Recall bid gains traction

Associated Press
03.26.08                                        [back to top]

NEW YORK - An executive vice president of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, exercised options for 5,330 shares and sold 4,882 shares of stock, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday.

In a Form 4 filed with the SEC, Mary Susan Chambers reported she exercised options at $39.88 apiece on Thursday and sold the shares for $54.08 apiece and Monday.

Chambers also surrendered 448 shares back to the company to cover tax expenses on the options.

Insiders file Form 4s with the SEC to report transactions in their companies' shares. Open market purchases and sales must be reported within two business days of the transaction.

Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) is based in Bentonville, Ark.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Tell Wal-Mart not to take her money

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Today's lead story on CNN.com is about former Missouri Wal-Mart employee Debbie Shank. Debbie used to stock shelves at night for Wal-Mart. Now she owes Wal-Mart almost $500,000.

http://action.walmartwatch.com/debbieshank

The 52 year-old was a Wal-Mart employee when she was left "brain damaged, disabled and penniless" from a car accident seven years ago. But after the Shank family received a settlement from the trucking company at fault, Wal-Mart demanded reimbursement for every cent it had paid for Debbie's medical bills - plus interest and legal fees.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Debbie Shank's case, leaving her family no choice but to pay Wal-Mart $470,000. Now her family doesn't know how they're going to be able to afford Debbie's nursing home bills.

To make things worse, the $470,000 exceeds the remaining $277,000 in Debbie's trust from the settlement, which means Wal-Mart may even go after the donations given to the Shank family for Debbie's care, including the money you helped raise in November. This is just wrong.

Wal-Mart may have won the lawsuit, but the Shank family has already lost enough. The company claims that it has to collect the money for the good of all Wal-Mart employees. But, in this particularly egregious situation, surely the largest company in the world run by the wealthiest family in the United States can give this family a break. Write to Wal-Mart executives and ask them to tell Lee Scott to do the right thing and let Debbie Shank keep her money:

http://action.walmartwatch.com/debbieshank

This company already has a reputation for treating its employees poorly, and this tragic situation exposes the company's pure heartlessness. The Shank family is living most people's worst nightmare - and Wal-Mart is only making it worse.

Debbie's husband, Jim, told reporters:

"She's 52 and she's going to live a life in a nursing home. I just got a call today from the head nurse, and (Debbie) hasn't eaten in a couple days and she's talking about wanting to die," Shank said. "It makes the visits hard."

... "Be a human being; don't be a corporation," Shank said, "for the sake of one lady who is going to be miserable for the rest of her life. Take your victory. Let us pay some bills and get some quality of life."

Tell Wal-Mart that the Shank family has paid enough and Lee Scott should reverse the decision or find another way to let the family keep this money. Help us get this family's story out by forwarding the CNN story and this e-mail to your friends and family:

http://action.walmartwatch.com/debbieshank

Thank you for telling Wal-Mart to do the right thing for Debbie Shank.

Sincerely,

David Nassar
Wal-Mart Watch
Paid for by WalmartWatch.com,
a campaign of Five Stones and
The Center for Community and Corporate Ethics

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Wal-Mart to open biggest store ever

The big-box retailer says its 260,000-square-foot, two-story supercenter being built near Albany will be the company's largest store.

CNNMoney.com
March 19, 2008                        [back to top]

What's good for Wal-Mart

More Videos ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Upstate New York will soon be home to the nation's largest Wal-Mart store.

Workers are combining a standard-sized Wal-Mart store with space left vacant by a failed Sam's Club warehouse outlet on the outskirts of Albany to create a 260,000-square-foot, two-story "supercenter" selling department store merchandise as well as groceries, liquor and automotive and other services.

That's more than 25% bigger than the average Wal-Mart supercenter, which typically measures around 205,000 square feet, said Phil Serghini, a Wal-Mart spokesman in New York.

Real estate planners at the Bentonville, Ark.-based company - the world's largest retailer with more than 4,100 stores in the United States and 3,100 more overseas - never set out to build their biggest store in New York's Capital Region. In fact, the larger stores tend to be built in rural areas, Serghini said.

In the 1990s, Wal-Mart co-located a Sam's Club - its members-only warehouse store - with a Wal-Mart department store in a dual-level shopping center, with the Sam's Club on the lower floor.

The company closed the Sam's Club in 2006 because of low membership and decided to use that space to turn the department store into a supercenter.

"It's the largest one really only because of the situation involving the former Sam's Club," Serghini said. "But it is unique, and the customers are going to be very pleased with the layout."

The company had kept the project relatively quiet, not formally announcing it to the news media or to customers. Construction started about a year ago, but the transformation only recently became visible when workers opened up the newly renovated bottom floor and installed escalators.

"I didn't even realize anything was happening over here until I came back from winter break and all of a sudden there was a big hole in the floor," said Susannah Coon, a student at a nearby university who has shopped there since she started classes three years ago.

Denise Clow, who lives in suburban Albany and said she has shopped at the store since it opened, was particularly impressed by the escalators, which move both people and shopping carts. A hook grabs the bottom of the cart, which is then pulled along a track in the center of the escalator alongside the shopper riding the moving stairs.

"That's so cool," she said.

Aside from the newfangled escalators and wider aisles, the nation's biggest Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) won't be all that different from the rest. It will have the same kind of merchandise and services that are available at other supercenters, Serghini said.

The store plans to celebrate its grand opening in May.

Target's inner circle

Wal-Mart snaps up rest of Seiyu

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“Greenbackwashing”: Wal-Mart Admits It’s Not Green

by Philip Mattera,
director of the Corporate Research Project                    [back to top]

Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott has finally admitted what many of us suspected all along: the company’s widely celebrated embrace of environmental principles is bogus. Responding to a question as to why his company’s carbon footprint continues to grow, Scott told the Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics conference the other day: “We are not green.” At the same event, when asked why Wal-Mart continues to sell bottled water, despite its harmful environmental effects, Scott said: “We have to stay in business…If the customer wants bottled water, we are going to sell bottled water.” To top things off, he replied to a question as to when the company might reach its professed goals of generating zero waste and using 100% renewable energy by saying: “I haven’t a clue.”

While these comments were a far cry from the company’s usual green hype, the underlying point is one that Scott has actually been making all along. Wal-Mart’s environmental initiatives are in fact nothing more than an extension of its usual obsession with efficiency. Anyone who bothered to closely read Scott’s landmark “21st Century Leadership” speech in October 2005 saw that he framed the company’s efforts as waste reduction, which would reduce costs, which in turn would raise profits.

Scott reaffirmed this idea in a separate interview with the Journal’s Alan Murray at the ECO:nomics conference, video of which Wal-Mart has posted on its website. He reiterates the idea that what the company is doing is “driving waste out of the system” and thus reducing costs. When Murray asks about trade-offs, Scott amazingly denies there are any. “There don’t have to be trade-offs,” he asserts.

This is the heart of Wal-Mart’s philosophy not only about the environment but about its entire approach to business. The giant retailer can pretend there are no trade-offs because it is the master of cost shifting. It shifts employee healthcare costs to the public sector, it avoids what should be its full labor costs by fighting unionization—and it shifts the costs of environmental transformation (and other innovation) onto its suppliers. Having used its power to avoid cost burdens and difficult decisions, it is possible for Scott to dwell in a cloud-cuckoo-land where tackling problems such as global warming requires no sacrifice and is in fact a way to fatten the bottom line.

While for most economic players there is no free lunch, Wal-Mart can gorge itself at will. When other companies make misleading statements about their environmental record, that is greenwashing. What Wal-Mart has been doing might more accurately be called “greenbackwashing”—promoting the fallacious idea that a green transition can be costless.

Another corporate speaker at the ECO:nomics conference was a bit more honest. Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers acknowledged that there will be substantial costs in moving to a system of carbon regulation. However, he went on to argue that companies such as his—which is one of the largest CO2 emitters in the country—should get their greenhouse gas permits for free. This, he solemnly stated, was solely for the sake of his ratepayers. “I make a commitment that every one of those allowances will go straight to my customers, and I will sign that commitment in blood,” he said.

Undoubtedly, there will be blood—a lot of it—unless major corporations such as Wal-Mart and Duke Energy acknowledge that environmental transition will entail costs and that corporate profits cannot be immune from those burdens.

Copyright © 2008 Dirt Diggers Digest. WordPress Theme design. .

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North Chico Wal-Mart plans dropped

By JENN KLEIN
03/18/2008

Plans are off for the new Wal-Mart Supercenter proposed for north Chico. Wal-Mart representative Kevin Loscotoff said Monday the company canceled plans for what would have been a 242,000-square-foot retail supercenter at Highway 99 and Garner Lane. Wal-Mart notified the city of its decision Monday and will be formally withdrawing its application today, he said.

Wal-Mart is still pursuing plans for the expansion of its existing Forest Avenue store, expected to go before the Planning Commission at the beginning of April.

As first reported on ChicoER.com, Loscotoff said the decision not to go ahead with the new store was not because of any change in the local or regional economy, but because of a modification in the format of new Wal-Mart Supercenters.

"Under the new guidelines for our Wal-Mart Supercenter strategy, this project did not meet those guidelines. We are certainly disappointed, especially after the four years we have been working on the project," he said.

Following the announcement last year of plans to improve productivity and sales, Loscotoff said an internal company committee reviewed the north Chico store and did not reapprove the plans. He said the north Chico Wal-Mart is not the only store the company called off.

Part of the company's strategy included cutting back on the growth of its U.S. supercenters, dropping from the original plans of opening 265 to 270 supercenters this fiscal year to opening 190 to 200, according to a news release. Loscotoff said the company received more than 10,000 cards of support for a Chico supercenter — including cards supporting the south Chico supercenter — and still believes the land it was looking at is in an area of significant growth with a high desire for a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

"We recognize the demand and the desire to have the retail there; unfortunately, it just didn't meet the guidelines," he said.

When asked if Wal-Mart would explore different locations in Chico in the future, Loscotoff would only say the company will "always look at different opportunities and ways to support our customers."

"I think we're always exploring new opportunities to better serve our customers and we'll continue to do so. For right now, our expansion is our focus," he said.

A supercenter typically would have brought about 500 jobs, according to Loscotoff.

Jeff Farrar, the owner of the 20 acres Wal-Mart was looking at, said he's not yet sure what he will do with the property but has received other phone calls about his land, which is located outside of city limits.

"We have other retailers that are interested in the property and it's in the path of growth, so our strategy will be to I.D. the best use for that property and proceed in that direction," Farrar said Monday in a telephone interview.

"I still feel that retail is going to be the way that it develops," he added.

The Sunset Hills Golf Course was leasing the property from Farrar but he said it's been closed down as it "never made any money." The driving range will continue to stay open while he looks at other uses for the property.

In the called-off plans, the city would have annexed a 148-acre area between Highway 99 and The Esplanade. Wal-Mart would have gone at the northern end of the annexation area, on 18.56 acres of the property, leaving 20.2 acres for additional retail.

However, city planner Greg Redeker said there are still additional city staff costs involved in moving forward with the yet-unfinished environmental impact report for the north Wal-Mart and the additional retail. If Wal-Mart is no longer paying to proceed with the EIR, it won't move to a point where the city can certify it, he said.

"I'm fairly certain that means that entire thing is done, at least for now," Redeker said.

City planner Zach Thomas said the city does not have any other applications for the property.

