Wal-Mart: It Came, It
Conquered, Now It's Packing Up and Leaving
January 25, 2016 — 5:00 AM ESTSome towns left without grocery store after Wal-Mart departure
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Company announced
plans to shut down 154 stores this month
The Town’n Country grocery in Oriental, North Carolina, a local
fixture for 44 years, closed its doors in October after a Wal-Mart store opened
for business. Now, three months later -- and less than two years after Wal-Mart
arrived -- the retail giant is pulling up stakes, leaving the community with no
grocery store and no pharmacy.
Though mom-and-pop stores
have steadily disappeared across the American landscape over the past three
decades as the mega chain methodically expanded, there was at least always a
Wal-Mart left behind to replace them. Now the Wal-Marts are disappearing, too.
“I was devastated when I
found out. We had a pharmacy and a perfectly satisfactory grocery store. Maybe
Wal-Mart sold apples for a nickel less,” said Barb Venturi, mayor pro
tem for Oriental, with
a population of about 900. “If you take into account what no longer having a
grocery store does to property values here, it is a significant impact for us.”
Oriental is hardly alone.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said on Jan. 15 it would be closing all 102 of
its smaller Express stores, many in isolated towns, to focus on its
supercenters and mid-sized Neighborhood Markets. The move, which will begin by
the end of the month, was a relatively quick about-face. As recently as 2014,
Wal-Mart was touting the solid performance of its smaller stores and announced
plans to open an additional 90.
That’s a big problem for
small towns, often with proportionately large elderly populations. For the
older folks of Oriental -- a retirement and summer vacation town along the
Intracoastal Waterway -- the next-nearest grocery and pharmacy is a 50-minute
round-trip drive.
Wal-Mart says it is
sensitive to the dislocations its business decisions are causing.
“In towns impacted by
store closures, we have had hundreds of conversations with elected officials
and community leaders to discuss relevant issues and we are working with
communities on how we can be helpful,” said Wal-Mart spokesman Brian Nick.
Wal-Mart has been under
increasing pressure lately as sales in the U.S. have failed to keep up with
rising labor costs. It’s also been spending more on its Web operations. In
October, the company announced that profit this year would be down as much as
12 percent. The outlook contributed to a share decline of 29 percent during the
past 12 months.
“It is more important now
than ever to review our portfolio and close the stores and clubs that should be
closed,” Wal-Mart’s Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon said in
a statement on the company’s website.
Shuttered Stores
Towns like Clearwater,
Kansas, and Merkel, Texas, are among those hit by Wal-Mart closures. In Godley,
Texas, with a population of roughly 1,000, Wal-Mart opened a small store just a
year ago. Within months, the only other grocery store in town -- Brookshire
Brothers, part of an employee-owned regional chain -- shut its doors. Now with
Wal-Mart gone, the closest full-service grocery store is about a 20-minute
drive away.
In some cases, closed
businesses may reopen now that Wal-Mart has left. In Merkel, the Lawrence
Brothers grocery store, which closed two months ago, is planning to reopen now
that Wal-Mart is packing up, said Jay Lawrence, head of the regional chain in
Texas and New Mexico.
Residents of Oriental,
where some city officials originally tried to block Wal-Mart from opening, are
hoping for a similar outcome now that the megastore is gone. But for the moment
the damage has been done, they say.
Renee Ireland Smith, who
ran Town’n Country, said the store immediately saw sales fall by 30 percent
once Wal-Mart opened in May 2014. Whenever her store cut prices, Wal-Mart would
reduce its prices even more. Smith’s mother, who owned the store, invested
$100,000 in savings into the doomed effort. But by October, the family decided
to cut its losses and close the business.
“They ruined our lives,”
said Smith of Wal-Mart. “They came in here with their experiment and ruined
us.”
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