that great), they didn't try and fight wally world. In fact, the injuries were so bad that, after trying at some other jobs, which were good enough, he had to leave as the injuries kept him from performing them, as even his doctors said.)
I mean, what happened to Wal Mart? Sam Walton was such a good guy. Where did things go wrong?
Sam died. The company was taken over by typical MBAs. Same folks who ruin other companies. Walmart is so big and has so much money it may take years, but as Walmart is now, A&P once was. As A&P is now, Walmart will be. You could insert Kmart, Sears, Montgomery Ward, and a host of other companies in there and get the same answer.
They just do all sorts of nasty things. They had lawsuits for wage theft, abuse of temps at their warehouses, just a lot of the most heinous sorts of corporate bad citizenship.
Their products are also of very bad quality. I had an HDMI cable that pulled apart when unplugged, belts that the buckle fell apart, grills that rusted out in less than 2 years. They have a decent return policy if you can stand in line for 30 minutes to an hour to return their defective junk.
Walmart lost its way by doing and not doing a number of things.
Although it practically invented the warehouse box store mentality others came in the same way.
box stores did well when gas was cheap in the 1990's
Once the economy slowed it created incentives for more to switch to the internet and frankly walmart still doesn't know how to get it right.
Amazon now has a bigger market cap than walmart.
Traditional retail has quite an amount of overhead. I worked for a box store for 3.5 years. The safety regulations just to get things onthe floor and for customers is pretty large. Then you have to deal manually and directly with customers. Walking customers that don't know what they want to product that might not be there is not the best in terms of productivity. Whereas with the internet you just click and get it. There's no guessing there.
Although I won't say everything can be sold online but the ease of product delivery is already there. So to overcome that walmart didn't really do that much.
Product lines are not the best because surprise they don't put money into r&d at all. Sure there's some walmart brands here and there but there's no new product lines. Lack of innovation means boredom.
Sam died. The company was taken over by typical MBAs. Same folks who ruin other companies. Walmart is so big and has so much money it may take years, but as Walmart is now, A&P once was. As A&P is now, Walmart will be. You could insert Kmart, Sears, Montgomery Ward, and a host of other companies in there and get the same answer.
Walmart doesn't actually make much profit.
While it's good that they've got the best people running the business (MBAs), it's important to note that it is, just that, a business.
Former Wal-Mart employee here. It used to be that you had to work your way up through the company ranks to become a manager. Now you don't have to have experience, but you do have to have a degree. I cannot even tell you, for lack of time, the number of stories where I, a measly sales associate, had to train managers making twice my income how to do basic things like run a register or operate our inventory scanners. Or had to argue with managers about doing things that didn't make sense for our department, but because they were the "business people," we had to acquiesce to them, only to witness their genius plans blow up and have them tell us we could do things our way after all. An MBA may be useful for some things, but it does not a genius make.
Former Wal-Mart employee here. It used to be that you had to work your way up through the company ranks to become a manager. Now you don't have to have experience, but you do have to have a degree. I cannot even tell you, for lack of time, the number of stories where I, a measly sales associate, had to train managers making twice my income how to do basic things like run a register or operate our inventory scanners. Or had to argue with managers about doing things that didn't make sense for our department, but because they were the "business people," we had to acquiesce to them, only to witness their genius plans blow up and have them tell us we could do things our way after all. An MBA may be useful for some things, but it does not a genius make.
The vast majority of decent MBA programs require you to have experience in order to even get accepted to the program. Harvard, Wharton, Duke, Stern, etc. are not going to accept people who have no experience.
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