Wal-Mart 'Green Store' Cuts Energy

By MARCUS KABEL
Associated Press
03.18.08                                         [back to top]

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will open its latest generation of energy-efficient test stores this week with a Las Vegas Supercenter that uses new cooling technology to cut overall energy use by up to 45 percent.

The Las Vegas store opening Wednesday builds on advances in earlier pilot stores that reduced energy use in areas including lighting, refrigeration and water flow.

The previous pilot stores in the Midwest cut energy use up to 25 percent compared to a typical Supercenter built in 2005, the year Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) launched a broad environmental program to reduce energy use and packaging waste and to sell more sustainable products.

Wal-Mart said the new Las Vegas store adds to those savings with a new cooling system based on water evaporation for total energy savings of between 35 percent and 45 percent.

Wal-Mart has said it is the biggest private user of electricity in the world and has huge potential to cut back on greenhouse gases from fossil fuels burned to create electricity. It aims to use technologies proven in the pilot stores to develop a prototype in 2009 for all new Supercenters that will be between 25 percent and 30 percent more energy efficient.

An outside engineering and efficiency expert said Wal-Mart's advances in saving energy, including the new Las Vegas store, are leading the field for big-box retailers.

"This is not just a baby step. This is a big step," said Terry Townsend, past president of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

Townsend said Wal-Mart's pilot stores are important because they show other retailers how to use available technology to improve energy efficiency. Wal-Mart says it is sharing its lessons with retail industry groups.

The latest store is built specifically for the arid climate of Western states, where water evaporates faster than in the more-humid East.

It uses rooftop cooling towers to chill water that then runs in conduits under the floor of the store. The radiant cooling from the floor replaces traditional electricity-powered air conditioning.

The store also incorporates innovations from the previous pilot stores that include recycling heat from refrigerators and combining low-power LED lights in freezer cases with sensors that turn off those lights when no customers are around.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

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Residents hear critiques of big-box retailers

OAKLEY: Large, new stores are in direct conflict with plans to restore downtown, activists say

By Paula King
03/15/2008                                         [back to top]

A few weeks after Wal-Mart abandoned its plans to locate a Supercenter in Oakley, a local citizens group opposed to the megaretailer held a town hall meeting to discuss the impact of big-box development on the evolving city. The speakers at Thursday's meeting addressed community concerns about the proposed 77-acre commercial project where Wal-Mart was planning to move. They discussed the environmental review process and future public hearings surrounding the River Oaks Crossing shopping center. "It's not too late to include the citizens and taxpayers of Oakley in the process of deciding what kind of commercial growth we want in our community. Bigger is not necessarily better," Save Oakley Now spokesman Bob Caughron stated in a news release. The panel of speakers urged Oakley residents to get involved in the young city's impending commercial growth and hold public officials accountable for any related impacts. Land use attorney Mark Wolfe and Phil Tucker of California Healthy Communities Network spoke about how big-box development in Oakley could harm ongoing downtown revitalization efforts. According to Tucker, the development of big-box shopping centers and the redevelopment of Oakley's downtown represent two competing visions. He added that the area doesn't have enough potential shoppers to support both retail endeavors. "These plans overlap each other and what that means is they are drawing their primary shoppers from the same area," Tucker said. "The downtown development plan doesn't have much of a chance." Wal-Mart officials said that the Oakley Supercenter application was withdrawn because of the nation's sluggish economy and stagnant stock values. Wal-Mart has decided not to construct more than 140 planned stores. The Supercenter was expected to bring more than 450 new jobs and $700,000 annually in sales tax revenue. Meanwhile, city leaders are pushing forward with River Oaks Crossing by luring other major retailers to the site. According to Wolfe, Wal-Mart realized the demand is not strong enough in Oakley. "It still boils down to these competing visions and the delusion that it doesn't exist," he said to a crowd of area residents attending the forum at Vintage Parkway Elementary School. Wolfe mentioned several California cities that have banned superstores or imposed limitations on retailers like Wal-Mart. Among those cities are Los Angeles, Oakland, Turlock, Stockton and Vallejo, he said. As Save Oakley Now's land-use counsel, Wolfe asked residents to get involved in the public process for River Oaks. "What we can insist upon is that all that information is laid out in front of us," he said. Mark Gagliardi spoke as an Oakley resident and board member of the Contra Costa Central Labor Council. He said he is also interested in seeing the downtown successfully redeveloped. "I just think there is a smart way to do it," Gagliardi said. "We don't need to put up a big store that is going to take out the competition." Oakley resident and Delta Green Party member Paul Seger said Wal-Mart's way of doing business is un-American. He asked Oakley residents to demand accountability from local officials. "There are so many ways we can use this land," Seger said.

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Wal-Mart Director Buys 5,000 Shares

Associated Press
03.14.08                                                  [back to top]

NEW YORK - A director of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, bought 5,000 shares of stock, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Thursday.

In a Form 4 filed with the SEC, James Breyer reported he bought the shares for $49.85 to $49.88 apiece on Tuesday. He reported buying the shares indirectly through a trust.

Insiders file Form 4s with the SEC to report transactions in their companies' shares. Open market purchases and sales must be reported within two business days of the transaction.

Wal-Mart Stores (nyse: WMT - news - people ) is based in Bentonville, Ark.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

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Wal-Mart Says $4 Drug Plan Saves $1B

Associated Press
03.14.08                                                      [back to top]

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, on Friday estimated its $4 generic prescription drug program saved customers more than $1 billion since it launched.

Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) began offering $4 for a one-month supply of many generic prescriptions in late 2006.

The company said the $4 prescriptions now represent about 40 percent of all filled prescriptions at Wal-Mart. Nearly 30 percent are filled without insurance.

Shares fell $1.25, or 2.5 percent, to $49.35 in morning trading.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press

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Wal-Mart Tweaks Store for Arab-Americans

By JEFF KAROUB
Associated Press
03.14.08                                                  [back to top]

DEARBORN, Mich. - Faten Saad knew she wasn't in a typical Wal-Mart when she saw an end-of-the-aisle display featuring Mamool.

Boxes of the date-filled, whole wheat cookie from the Middle East welcomed the 21-year-old Lebanon native into the international aisle of the new Wal-Mart store in this Detroit suburb known as the capital of Arab America. Aisle 3, which also features Eastern European and Hispanic food, represents many of the 550 items geared toward Arab-American shoppers in the store that opened last week.

It might be statistically tiny in a store with more than 150,000 items, but it's symbolically huge for the world's largest retailer as it seeks to change from a cost-is-everything monolith to one that customizes its stores to meet neighborhood needs.

Managers say they seek peace with the neighborhood's merchants - and vow not to undercut them on Middle Eastern specialties. But some experts and observers say Wal-Mart's well-planned launch in Dearborn is bound to shake up the buying and selling in a community that has long supported its own. Southeastern Michigan is home to an estimated 300,000 people who trace their roots to the Middle East.

"I have not heard of anything this tailored. It's inspiring to me as a shareholder," said Patricia Edwards, portfolio manager and retail analyst in the Seattle office of San Francisco-based investment manager Wentworth, Hauser & Violich, which has 537,000 shares of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. stock.

The Dearborn store also sells Arabic music and plans to offer Muslim greeting cards. But the modifications go beyond merchandise: It has 35 employees who speak Arabic - noted in Arabic script on their badges. The store also has hired a local Arab-American educator to teach the staff cultural sensitivity.

It's clear as soon as shoppers walk in that this isn't a typical Wal-Mart. Inside the grocery entrance are 22 produce tables filled with squash, beans and cucumbers common in Middle Eastern dishes. The section also features grains and vegetables popular among blacks and Hispanics, two other demographics with sizable populations living nearby.

"It's like a farmers' market," said Bill Bartell, the store manager who developed the international aisle with Tut's International Export & Import Co., the Dearborn-based distributor that handles the sourcing for many of the store's Middle-Eastern items.

"Because we did all this due diligence prior to moving into this area, we came to realize our clients really kind of liked this atmosphere, and they liked the variety that we can give them."

More than a year of studying the market and meeting with community groups was put to the test last fall, when Bartell and a Tut's executive began to work on what would become aisle 3. They set up an 80-foot-long counter in an empty warehouse and hauled out products - date-filled cookies, grape leaves, vacuum-packed olives, chick peas and a 97-ounce jar of olive oil imported from the Middle East. The men spent two weeks working on a way to present a new line of products.

As he recalled their effort, a few women in hijabs - traditional Muslim head scarves - inspected produce. One spoke in Arabic to Mohamad Atwi, the developmental store manager.

Bartell said the store aims to offer convenience - not a comprehensive selection of specialty products.

"It's very important that we have the variety of the Muslim, Hispanic items, local items, at a comparable price," he said. "If you go over to Warren (Avenue) where there's other ... small retailers, they have a variety that goes on and on and on."

At the Super Greenland Market, which Wal-Mart studied to come up with its new store, customers can find one whole side of an aisle with more than 20 different varieties of chick peas and fava beans.

"We have vendors that extend from here to the end of the planet," said Jamal Koussan, owner of Super Greenland. "We import directly. That puts us at a big advantage."

He said Wal-Mart doesn't concern him, but he is watching it. He tracked his store's sales on Wal-Mart's opening day and saw no dip.

"I'm not saying they will have no effect on our business but nothing that will threaten us, that will threaten our existence or threaten our bottom line," he said.

Still, the lure of everything under one roof could prove stronger than product depth for some who frequent Middle Eastern shops.

Saad, the college student who emigrated from Lebanon in 1990, marveled while shopping at Wal-Mart and plans to return.

"I don't think I would come all the way here just to get those things, but I'd pick them up on the way if I was already here doing my shopping," she said.

Warren David, a public relations and marketing specialist focusing on Arab-American and Islamic markets, called Wal-Mart's arrival bittersweet. He's happy for the steps it's taken, but "at the same time I can't help but think it's going to have some kind of impact on the local business community."

The Dearborn Wal-Mart is part of a two-year-old corporate effort to help sales by tailoring stores to local demographics, said spokeswoman Amy Wyatt-Moore at Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters. It targeted six groups: Hispanics, blacks, empty-nesters/boomers, affluent, suburban and rural shoppers.

Dearborn's store is designed to reflect its neighborhood, not serve as a national template for Arab-American shoppers, she said.

"We realize there are more than those six broad demographic groups around the country. In some places the result will be a unique store," Wyatt-Moore said.

Edwards, the analyst, says the Dearborn store is a good move for a company that historically has been better at the science, rather than the art, of retail.

"Wal-Mart is a little kinder and gentler than they were 10 years ago. They are fierce competitors ... but I don't think they're trying to do a scorched earth policy," she said.

"The trick for these local merchants is ... they're going to have to change how they operate in the face of this changing competition."

AP Business Writer Marcus Kabel in Bentonville, Ark., contributed to this report.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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RAMAPO STOPS WALMART DEVELOPMENT

Joseph Feller
amtelwest                                                     [back to top]

MONSEY, N.Y.  It was Friday afternoon when the developer who had been intent on building a 215,000-square-foot Wal-Mart in this hamlet sent word to the town offices in Ramapo. The fax was terse, but its message clear: We will not continue to proceed with the development.

The news that the developer, and potentially Wal-Mart, had scrapped plans it had so diligently worked on gave observant Jews, who make up the bulk of the population here, reason to rejoice.

They had waged a modest yet unyielding campaign against the proposed store, which they feared would force too many outside influences into their insular world of Orthodox Judaism.

It also represented a political vindication of sorts for Christopher P. St. Lawrence, town supervisor of Ramapo, which encompasses Monsey, in the heart of Rockland County. He hung much of his re-election on a promise to keep the Wal-Mart out of Monsey. During his campaign, he mailed a flier to every home in Monsey, saying, Supervisor St. Lawrence opposes the Monsey Wal-Mart. Mr. St. Lawrence was elected to a fourth term in November.

Wal-Mart doesnt vote for the supervisor, said Rabbi Jacob Horowitz, one of Monseys most respected religious leaders. The people vote for the supervisor.

We work very hard to raise our families the right way, Rabbi Horowitz said. And the supervisor understood that preserving our lifestyle is something thats very important to us.

There were other issues that Mr. St. Lawrence said had prompted him to stand up against putting a Wal-Mart on Route 59, like the flood of traffic such a big store could bring to a two-lane highway that is already clogged much of the time, and its impact on the revitalized downtown section of Spring Valley, a village northeast of Monsey.

Were very pro-business here, Mr. St. Lawrence said. But it has to be the right business.

Wal-Mart says it has not yet formally given up on the project.

Philip H. Serghini, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, said that the company had placed the plan under review, weighing the costs of pushing it forward against its potential benefits.

To build here, Wal-Mart would have to overcome at least two obstacles: finding another developer and preparing a new environmental impact study. The town Planning Board rejected the one it received last June on the ground that the proposal to ease traffic on Route 59 with a combination of turning lanes and more traffic lights was inadequate.

Jerrold Bermingham, managing director of the National Realty and Development Corporation, which was to have built the store, did not respond to e-mail messages or phone calls left with him and his lawyer.

With about 28,000 residents and almost 200 synagogues squeezed into 2.2 square miles, Monsey feels at once crowded and neighborly, the type of place that seems immune to the modernity that surrounds it.

Many of the women do not drive, and their children attend the dozens of yeshivas, or private religious schools here. Among the most observant families, home computers are strictly forbidden.

These are not people who were schooled in the tactics of public protesting, or who even felt comfortable doing it, said Richard Lipsky, a spokesman for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, a coalition of small-business groups that helped residents here wage their battle against Wal-Mart. They never imagined they could beat a giant like Wal-Mart.

The retailer made numerous attempts to woo the Jewish community. Company representatives met with rabbis and agreed to conceal the covers of celebrity magazines featuring photographs of scantly clad movie and television stars to avoid offending Jewish patrons. Wal-Mart also hired a firm to send mailings in Yiddish to local homes, asking residents to suggest ways the company could improve the area.

A lot of us sent the mailing back to them with the words, No, thanks, written at the top, said a 36-year-old Hasidic man who has lived here for 18 years and who requested anonymity to keep with his religious tradition of modesty.

Then, the community hit back. Residents joined union workers for a rally in December 2006, and circulated petitions and ran ads in Yiddish and English every week for 32 weeks in a local newsletter, Community Connections. The ads warned of the additional traffic the store would attract and how it would expose their children to such unwelcome sights as bikinis and lingerie.

Very little money was collected or spent in the effort, said Jacob Guttman, 33, who is Hasidic. It was just a well-organized and carefully planned grass-roots campaign.

The rabbis, for their part, encouraged the faithful to speak up. When Wal-Mart offered to repair Monseys heavily used sidewalks and build others, the rabbis asked residents to write to local officials, saying they did not need new sidewalks.

We were determined to make Wal-Mart uncomfortable because by making them uncomfortable, we thought they would eventually leave, said Rabbi Horowitz, who is also the executive director of a social services agency here, the Community Outreach Center.

Were very strong believers that everything comes from the Almighty, he added. I think the Almighty realized that for our children to grow up in a beautiful community, for our traditions to be preserved, we couldnt have a Wal-Mart.

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Wal-Mart Ends Test of Linux in Stores

Associated Press
March 11th, 2008                    [back to top]

Wal-Mart Ends Test of Linux in Stores 20 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Computers that run the Linux operating system instead of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows didn't attract enough attention from Wal-Mart customers, and the chain has stopped selling them in stores, a spokeswoman said Monday.

"This really wasn't what our customers were looking for," said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien.

To test demand for systems with the open-source operating system, Wal-Mart stocked the $199 "Green gPC," made by Everex of Taiwan, in about 600 stores starting late in October.

Walmart.com, the chain's e-commerce site, had sold Linux-based computers before and will continue selling the gPC.

This was the first time they appeared on retail shelves.

Paul Kim, brand manager for Everex, said selling the gPC online was "significantly more effective" than selling it in stores.

Wal-Mart sold out the in-store gPC inventory but decided not to restock, O'Brien said. The company does not reveal sales figures for individual items.

Walmart.com now carries an updated version, the gPC2, also for $199, without a monitor. The site also sells a tiny Linux-driven laptop, the Everex CloudBook, for $399.

Linux software is maintained and developed by individuals and companies around the world on an "open source" basis, meaning that everyone has access to the software's blueprints and can modify them.

There is no licensing fee for Linux, which helps keeps the cost of the Everex PC low. Manufacturers have to pay Microsoft to sell computers with Windows preloaded.

Linux is in widespread use in server computers, but it hasn't made a dent in the desktop market. Surveys usually put its share of that market around 1 percent, far behind Windows and Apple Inc.'s OS X.

Smaller laptops like the CloudBook could provide an entree for Linux, since it runs well on systems with modest memory and hard drive capacity.

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Judge tosses out Wal-Mart secret life insurance lawsuit

By Kevin Graham,
St. Petersburg Times
March 11th, 2008                       [back to top]

A federal judge has dismissed a Hillsborough County man's lawsuit against Wal-Mart over a life insurance claim the company received when the man's wife died.

Friday, U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr. dismissed the suit filed by Richard Armatrout, because it failed to reach the $75,000 threshold for a civil complaint to go before a federal judge.

When Karen Armatrout, 50, died of cancer in 1997, Wal-Mart collected $72,820.30 from an insurance policy the retail giant had in her name. Armatrout's husband sued, saying the couple never knew about the policy and he received none of the payout.

Armatrout's attorney argued the lawsuit exceeded the $75,000 limit if punitive damages were included.

Karen Armatrout worked at a Wal-Mart pharmacy on Waters Avenue in Tampa and took a leave of absence when doctors diagnosed her with cancer.

Michael D. Myers, a Texas attorney representing Richard Armatrout, said Monday he anticipated the case would be thrown out because of the technicality. Before Moody's ruling, Myers filed Armatrout's lawsuit in Pasco County, along with a similar case for Pasco resident Wayne Atkinson. Myers said Wal-Mart also collected on a policy when Atkinson's wife, Rita, died.

Myers estimates Wal-Mart secretly insured about 350,000 employees for two years beginning in 1993. Wal-Mart officials said they dropped the policies by the start of 2000.

He has won settlements against Wal-Mart in Texas and Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, a judge approved a $5.1-million class-action settlement in a case brought by the estates of deceased Wal-Mart employees. A $10-million settlement was reached in Texas.

Myers is waiting to see if a Pasco County judge will grant his motion to give Armatrout's case class-action status for similar estate claims in Florida.

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Retail Retrenchment Hurts Malls

By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO
03.10.08                                          [back to top]

The signs that smaller retailers are struggling are unavoidable at malls across America: "Going out of business" sales at many Wilsons Leather stores. "Up to 70 percent off" at KB Toys.

At the once-sizzling Paradise Valley Mall in Phoenix, the space once occupied by Bombay Co., the furniture chain that went bankrupt last year, is empty. Wilsons just finished liquidating its inventory. KB Toys, AnnTaylor and American Eagle feature bold posters advertising steep discounts.

"I don't think it brings much business when all these stores are closed," said Michelle Green, a sales clerk at Fred Meyer Jewelers.

Around the country, mall centers are starting to feel the recoil from a rapid expansion in recent years that allowed retailers to aim stores at almost every niche, from shoppers who wanted Talbots clothes for their children to those who craved Bombay's little wood tables.

Now, consumers who are closing their wallets amid rising gasoline prices and a housing slump are forcing specialty retailers to pare back their brands. While still healthy overall, mall centers in areas hardest hit by the housing downturn - like Paradise Valley - are suffering the most store shutdowns.

Retailers including AnnTaylor Stores Corp., Talbots Inc. and Pacific Sunwear of California Inc. have closed hundreds of stores so far this year. Gadget seller Sharper Image Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection last month and plans to shutter nearly half of its 184 stores.

That retrenchment, along with the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of catalog retailer Lillian Vernon Corp., marks the beginning of a wave of retail bankruptcies that's expected to go well beyond the home furnishings stores hurt by the housing malaise.

"This is economic Darwinism," said Dan Ansell, a partner at Greenberg Traurig LLP and chairman of its real estate operations division. "Those retailers and businesses that have a product that is desired by consumers will survive, and those who do not will not."

Unless the economy dramatically improves, Ansell believes retail bankruptcies this year could reach the highest level since the 1991 recession. More closings could leave gaping holes in the nation's retail centers, which have already seen average vacancy rates creep up to between 7 percent and 8 percent from 5 percent over the last six months, according to data from NAI Global, a commercial real estate services firm.

David Solomon, president and CEO of ReStore, NAI Global's retail division, expects the vacancy rate could hit 10 percent by the end of the year. Suzanne Mulvee, senior economist at Property & Portfolio Research, figures that vacancies could rise as high as 12.5 percent this year. Her figure includes retail spaces where tenants have defaulted on their rents.

Part of the problem, according to Mulvee, is that more retail space is coming to the market just as consumer demand is falling. Another 130 million square feet of retail space will become available this year, she predicts, on top of last year's 143 million. That is well above the average 100 million square feet added per year earlier in the decade.

As a result, markets like Phoenix, which had a retail boom, are expected to see the most dramatic increases in vacancies. Phoenix's rate is expected to more than double to 10 percent by the end of 2009 from 4.4 percent late last year, according to Property & Portfolio. In Kansas City, Mo., rates could rise to almost 17 percent by the end of 2009 from last year's 13.5 percent. In San Antonio, experts say the figure may hit 20.5 percent next year from last year's 17.4 percent.

Still, Solomon doesn't think the situation will be as dire as in 1991, when the savings and loan crisis hurt the entire country. Experts also say merchants are weathering downturns better because of new systems to control inventory and costs.

Nevertheless, consumers are seeing fewer stores that focus on specific niches, like apparel for women baby boomers or clothing for surf fans. That would differ from 17 years ago, when it was the department stores that felt the major shakeup as leveraged buyouts and fierce competition led to the demise of names like Carter Hawley Hale Stores and Woodward & Lothrop. But there's one common theme: the power of national discounters like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which helped seal the eventual demise of regional discount chains last time around. Now, the discounters' clout is hurting consumer electronics stores like CompUSA, which is closing most of its stores, and Circuit City Stores Inc., which posted dismal holiday sales.

Christina Avila, shopping at the Oak Park Mall in Kansas City, Mo. - which had more than half a dozen store vacancies - said she's cutting back because of the economy and spending more at places like Wal-Mart and Target.

"I'm more interested if they have clearance items," she said.

Michele Lipovitch of Phoenix said she only goes to the Paradise Valley mall twice a month.

"We have two kids. I have credit card debt I'm trying to pay off," said Lipovitch. "It's kind of scary because we keep hearing that it looks like we're going into a recession."

The industry pullback follows several years of rapid expansion and experimentation with a range of new store formats as retailers enjoyed robust consumer spending fueled by rising home values. But the sharp spending drop has made stores rethink how to expand their businesses.

Jewelry retailer Zale Corp. announced more closings last month, meaning it now plans to shutter almost 5 percent of its stores by the end of July. In January, Pacific Sunwear said it will close all 154 remaining Demo stores, which sell urban fashions. AnnTaylor is shutting down 13 percent of its stores and delaying a new store concept aimed at women boomers, while Talbots is closing its 78 children's and men's apparel stores to focus on its core middle-aged female customer. Macy's also has said it will close nine stores.

And Wilsons The Leather Expert is closing a majority of its 260 mall locations.

Analysts say they're watching to see if Circuit City closes any stores after posting a third-quarter loss and cutting its full-year profit outlook. Analysts also expect more store cutbacks at Sears Holdings Corp., which operates Kmart and Sears stores.

Some shoppers are not going to miss the casualties.

"They have nice clothes, nice urban wear, but their prices (are) a little high," said Tasha Burts, 35, of Demo at the Dolphin Mall west of downtown Miami. She walked out empty-handed.

Mall operators Taubman Centers Inc. and Simon Property Group say their top tenants - the department stores and other big chains that anchor most shopping centers - are in good financial shape.

Bill Taubman, chief operating officer of Taubman Centers, predicts more store closings and bankruptcies than last year, but doesn't think they will reach historic highs.

That will still mean a more limited selection for consumers, who until a few months ago had a plethora of choices, particularly when it came to furniture. Recent home furnishings casualties included Bombay and Levitz Furniture, which filed for bankruptcy in November and has been liquidating its inventory. Clothing stores, in a malaise since consumers see fashion spending as discretionary, could see widespread closures this year.

While the industry overall is experimenting less with new formats, Janet Hoffman, managing partner of the North American retail division of Accenture, expects the mood to be temporary.

"There is this undying belief in the retail industry that they have an idea that will work," Hoffman said, citing Abercrombie & Fitch Co.'s new lingerie chain Gilly Hicks. "A year or 18 months from now you will see new ones at play."

Associated Press Writers David Twiddy in Kansas City, Mo., Terry Tang in Phoenix and Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami contributed to this report.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Could Asda be kicked out of Wal-Mart?

Telegraph
March 9th, 2008                             [back to top]

When Wal-Mart swooped to buy Asda in 1999 for £6.7bn analysts predicted that the arrival of the world's largest retailer would change the UK high street forever - sparking a savage price war and a wave of mega mergers.

But the doom-laden predictions of 1999 have proved wide of the mark. The combination of intense competition and planning restrictions have frustrated Wal-Mart's ambitious plans for Asda and the UK.

In fact, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that Wal-Mart president Lee Scott became so dismayed at the failure to crack the UK market and the constraints on future growth that last year he ordered a strategic review that could have seen Wal-Mart float a minority stake in Asda or even pull out of the UK entirely.

According to sources the strategic review has - for now - been shelved. Asda refused to comment.

But the revelation that Wal-Mart even considered pulling out of the UK will stun retail-watchers on both sides of the Atlantic and raise renewed questions about whether the UK is becoming less attractive to overseas investors.

It will also stir up the debate about over-regulation. The decision by the Competition Commission to bar Asda from buying Safeway particularly infuriated Wal-Mart and is thought to have originally sparked the debate about the future of its investment in Asda.

Asda has often been held up as an example of a successful overseas venture for Wal-Mart - which has had mixed results outside its home market. The American company pulled out of Germany in 2006 after an unsuccessful foray.

But despite the success, executives say Scott has become increasingly loath to invest large amounts of capital in the mature and competitive UK market - when potentially much greater returns can be generated in China, India and South America.

The flotation of a significant stake in Asda on the London Stock Exchange would have provided the UK business with well-needed capital to invest in opening new stores and developing new formats such as Asda Living, its non-food format or acquiring a convenience chain such as Somerfield. A separate float would also have helped to incentivise senior management.

An IPO would also put a price tag on Asda - helping Wall Street analysts put a value on Wal-Mart's wider international businesses, which the retailer believes are undervalued.

The move would not be unprecedented. Wal-Mart owns a 62 per cent stake in its Mexico business - with the remainder of the shares traded on the Mexico Stock Exchange.

Alongside the flotation of a stake, Wal-Mart is also believed to have looked at an outright sale - a move which would have freed up senior executives, and capital, to focus on growth markets such as China and India.

News of Wal-Mart's plans will send shockwaves through the Government. Wal-Mart was courted by Prime Minister Tony Blair prior to its acquisition of Asda. But Scott has made little secret of his dismay with UK planning and competition regulators - and in particular the decision to block Asda from buying Safeway in 2004.

Nine years after Wal-Mart bought Asda it is still number three in the UK, having failed to overtake J Sainsbury.

Since the acquisition there have been three separate Competition Commission inquiries into the grocery sector.

The latest investigation is due to be completed in May. In a recent submission Asda called for the "needs test" - which requires retailers to demonstrate demand for a new store - to be scrapped and for planning rules to be suspended in so-called "Tesco towns", a move that would allow it to build giant out-of-town superstores on greenfield sites

Should Scott return to his plans and decide to once again look at pulling out of the UK, it would not be the first time Wal-Mart has performed a dramatic U?turn on its plans to grow overseas.

Wal-Mart has expanded rapidly, and since opening its first store in Arkansas, nearly 30 years ago, it has become the world's biggest retailer, boosting its international business from 5 per cent of group sales in 1997 to almost a quarter today.

It has nearly 1,000 stores in Mexico and operates more than 3,000 retail units in 13 markets outside the continental US including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Japan, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, and the UK.

However, its overseas investments have not always gone according to plan. In December the retail giant increased its ownership of Seiyu, the leading supermarket and convenience stores operator in Japan from 50.9 per cent to 95.1 per cent.

Since Wal-Mart first started building a stake in Seiyu in 2002, the group has been unprofitable. It recently cut 450 management jobs there - equivalent to 7 per cent of Seiyu's work-force - and discounts offered in its store have failed to boost sales. Last month, Seiyu said last year's net loss would be double forecasts, at Y20.9bn (£101m).

Wal-Mart seems to be committed to Japan for now, having said a few months ago it was "proceeding with additional steps" to buy the remaining stake in Seiyu.

But although the world's most powerful retailer rarely admits defeat, it will withdraw from unprofitable markets, as it did with Germany and South Korea. It exited both of those loss-making markets in 2006, marking its first significant withdrawals since launching its international strategy in the 1990s as those two markets had caused Wal-Mart to post its first quarterly fall in profits for 10 years.

In Germany, Wal-Mart bought the 20,000 sq m megastores of the Verkauf chain but struggled in the competitive food markets against discounters such as Aldi and Lidl. Wal-Mart then went on to sell its stores to local partner Metro. In South Korea its hypermarket formula failed to appeal to local tastes

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Recall bid gains traction

the reporter.com
03/09/2008                                        [back to top]

Opponents of the recently-approved Wal-Mart store in Suisun decided Saturday to move forward with a recall effort against some members of City Council.

More than 40 people reportedly attended the community meeting, which was put on at Grace Baptist Church by a group calling itself Save Our Suisun. Those assembled decided in favor of a recall effort aimed at Suisun City Mayor Pete Sanchez, as well as council members Jane Day and Mike Hudson.

The other two council members, Mike Segala and Sam Derting, are not being included in the recall push because they are up for re-election in November.

Describing the group that came together on Saturday, Suisun Citizens' League member Dwight Acey said, "They were very, very energized."The group's main grievance is the council's unanimous approval of a Wal-Mart Supercenter, which is to be located at Highway 12 and Walters Road.

In a press release this week, opponents claimed that council members "disregarded public safety warnings by aviation experts and other land-use professionals when they approved the controversial project."

Acey said the intent is to file the necessary paperwork in the coming days and to begin gathering signatures "within a week or so." He added that the goal is to collect 3,000 signatures over the next month.

Note from Save Our Suisun: Please go to our website for future news: http://www.saveoursuisun.com

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Bills Give Labs Job of Finding Risks In Kids’ Products

By Gary McWilliams
and M.P. McQueen,
Wall Street Journal
March 7th, 2008                                     [back to top]

Congress is giving the job of ensuring that children’s products are safe to many of the same private laboratories that already work for importers, manufacturers and retailers.

A bill approved yesterday by the Senate—as well as a similar bill already passed by the House—aims to plug holes in the government’s consumer safety net that have been letting hazardous products aimed at children slip through. Dozens of toys were recalled by manufacturers in 2007 because of dangers including choking risks and contamination involving lead, asbestos and other toxic chemicals.

Under the new bills, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission would develop procedures for certifying and monitoring the work of independent labs that test for conformance with federal safety standards. The commission would also have more powers, including the ability to assess fines of up to $20 million for violations of product safety laws.

Sen. Mark Pryor, a co-sponsor of the Senate bill, said the current system for consumer-product testing hasn’t done a good enough job. “The system has pretty much been voluntary and we have seen the result,” added Michael Teague, a spokesman for Sen. Pryor.

But turning over such a key consumer watchdog role to private laboratories is raising questions about how much protection consumers will get and how independent the labs really are. In some cases, the dangerous children’s toys and cribs recalled last year had passed through several test-lab reviews before landing on store shelves.

Of course, many of the labs that will do the testing are large, reputable companies. And keeping faulty products off the market is good for business. But historically, the labs’ testing has been narrowly focused on confirming that products work as claimed. The fees for testing are paid by product suppliers, and the labs must compete with rivals to win business.

Some of the children’s cribs and toys recalled last year had passed more than one—and in some cases as many as four—outside lab reviews prior to going on sale. Simplicity Inc., whose Nursery-in-a-Box crib was among those recalled, had received a seal of approval for the crib from the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association.

A Simplicity spokesman said the multiple safety tests found no problems, but he declined to discuss the specific results. The manufacturers association said the cribs “passed the comprehensive and rigorous tests and review administrated at our qualified independent testing lab.”

Cases of dueling lab results aren’t unusual in consumer product testing. The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, a group that works to ban the use of asbestos, paid laboratories to test 250 consumer products. On Nov. 30, it reported results showed asbestos in five household products, including toy-fingerprint kits imported by Planet Toys Inc.

The group published its findings and documented the appearance of small amounts of tremolite, a type of asbestos fiber, through testing by three separate laboratories. In December, Planet Toys said its own tests “by a leading asbestos testing laboratory” showed no evidence of asbestos in the toys. Even after pulling the toys off the market, Planet Toys said the kits weren’t tainted. “It is one organization’s word against another,” said Eunnie Hur, Planet Toys director of new business development.

Some critics worry the thoroughness of testing can be compromised because labs are dependent on retailers and manufacturers for business. John W. de Gravelles, a Baton Rouge, La., attorney who represents consumers injured by faulty products, cites what he calls a “cozy arrangement” between Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and its primary testing lab, Consumer Testing Laboratories Inc. “How rigorous the testing is, I’m sure, is less determined by CTL than it is Wal-Mart,” he said.

Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, describes CTL on its Web site as both “independent” and “a joint effort.” Former CTL executive Ron Caviness says 85% of the lab’s business derives from Wal-Mart. The retailer has provided CTL with customer referrals, computer networking and equipment and, at one time, even office facilities, according to former CTL employees. In a 1991 Wal-Mart newsletter, CTL’s current president described the arrangement as “independent in-house testing.”

Despite a nearly 20-year relationship that has included testing clothing, furniture and food, CTL until recently didn’t have any of the laboratory accreditations that are common at large test labs. Last year, Wal-Mart stopped selling children’s toys that were found to contain lead. At that time, CTL was testing all Wal-Mart’s toys. But it was only last week that CTL was granted a Chemical Testing certificate by the American Association of Laboratory Accreditation to test for lead in nonmetals and metals.

Wal-Mart recently began shifting testing of most children’s products to two large laboratories used by its retail competitors, according to a spokeswoman. “We’re not using [CTL] as we had in the past,” said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien. She said Wal-Mart continues to use CTL on many other products, adding that the retailer has been satisfied with CTL’s test work.

CTL President Yefim Buzik declined to comment.

An article in Wal-Mart Today, the retailer’s employee newsletter, describes a partnership that began in 1989 and expanded to cover the testing of most Wal-Mart products. The relationship continues today with three facilities in or near Bentonville, Ark., Wal-Mart’s headquarters, as well as operations in India and China near Wal-Mart’s procurement offices. The article was provided by Flagler Productions Inc., a Lenexa, Kan., company with an archive of Wal-Mart videos and corporate materials.

Wal-Mart isn’t the only company closely linked to its testing lab. Many toy retailers, including J.C. Penney & Co., conduct their own product testing. In-house labs can respond to complaints more efficiently and can be more reliable, says Peter McGrath, J.C. Penney’s executive vice president and director of product development and sourcing. “We are as, or more, reliable than outside labs,” he says.

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Wal-Mart Lobbying Up 60 Percent in 2007

By DIBYA SARKAR
03.07.08                                           [back to top]

WASHINGTON - Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, jacked up its lobbying budget by 60 percent in 2007, spending $4 million to influence the government on issues ranging from energy efficiency to retail crime.

While its lobbying budget is still pocket change compared with other major trade groups and corporations, Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people )'s increased spending marks a growing recognition that the bottom line in Bentonville, Ark. is subject to the ways of Washington.

In 2006, the company spent about $2.5 million in lobbying dollars, up from $1.6 million in 2005. But less than a decade ago, Wal-Mart barely broke the six-figure mark thanks largely to Sam Walton's distaste for it. It spent $140,000 in 1999, after establishing a Washington shop about 10 years ago. It spent about a $1 million annually for the next several years, before increasing its lobbying representation and funds in 2005 amid increased criticism of labor practices and benefits.

A spokeswoman in company's Washington office said Wal-Mart decided around 2004 that it needed to focus more on federal relations and better educate policy makers on the many issues affecting the global retailer and employer. The company has 12 registered lobbyists now, up from two in 1999, said E.R. Anderson, who is part of the office's D.C. staff.

The company also has worked with a stable of outside lobbying firms, including Patton Boggs LLP, the Podesta Group Inc., Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti Inc. and 10 others for the last few years.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. easily ringed up more than its major rivals. Target Corp. (nyse: TGT - news - people ) spent $200,000 lobbying in 2007, while Costco Wholesale Corp. (nasdaq: COST - news - people ) and Macy's Inc. (nyse: M - news - people ) aren't even registered to lobby. Wal-Mart also outdistanced the top retail trade group, the National Retail Federation, which spent about $1.7 million last year.

Wal-Mart didn't nudge its way into the K Street stratosphere of major trade groups and veteran corporate lobbyists.

The drug industry trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, spent $22 million in 2007, while Exxon Mobil Corp. (nyse: XOM - news - people ), the world's largest publicly traded oil company, spent $17 million.

Wal-Mart lobbied on numerous issues, including a food stamp program, free trade, consumer product safety legislation, energy efficiency and standards. It also pushed for tougher enforcement of organized retail crime.

It also lobbied for a bank license, although it dropped its bid last year after it was strongly opposed by banks, unions and other critics. It continues to push for the ability to offer other financial services, such as prepaid Visa debit cards for millions of low-income shoppers who don't have bank accounts.

Long criticized for its skimpy employee health-insurance benefits, the company has also lobbied against legislation that would allow employees to form, join or help labor organizations. Its employees are not unionized.

The company - which lobbied Congress, the White House, Consumer Products Safety Commission and Commerce and Labor departments, among other agencies - spent more than $2.2 million in the second half of 2007 to lobby the federal government, according to a disclosure form posted online Feb. 15 by the Senate's public records office. It spent nearly $1.8 million in the first six months of 2007 to lobby on similar matters.

Breana Teubner, a former legislative assistant to Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., was among those lobbying on behalf of Wal-Mart.

Lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and legislative branches, under a federal law enacted in 1995.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Wal-Mart Feb. Same-Store Sales Rise

Associated Press
03.06.08                                               [back to top]

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said Thursday that same-store sales rose 3 percent in February, ahead of analyst expectations, helped by sales of gas, food and flat-panel TVs.

Same-store sales for the four-weeks ended Feb. 29 rose 2.6 percent excluding fuel.

Same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year, is a key indicator of retailer performance, because it measures growth at established stores rather than newly opened ones.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expected same-store sales to rise 1.1 percent.

Wal-Mart Stores (nyse: WMT - news - people ) same-store sales rose 2.5 percent while Sam's Club same-store sales rose 5.2 percent, or 2.8 percent excluding fuel.

Total sales rose 9 percent to $29.19 billion, from $26.79 billion last year.

Wal-Mart said food, flat-panel TVs, digital audio, video games and pharmacy products did well, while home products remained weak due to a soft housing sector. Apparel sales improved, Wal-Mart said.

At Sam's Club, gas, food and video game sales helped results.

The company expects same-store sales in March to be between flat and up 2 percent.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

Wal-Mart Increases Dividend 8 Percent

Associated Press
03.06.08                                              [back to top]

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is raising its annual dividend 8 percent.

The world's largest retailer says it will pay an annual dividend of 95 cents, up from a previous dividend of 88 cents. For the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2009, Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) will pay four quarterly installments of nearly 24 cents per share.

The first quarterly dividend is payable April 7 to shareholders of record as of March 14.

Wal-Mart says it plans to return more than $3.6 billion to shareholders as dividends in fiscal 2009.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Sector Snap: Big-Box Discounters

Associated Press
03.06.08                                        [back to top]

NEW YORK - Big-box discount stores and warehouse club operators this week reported a February same-store sales mostly ahead of analyst expectations, as consumers sought out bargains for food and other products in a sliding economy.

Consumers are cutting back spending as they face a higher cost of living and weak housing and credit markets. Big-box discounters and warehouse club operators benefit from shoppers seeking out low prices.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (nyse: WMT - news - people ), the world's largest retailer, said same-store sales rose 3 percent in February, or 2.6 percent excluding fuel, ahead of the 1.1 percent rise analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected. Results were helped by sales of food, flat-panel TVs and other items.

Shares rose 65 cents to $55.20 during morning trading.

Rival discount retailer Target Corp. (nyse: TGT - news - people ), meanwhile, reported same-store sales rose 0.5 percent, helped by sales of health care products, food and shoes, above analyst predictions of a 0.2 percent drop.

Target shares were flat at $72.80.

In a note to investors, Banc of America analyst David Strasser said Wal-Mart is "re-emerging as the value option during a tough economy."

He said Target meanwhile, is hurting because it has less exposure to food inflation, which helps sales, than Wal-Mart does. He also said Target is adjusting to a lower operating expense structure and results are being hurt by longer lines at the cash register, even with lower traffic.

He rates Wal-Mart "Buy" and Target "Neutral."

In the warehouse club sector, Costco (nasdaq: COST - news - people ) on Wednesday reported February same-store sales rose 5 percent, short of the 6 percent rise analysts expected. BJ's reported same-store sales rose 5.9 percent, helped by food and gas prices, above the 3.8 percent analysts had forecast.

"The club sector continues to take market share in the difficult environment," wrote Wachovia (nyse: WB - news - people ) Capital Markets analyst Peter Benedict.

Costco shares rose 15 cents to $60.98, while BJ's shares fell 91 cents to $34.61.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

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Infantino 'Lamb Grabby' Rattles Recalled

Consumer Affairs
March 5th, 2008                  [back to top]

Infantino LLC is recalling about 2,000 'Lamb Grabby' rattles. The tail piece on the rattles can detach, posing a choking hazard to young children.

Infantino has received eight reports of the tail piece on the rattle detaching. No injuries have been reported.

The recalled Infantino Lamb Grabby Rattles™ are shaped like a lamb with an Infantino elliptical-shaped logo stamped on the front right foot of the lamb. Only rattles with date code 0907 printed on the back of the left ear of the lamb are included in the recall. The production batch code is printed in a dial format with the year in the middle of a circle and an arrow pointing to the number on the circle that indicates the month. Rattles that do not have a date code are not included in the recall.

The rattles were sold at Wal-Mart, Babies 'R' Us and other specialty stores nationwide from September 2007 through February 2008 for between $3 and $4. They were made in China.

Consumers should immediately take the recalled toys away from young children and contact Infantino for a replacement rattle or a product of equal value.

Consumer Contact: For additional information, contact Infantino toll-free at (888) 808-3111 between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. PT or visit the firm's Web site at service.infantino.com.

The recall is being conducted in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

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Retailers: Microsoft should have never released Vista Basic

By Jonathan Schlaffer,
Blorge.com
March 4th, 2008                                              [back to top]

There’s a lot going on right now involving Microsoft and its “Vista Capable” label for computers. So much so that there is now a class action lawsuit against the company for “switch and bait” tactics. The Vista capable logo only meant a computer could run the most basic version of Vista. The company even bowed to Intel demands to lower the requirements to help it sell lower-end chips. What’s worse, several retailers wish Vista Basic never existed.

The feeling is mutual throughout the IT industry. Vista Basic lacks all the features that make Vista, “Vista.” Aero Glass is missing, as is media center and several utilities that are included with the upper market editions. When Walmart starts complaining about the “low-end” nature of something, you know it’s bad.

ComputerWorld says that Walmart went so far as to say it wished Vista Basic never existed. But, the stores had to sell computers equipped with it because other retailers were.

Office Depot wished that Vista Basic had never been created in the first place; essentially following in Walmart’s footsteps. As for the Vista Capable debacle, it’s in the hands of the courts now. An executive at Microsoft had this to say about the resistance from retailers on Vista Basic:

“This feedback has been consistent from retailers around the world. We should not let consumers or retailers have to decipher what windows Vista capable means.”

I suppose the consumer shouldn’t have to, either? It pays to educate yourself about the product line BEFORE you buy. I suppose the program was confusing to anyone not in the IT industry. At any rate, the author sums up with the following thought:

“here’s betting that you won’t see a Windows 7 Home Basic, not if Wal-Mart and Office Depot have anything to say about it.”

Microsoft had better get Windows 7 right, the first time. Maybe it should do what Apple does, $120 for a single license that includes all the features or $199 for five licenses to be used at the same location. While that probably won’t happen, maybe it’ll go back to the simpler “Windows 7 Home” and “Windows 7 Professional” editions at retail.

Make it so that only companies would be eligible to purchase Business or Enterprise editions. Vista Basic will probably fade away without so much as a whisper. One day, we’ll all wake up and notice that it’s just gone; at least, that’s the hope.

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Wal-Mart Fills Prescription for Chambers Memo: Health Care on the Cheap

By David Nassar,
Huffington Post
March 5th, 2008                         [back to top]

In January, on a conference call with reporters, Wal-Mart proudly announced that it convinced less than three percent more of its workforce to join the company health plan during the last three years. When asked why more people did not take advantage of the benefits, Linda Dillman, executive vice president of benefits and risk management for Wal-Mart, expressed surprise that every employee wouldn't at least jump at the cheapest plans. Well, she shouldn't be surprised.

Wal-Mart's recent announcement is a continuation of the company's efforts to implement a health care policy that favors the multi-billion dollar corporation, rather than its employees. Susan Chambers, executive vice president for benefits back in 2005, laid out a strategy to provide low-cost, high-deductible health care plans. In a memo leaked by Wal-Mart Watch to the New York Times in November, 2005, Chambers explained how she was sure such plans would drive up enrollment and drive down costs by shifting more costs to employees. Chambers' strategy fits nicely into Wal-Mart's business model, which relies on low prices to sell high volumes of poor quality products. Since the strategy worked for company sales, executives thought it would work with health care, too. But, the recent enrollment numbers show Wal-Mart's employees aren't buying it - the plans or the spin. Despite the company's efforts to market the new plans, employees realize Wal-Mart has not improved the quality or affordability of its health plans. Today, only half of Wal-Mart's employees use the health care package the company offers.

Perhaps this stems from the fact that Wal-Mart's health care efforts are intended to pacify critics rather than actually help employees. In January's press call, Dillman refused to release the amount Wal-Mart spends on health care per employee or the percentages of employees using the very different plans. Both pieces of information are critical to determine whether or not Wal-Mart employees are enrolled in higher-priced plans that provide quality coverage or the company's cheap plans, which would bankrupt employees should they ever need medical care. If the company really believes its rhetoric, surely it would be forthcoming with this information.

In another key public relations tactic lifted from the Chambers memo, Wal-Mart tried to claim credit for the number of employees insured by other plans, including state plans. In fact, the percentages of employees who are uninsured, covered by Medicaid, and other coverage options are based merely on company surveys rather than actual data, so it is uncertain whether the numbers Wal-Mart provides accurately reflect the insured status of the company's employees. These statistics also leave out the thousands of employees not even eligible for company health care due to comparatively longer waiting periods.

Despite Wal-Mart's attempts to quell this public relations disaster by discrediting the Chambers memo two years ago, January's announcement reinforced CEO Lee Scott and the company's embrace of its implementation. Wal-Mart's refusal to provide additional information once again shows the company cannot be trusted to do the right thing for its employees. No amount of Wal-Mart spin will change the facts.

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Wal-Mart Stops You and the Assistant Manager For Refusing To Show a Receipt

By Staff,
The Consumeris
March 4th, 2008                                              [back to top]  

These receipt checking stories keep coming in and they just keep getting weirder. Reader Patrick was shopping at a Memphis, TN Walmart to buy a firearm, some ammunition and some groceries. First, Walmart refused to sell the groceries and the ammunition because Patrick was buying a firearm.

Then, as the Assistant Manager was carrying his firearm ( it is store policy that a manager escorts the firearm out of the store) another employee demanded to see a receipt. Patrick refused, as he had not even touched the firearm. The employee refused to let him leave, and Patrick decided to return his purchase instead of showing his receipt.

Here's a basic run down of my WalMart experience from this past Saturday in Memphis, TN. I went there to buy 1)firearm, 2)ammunition for firearm, and 3)groceries. I knew the firearm would take the longest so I went to the sporting goods counter first with the intent of buying the firearm and ammunition back there and groceries up front ( I had produce). I was going to have my initial purchase in its own basket and flow through the self check out with my groceries. While waiting for the government approval to buy the firearm, I gathered my groceries and the ammunition. The cashier, who really was nice and pleasant, kept telling me it would be just another five minutes and to wait instead of going up front and buying my groceries. After an hour the approval came through so a manager was called to complete the sale. We waited 15 minutes for Assistant Manager Ladarrel to show up. He checks the paperwork then tells me he can't ring the ammunition up with the firearm. I would have to take them to the car and come back. Since I had already spent an hour waiting so far and no one in sporting goods bothered to point out that store policy, I decided I would just buy the ammunition at another time. I already had to wait in 2 separate lines. I didn't want to make it 3. Ladarrel sells me the firearm. I give him cash. He gives me a receipt. He then says it is store policy that he escorts the firearm out of the store. So he, holding the box with the firearm, follows me and my shopping cart to the front of the store. When I walk to a check out line he tells me he has to escort the firearm out of the store immediately and I would have to take the firearm to my car and come back to buy the groceries. I explained I could not secure or even hide the firearm in my car so once I put the box in my car I was leaving. He insisted I could not buy my groceries at that time. So, we abandoned the cart and went to the door. When he reaches the door checker, he, still holding my purchased firearm, stops and tells me to show them my receipt. I say that I don't do that. He says it's store policy. I explain that it's my policy not to show my receipts unless absolutely necessary. Soon another man who apparently is in charge of the front joins in and insists that unless I show my receipt I can't have my firearm. I try to explain that not only did I give cash to Assistant Manager Ladarrel AND he gave me a receipt of sale AND he has been in complete possession of the firearm since the sale; he escorted me from the back of the store to where we were standing. At no time had I been in possession of my merchandise. He knew he had sold me the merchandise and he knew I was the owner at that time. It was useless. We argued for about 10 minutes. It all came down to their saying that unless I showed proof of ownership the merchandise was not mine. I insisted that not only did Ladarrel know I owned the merchandise so he was illegally in retaining possession of it; the proof was located in the records they are required to keep for a firearm sale; records that Ladarrel had personally verified for accuracy. Finally, I said I wanted to return the item. They insisted that without a receipt I could only get store credit. I told them that I paid cash and I would get cash. We walked to the sporting goods counter and they easily printed a copy of the receipt from the register. I received my cash back and they kept the firearm. I left and went to a grocery store and a sporting goods store. All in all, I would have spent over $450 at WalMart but other companies received my business. Patrick

That policy makes no sense.

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Knightdale loses planned Wal-Mart Supercenter

By Thomas Goldsmith,
The News & Observer
March 4th, 2008                                                  [back to top]

Faced with a halting economy and a small but determined band of community opponents, Wal-Mart has shelved plans to build a 206,000-square-foot Supercenter in Knightdale, the town's mayor said today. Mayor Russell Killen said the giant retailer's decision represented a million-dollar setback for the Wake County town east of Raleigh. The town's council approved a development that included the store in June 2006, but a community group filed a lawsuit challenging the council's decision and was continuing to appeal the suit's loss at the trial level.

"I think the delay changed (Wal-Mart's) view of the economic prospects," Killen, who practices law in Raleigh, said today.

"If that lawsuit had not been filed, the store would have been up and built. For Knightdale, this is a huge financial loss."

In June 2007, Wal-Mart told shareholders nationally that the company would reduce costs with a 30% cut in the number of new Supercenters it planned to open in 2007. In January, the chain announced it would not build a planned Supercenter in Southeast Raleigh, but another of the megastores opens tomorrow in Zebulon.

Tara Stewart, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said today that projected returns on investment from the Knightdale store were key to the company's decision to include it in a large number of projects nationally that won't be completed. Wal-Mart followed the Knightdale lawsuit's progression and expected the city to win again on appeal, Stewart said. "It had nothing to do with (the suit) as much as it did our internal decision-making," she said.

Stewart said she could not speculate on whether the store would have been built had the suit not been filed.

Killen said the town has spent about $100,000 defending the suit and would lose an additional $900,000 during a five-year period which it expected Wal-Mart to pay in fees, permits and taxes.

In addition to a convenient retailer, Killen said, Knightdale could lose planned new amenities including a greenway, new fire station and soccer park, which will have to be set aside or paid for with a tax increase.

The group CARE, for Citizens Against Residential Encroachment, maintained in its suit that the store would bring unwanted crime, traffic, noise pollution and lowered property values to Knightdale.

John Allen, a 15-year town resident and CARE member, said Killen was overstating the negative effects of Wal-Mart's decision. There are plenty of other Supercenters within driving distance, Allen said, and possible tax increases for city services were under debate whether the retailer came or not.

"I'm sure he's going to paint as bleak a picture as he can," Allen said

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Detained and Harassed at WalMart for Not Showing a Receipt

By Staff,
Consumerist
March 3rd, 2008                           [back to top]

Reader J was detained and harassed by some Walmart employees on his way out of the store the other day. J had already put his receipt inside his wallet after purchasing a $25 shower rack when a Walmart employee demanded to see his receipt. J declined and continued exiting the store. That's when things got weird. First, he was grabbed by a Walmart employee, then another customer started pushing him back inside the store.

Yesterday (2-28-08) late afternoon I bought a $25 shower rack at the Wal-mart in [redacted] New Hampshire, and then tucked the receipt safely inside my wallet so I wouldn't lose it in case I had to return the item. The cashier did not bag the shower rack, so after I was done at the register I picked up my item and headed for the door. As I was approaching the door, the receipt checker Bob said, "Do you have your receipt?" To which I responded, "Yes, it's in my wallet" and I kept walking towards the door. Behind me, I could hear him yell "Sir! Sir! I need to see your receipt!", but being an avid Consumerist reader, I knew I didn't need to stop, so I kept walking. [reacted] ran up in front of me and stood between the slider doors, blocking my exit and budging me back inside. Appalled that the Wal-mart employee had just touched me, I said "excuse me", but Bob refused to budge, demanding again to see my receipt. I attempted to walk around him, but he kept stepping in front of me, and I would bounce off of him. Now, I was bigger than Bob, but I didn't wish to get physical and blow the situation out of proportion. At this point however, a random male customer came to Bob's assistance blocking the exit and pushing me back inside. The customer, who was bigger than me, told me to show Bob my receipt. When I refused, the customer responded with "Maybe I'm a cop". So now I have Wal-mart employee Bob and a customer impersonating a police officer physically blocking my exit and budging me back inside when I try to press by them. I was scared. I repeatedly asked the two of them if I was free to go, to which Bob said, "No, you need to show me your receipt." At this point a female employee shows up (I think her name was Cindy) and joins in telling me that I need to show my receipt. The police officer-impersonating customer disappears at this point, but Bob is still physically rebuffing my attempts to exit. I argue with the female employee for a while, getting nowhere, but for some reason Bob FINALLY stops pushing me back when I try to walk past him, and at this point I consider my illegal detainment to have ended. As I am outside the store and about to walk away, the female employee says something to the extent of "Fine, we'll just write down your license plate number and tell the police you were shoplifting!"

Now, due to the nature of my work, I cannot get in trouble with the police, and any arrest, regardless of my guilt, could cost me my job. So at this point, I responded to her with "Are you kidding!!?? You're going to lie to the police?" She shrugged, and walked back inside. I followed her, demanding to know what her name was, and although she didn't tell me, I think her nametag said "Cindy".

Currently standing back inside Wal-mart near the exit, I whipped out my cell phone and called 1-800-Walmart, and reported what just happened to someone at corporate. At this point there was a lot of onlookers because of the commotion, and I was extremely embarrassed. Anyways, I pulled out my receipt in order to read the person at corporate the store number, and I could see the look of surprise on the other employees' faces. The corporate phone jockey took my name, number, and said someone would get back to me. After I hung up, I switched my phone to camera mode, looked at Bob who was still standing a few feet away from me, said "Smile, Bob", and snapped his picture (attached).

At this point, General Manager David arrived on the scene, and told me that I can't take pictures of his employees, that it's a violation of their privacy (Hah!). I explained to David what just went down, and how it was not acceptable for his employees to lay their hands on me and to threaten me with making a false police report. I was actually surprised with the following discussion I had with David, who was nothing but professional and sympathetic. He understood how completely wrong his employees were, claimed that he'd review the security cameras (yeah right), and that his employees definitely needed some "retraining". I thanked David for understanding, shook his hand, and went home.

I'm still waiting for the call from corporate. Wal-mart needs to understand just how much is at stake when their employees illegally detain customers. Their employees are literally putting their lives on the line. What happens when a customer is carrying for self-defense and fears for his life when a Wal-mart employee illegally detains him? Is it really worth it, Wal-mart?

I'm considering making a police report about the situation, but I'm not sure I want Bob arrested. Sure, I think that what he did was criminal, but he was just a below-average-intelligence, under-paid, and under-trained employee trying to do his job. Should I make the report?

Yikes! All that for a shower rack? Why didn't the employee put one of those "sold" stickers on the stupid thing so that they wouldn't have to launch a criminal investigation as you walked to your car? We don't pretend to know the mind of Walmart, but we're pretty sure their policy isn't to attack their customers and file false police reports about them over a $25 shower rack.

Bob probably will not be arrested if you file a police report about the incident. If you were thinking of filing a lawsuit against Walmart for their behavior, you'd need to file one to use as evidence, but you didn't mention that in your letter.

A formal complaint to Walmart is appropriate. If you file a police report, include it with your complaint. These employees obviously had no idea that what they were doing was wrong and are in need of some guidance. We're surprised to hear a story like this from New Hampshire. Aren't you guys supposed to be all "Live Free or Die?" Did the Walmart employees not get that memo?

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Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write Unfiltered Blog

By MICHAEL BARBARO,
New York Times
March 3rd, 2008                                           [back to top]

Microsoft is one of Wal-Mart’s biggest suppliers. But that did not stop the Wal-Mart employee in charge of buying computers from panning Microsoft’s newest operating system, Vista.

“Is it really all that and a bag of chips?” he wrote on his blog. “My life has not changed dramatically — well, for that matter, it hasn’t changed at all.”

His public burst of candor was not isolated. On the same blog, a video game buyer for Wal-Mart slammed a “Star Wars” film as a “debacle” even though Wal-Mart still sells the movie.

Known for its strict, by-the-books culture — accepting a cup of coffee from a supplier can be a firing offense — Wal-Mart is now encouraging its merchants to speak frankly, even critically, about the products the chain carries.

This unusual new Web site, which was quietly created during the holiday shopping season, has become a forum for unvarnished rants about gadgets, raves about new video games and advice on selecting environmentally sustainable food.

Corporate blogs are nothing new — General Motors, Dell and Boeing have them — but Wal-Mart’s site, called Check Out (checkoutblog.com), turns the traditional model on its head. Instead of relying on polished high-level executives, it is written by little-known buyers, largely without editing.

The result is an intensely personal window into the lives, preferences and quirks of the powerful tastemakers at Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, who have spent years shielded from public view.

Their decisions about what makes it onto Wal-Mart’s shelves have enormous impact, earning (or costing) vendors millions of dollars. It was a blogger on the Check Out, after all, who first disclosed last month that Wal-Mart would stock only high-definition DVDs and players using the Blu-ray format, rather than the rival HD DVD system. The decision was considered the death knell for HD DVD.

On the blog, Marvin Deshommes, a merchandise manager in the lawn and garden department, tells readers that he belongs to the Christian Live Cathedral Church. His favorite quote from the Bible is Luke 12:48 — “To whom much is given, from him much will be required.”

Joe Muha, a video game buyer, discloses that Ayn Rand is one of his favorite authors. Danielle Pribbernow, a toy buyer, talks about her cat, Sierra.

Wal-Mart says the Web site helps buyers solicit quick feedback from consumers on the merchandise — and shows a softer side of the giant company, which has 5,000 stores, 1.2 million workers and annual sales of nearly $400 billion.

“We are real people, and that gets lost in the to and fro of business,” said Nick Agarwal, a Wal-Mart communications official who helped develop the blog. “It puts real personality out there in a real conversation.”

But all that uncensored rambling has its potential drawbacks, like irritating suppliers or consumers. Mr. Muha, the video game buyer, may have ventured into dangerous territory, for example, when describing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

“The bad guys are the usual Middle Eastern extremists. I guess they are the new Nazis for the modern era,” he wrote.

This is not Wal-Mart’s first plunge into the blogosphere. Several years ago, when the retailer’s public relations problems began to mount, it turned to the Web for relief. It created one blog, Working Families for Wal-Mart, to trumpet the chain’s accomplishments and ding its critics. It created another, Wal-Marting Across America, to highlight the good deeds and productive careers of Wal-Mart employees.

Critics dismissed both as thinly veiled extensions of Wal-Mart’s P.R. department, and Wal-Mart shut them down.

The lesson seemed clear: create an authentic blog or don’t create a blog at all.

Wal-Mart employees began developing Check Out (subtitled “Where the Lanes Are All Open”) a year ago and recruited a handful of buyer-bloggers last fall, giving them rudimentary training on how to post their writing, upload videos and create hyperlinks.

The focus of the Web site, the novice bloggers decided, would be electronics, given the reliable appetite for gadget reviews and news on the Web, with a sprinkling of posts on the environment, toys and furniture.

After heeding the lessons of Wal-Mart’s earlier blogs and consulting with several well-known bloggers from sites like the Huffington Post, the buyers decided the site would succeed only if they wrote in their own voice, free from censorship and corporate review.

“Readers can tell if people are being genuine or monitored,” said Alex Cook, the merchandise manager for Wal-Mart’s entertainment division, who blogs about computers and electronics (and who wrote the lukewarm review of Windows Vista).

Anil Dash, a blogger at Six Apart, which makes blogging software, said the evolution in Wal-Mart’s thinking about blogs was typical. “You start with this total lockdown, suits read everything, one post a month model,” he said. “Then you evolve. A year later, you get one that is more open. A year after that, they start to do something that is far more authentic.”

Mr. Dash said Wal-Mart’s decision to let buyers do the blogging reflected a growing recognition that “trying to control who can speak and what they can say does not work.”

Mr. Agarwal said the company had no problems with any of the posts so far. “If you are a vendor and you talk to your Wal-Mart buyer all the time, you are going to know their likes and dislikes anyway,” he said.

Like every blogger, the buyers at Wal-Mart are finding the biggest challenge is not figuring out what to write, but making room in their schedules to write it. “Finding the time to blog,” Mr. Cook said, “is hard.”

So far, the Check Out receives about 1,000 hits a day, a relatively small figure. The closely watched Blu-ray news temporarily bolstered traffic in mid-February.

By and large, however, the site is filled with less urgent musings on products and trends. Mr. Cook, the entertainment merchandise manager, recently wrote about his love of desktops and his wife’s passion for laptops.

“My wife mocks me as she parades around the house with her laptop,” he wrote. “Lip-synching ‘Freedom’ by Jimi Hendrix while on iTunes. Checking her e-mail from the couch. Browsing the Internet while lounging on top of her bed.”

In an interview, Mr. Cook said he did not worry about sharing information about his life or writing a dismissive review of a product Wal-Mart carries, like Vista.

“It was not any different than what I said to Microsoft” when he met with company officials, he said, and added, “If it was something that would be a surprise, it might be different.”

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The Times Falls for Wal-Mart’s “Authenticity”

By Phil Mattera ,
Dirt Diggers Digest
March 3rd, 2008                                       [back to top]

The New York Times gave a boost today to Wal-Mart’s effort to raise its coolness quotient. Its account of a new blog that the giant retailer is allowing some of its merchandise buyers to produce was filled with references to “candor,” “speak[ing] frankly,” and “uncensored rambling.” Much is made of the fact that the posters have made unflattering comments about some of the offerings of Wal-Mart’s suppliers. Wal-Mart is said to have learned its lesson from earlier disasters with blogs created in the name of bogus front groups. This new initiative, the Times assures us, is the real thing.

It is indeed the case that the site allows reader comments that are critical of certain company practices. For example, a posting by an “associate” named Alex saying he might use spend his federal economic stimulus check to purchase a TV or a laptop was followed by comments on how that would do more to help the foreign economies where such products are made. One person asked: “what happened to the campaign WalMart used to run advertising its committment to support American manufacturers?”

Yet, it appears that the Times was hoodwinked by Wal-Mart. The appearance of authenticity and candor is just another technique used by advertising agencies and public relations consultants to win over skeptical audiences.

As for those critical comments, it’s significant that “Alex” thanked all those who had corrected a spelling error in his post but had nothing to say about the company’s sourcing practices. In fact, that the only real topic covered in the posts apart from product assessments is “sustainability.”

Those items are posted in the name of Rand Waddoups, who is no lowly buyer but rather the company’s senior director of business strategy and sustainability. His part of the blog, at least, fits in neatly with the company’s dubious campaign to depict itself as the environmental leader of the corporate world.

As I have previously noted, Wal-Mart’s green crusade places all the burdens on its suppliers, while the moves taken by the retailer itself (improving energy efficiency, etc.) are in fact nothing more than cost-cutting measures that boost its bottom line. Until Wal-Mart makes some hard choices itself—such as paying all its workers a living wage—nothing it does in the blogosphere or elsewhere is going to be very authentic.

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Don't Take That Rebate Check to Wal-Mart

By Al Norman,
Huffington Post
March 2nd, 2008                                            [back to top]

Wal-Mart is waiting for your check.

The world's largest retailer, which made $819,976 in sales every minute during the fourth quarter of its 2007 fiscal year, is expecting to see you walk through its doors with an IRS rebate check in your hands. But there is a more patriotic thing you can do.

Beginning this May, the U.S. Treasury will start sending "economic stimulus payments" to more than 130 million Americans. The vast majority of individuals who qualify for a stimulus payment will not have to do anything other than file their 2007 individual income tax return to receive their rebate. In most cases, the payment will equal the amount of tax liability on the return up to a maximum amount of $600 for individuals ($1,200 on a joint return) and a minimum of $300 for individuals ($600 on a joint return). The government made the same deal with taxpayers back in 2001, when the Treasury sent "advanced payment" checks of $300 to single tax filers and $600 for joint filers.

When you spend your rebate check at America's signature retailer, you are responding to the government's stimulus like a true patriot. In a speech five days before Christmas of 2006, President George W. Bush said, "A recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country -- and I encourage you all to go shopping more."

The White House/Congressional economic stimulus package should be labeled for what it is: the Wal-Mart/Beijing Welfare Subsidy of 2008. The "stimulus" plan is an income transfer program from the U.S. Treasury, to Wal-Mart, and from there to its chief trading partner, China.

Wal-Mart issued a press release shortly after the tax rebate passed applauding "the President and Congress for recognizing the economic struggles of everyday Americans and moving quickly to provide much needed tax relief." But the real relief is going to Wal-Mart.

Here's how it's supposed to work: The American taxpayer takes this windfall of discretionary income, drives to Wal-Mart, and buys another MP3 player made in China. Much of the Treasury's investment passes to the Walton family, and to their sweatshop vendors in Guangdong Province.

In an interview with Reuter's, Wal-Mart acknowledged that the tax rebate will trigger a "rapid response" at their check out line. "I would like to think that, as in the past, we have gotten at or more than our fair share of our checks," Wal-Mart's Chief Financial Officer Thomas Schoewe told Reuters. This Treasury infusion is a downpayment on Wal-Mart's estimated $9 billion worth of direct imports from China this year, not counting its indirect imports. The American consumer is just a pass-through.

One of the groups that lobbied the hardest for this "stimulus," the National Retail Federation, estimated that 41% of the checks being mailed this May will be spent. This cash injection is supposed to jump-start the economy. But when spent at stores like Wal-Mart or Home Depot, it won't create more jobs, or higher wages, or even more American production. It will simply rise to the top management, or be exported overseas, where inventory procurement occurs.

A 2005 study by the Economic Policy Institute, U.S.-China Trade, 1989-2003, found that America's growing trade deficit with China has had an increasingly negative impact on the U.S. economy, triggering job losses in the manufacturing sector in every state in the nation. The EPI study found that 1.5 million jobs were lost to lower-wage Chinese competition in the 14-year period between 1989 and 2003. During this period, the U.S. trade deficit exploded twenty-fold, like Chinese fireworks, from $6.2 billion to $124 billion. In the month of January 2007, the U.S. trade deficit with China stood at -$21.27 billion, or -$255 billion annualized.

The EPI study noted that the pace of job loss has more than doubled since China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. China's exports to America of sophisticated electronics and communications equipment requiring skilled labor are growing much more quickly than its exports of low-value, labor-intensive products. "Everyone knew we would lose jobs in labor-intensive industries like textiles and apparel," one EPI researcher said, "but we thought we could hold our own in the capital-intensive, high-tech arena. The numbers we're seeing now put the lie to that hope -- as China expands its share even in core industries such as autos and aerospace."

"Right now," says Mike Duke, Vice Chairman of Wal-Mart's International Division, "in many markets of the world, particularly mature markets, the consumer is under a lot of pressure. We are perfectly positioned for this time."

But what if Americans don't take their Treasury check to Wal-Mart? Here are 4 better alternatives:

1. Put It Towards Your Credit Card Debt: According to the Federal Reserve's most recent Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), about 76% of U.S. families carried some form of debt in 2004. The first thing Americans should do with their rebate is pay off their plastic debt. Outstanding debt on bank-type credit cards rose from $181 billion in 1991, to $645 billion in 2004. This debt is a drag on our economy, and every patriotic American family should first strive to wipe out its own red ink.

2. Save it: A survey conducted at the University of Michigan, found that only 22% of households in 2001 said they would spend their Treasury rebate. Other consumers said they would either save the money or use it to pay off debt. Personal saving jumped in 2001 by precisely the amount suggested by the survey results. The Michigan study said that since they were mainly saved, the 2001 advanced payments provided little stimulus to the economy. The personal savings rate in America hovered just around 0% in 2007---the lowest level in the last twenty years. According to the University of Michigan report, "Direct evidence on consumption and investment spending in response to the (2001) tax changes suggests that these policies provided only modest stimulus."

3. Spend it locally: Money spent on local merchants recycles 7 or 8 times more productively than money spent at national chains. Your dollar recirculates only if its stays local. When it gets wired overnight to corporate headquarters, it has been extracted from the local economy as if it had been strip-mined.

4. Donate it to a local charity: You can help needy people in your hometown, and claim your donation as an itemized deduction to lower your taxable income to the IRS. This is at least a more honestly-earned tax break, instead of the retailer-inspired plan developed by the White House and Congress.

President Bush wants you to "go shopping more," and Wal-Mart has more than 4,000 U.S. locations to take your check. But it would be more patriotic to reduce your own personal debt, or boost your own personal savings, rather than let a multi-national corporation spend it for you in China.

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Wal-Mart stirs CD pricing pot with multi-tiered plan

By Ed Christman,
Reuters
March 1st, 2008                                         [back to top]

NEW YORK (Billboard) - The major music companies have been resistant to lowering their price on CDs, but now they may be dragged to that point: Wal-Mart, the largest retailer of music with an estimated 22 percent market share, has proposed a five-tiered pricing scheme that would allow the discounter to sell albums at even lower prices and require the labels to bear more of the costs.

According to sources, the Wal-Mart proposal would allow for a promotional program that could comprise the top 15 to 20 hottest titles, each at $10. The rest of the pricing structure, according to several music executives who spoke with Billboard, would have hits and current titles retailing for $12, top catalog at $9, midline catalog at $7 and budget product at $5. The move would also shift the store's pricing from its $9.88 and $13.88 model to rounder sales prices.

Executives at the Bentonville, Arkansas-based discounting giant wouldn't comment on the specifics of their promotion, but Wal-Mart divisional merchandise manager for home entertainment Jeff Maas acknowledged the proposal. "When you look at sales declines with physical product, and you have a category declining like it is, you have to make decisions about what the future looks like," he said. "If you have a business that is declining and you want to turn it around, it really takes looking at it from all angles."

Maas referenced the DVD business as a model for tiered pricing. "(It) has been around for years and has worked very well," he said.

While Wal-Mart's negotiations with the labels have yet to take place, the proposal is already causing agita at the majors. Some consider the proposal a non-starter, others say further negotiations might eventually yield a workable solution, and a few see it as appropriate, given the big picture.

"I don't think this is a Wal-Mart discussion," one top executive at a major label said. "I think this is a future-of-the-business discussion. Right now everyone is paralyzed."

Some executives raised the question of whether the Federal Trade Commission would take issue with such a program were it rolled out only to Wal-Mart. But one executive said, "Making it legal is not the difficult part. The difficult part is coming to terms with it."

Another top executive said, "The decision might come down to: Do we give up 20 percent of our business (i.e., Wal-Mart) in order to not lose the entire business?"

That question assumes that Wal-Mart would either penalize or stop doing business with a major that decides not to participate in the pricing program. Moreover, if all majors take a pass, some speculate that Wal-Mart could pull music entirely from the store.

This type of speculation abounds, although the Wal-Mart proposal was presented only as a starting point. One label executive said, "This sounds like the Hail Mary pass, and if it doesn't work, they could be out of the music business; or maybe they reduce music down to a couple of racks" from the 4,000 titles carried by Wal-Marts with larger selections.

Maas declined to rule out those possibilities, but said he'd rather look at how Wal-Mart can help a declining category. "The customer votes every single day in our stores, and based on what they want is how we merchandise our stores."

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County Cites Wal-Mart For Pricing Violations

Westchester News
March 1st, 2008                             [back to top]

White Plains, NY - Westchester County has announced that retail giant Wal-Mart has been fined $27,500 for violating Westchester’s item pricing law.

Inspectors from the Department of Consumer Protection found that 64 percent of merchandise on display at the Wal-Mart store in Mohegan Lake was not item priced. Unmarked items included kitchen utensils, packaged foods, vitamins, over-the-counter drugs and sporting goods.

A prior inspection at Wal-Mart’s White Plains store in August 2006 found an 81 percent error rate. Wal-Mart was fined $2,500 at that time.

In resolving the latest infraction, Wal-Mart has also agreed to adopt a “Pricing Action Plan” that will include additional training for employees, adjustment of staffing levels to ensure that adequate resources are devoted to item pricing and internal self-audits.

“We are pleased that Wal-Mart has agreed to act to improve its level of compliance with our item pricing law,” said Gary Brown, director of Consumer Protection. “Retailers that fail to individually price their merchandise are violating our law and hindering the ability of consumers to comparison shop. We will continue to conduct inspections to ensure compliance with our law.”

Consumers with complaints about a store’s failure to item price should contact the Department of Consumer Protection by calling (914) 995-2155 or logging onto www.westchestergov.com/consumer

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VIDEOS

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Fighting Wal-Martization 25min. (2005)

A new video by The Labor Video Project 25 min. (2005)

Wal-Mart is now the largest private employer in the United States and has the same impact that General Motors had nearly 50 years ago. This 26-minute video shows why working people and trade unionists are fighting back and what Wal-Mart has in store for the communities it is seeking to build stores in. "Fighting Wal-Martization" is a hard hitting documentary that looks at how the constant price cutting not only drives local small businesses out of the community but how this ends up driving down the living conditions of the very people who shop at Wal-Mart. The video also looks at the healthcare crisis and how Wal-Mart increases its profits by sending it¹s employees to public hospitals to get treatment thereby shifting costs back onto the taxpayer. This video can be used at union meetings, community meetings and on cable TV to get the message out about the Wal-Martization of America and what it means to every working person.

Please mail your check of $20.00 and order form to

Labor Video Project
P. O. Box 720027,
San Francisco, CA 94172

For more info: lvpsf@labornet.org, (415) 282-1908

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices (www.walmartmovie.com)

Independent America: The Two Lane Search for Mom & Pop (www.independentamerica.net)

Big Box Mart (www.jibjab.com)

Garth Brooks Parody (www.walmartworkersrights.org)

"Is Wal-Mart Good for America?" Frontline, PBS Video, (www.pbs.org)
 

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BOOKS

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NON-FICTION

The Case Against Wal-Mart By Al Norman Raphel Marketing ruth@raphael.com

Wal-Mart: The Face Of Twenty-First Century Capitalism Edited By Nelson Lichtenstein The New Press www.thenewpress.com

The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care and Retirement By Jacob S. Hacker Oxford University Press www.oup.com

War On The Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back By Lou Dobbs Viking, a member of Penguin Group www.penguin.com

Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age By Allison H. Fine Jossey-Bass www.joseybass.com

Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses, By Stacy Mitchell, www.beacon.org www.newrules.org

Wal-Mart: The Face Of the Twenty-First-Century Capitalism, Edited by Nelson Lichtenstein, Published by The New Press www.thenewpress.com

 The Bully Of Bentonville - How the high cost of Wal-Mart's Everyday Low Prices is Hurting America, By Anthony Bianco, Published by Doubleday
Email: specialmarkets@randomhouse.com

 How Wal-Mart is Destroying America (and the world), By Bill Quinn, Published By Ten Speed Press, Box 7123, Berkeley, CA 94707, www.tenspeed.com (pp. 163)

Slam Dunking Wal-Mart, By Al Norman, Published By Raphel Marketing, 12 S. Virginia Avenue, Atlantic City, New Jersey 08410, www.sprawl-busters.com (pp. 237)

The Great American JobsScam, By Greg LeRoy, Published By Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 235 Montgomery Street, Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94104-2916, www.bkconnection.com (pp. 257)

Nickel and Dimed, By Barbara Ehrenreich, Published By Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 115 West 18^th Street, New York, NY 10011, www.henryholt.com (pp.221)

United States of Wal-Mart, By John Dicker, Published By Jeremy P. Tarcher (Penguin Group usa), www.us.penguingroup.com (pp.257)

The Wal-Mart Effect, By Charles Fishman www.penguin.com

Megamall On The Hudson, By David Porter and Chester L. Mirsky www.trafford.com

FICTION

Death By Discount, By Mary Vermillion, Published By Alyson Publications, P.O. Box 4371, Los Angeles, CA 90078-4371, www.maryvermillion.com (pp. 275)

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