Hacker News Reader

Comment by w8rbt | Hacker News Reader

I'm pulling for Walmart! I've seen the death of so many stores that I dearly miss (Sears, JC Penny, etc.). I can no longer get good hand tools or good t-shirts locally. And, the online stores are full of rip-offs and forgeries. Walmart is the last bastion of honest retail (where I can talk to a fellow human in person). I really hope they make it.

View on HN

It's so odd to see Walmart getting cheered on as a plucky neighborhood underdog. They were Amazon before Amazon, using their huge scale to drive local competition out of business and relentlessly pressuring suppliers to drive down prices.

All that said I'm rooting for them too, simply because competition with Amazon is good for everyone.

Having grown up in a small town, we cheered walmart killing all those little businesses with overpriced goods. Instead of planning the monthly trip to the big city we would head to Walmart after supper and be home before bedtime.

>I'm pulling for Walmart! I've seen the death of so many stores that I dearly miss (Sears, JC Penny, etc.). I can no longer get good hand tools or good t-shirts locally. And, the online stores are full of rip-offs and forgeries. Walmart is the last bastion of honest retail (where I can talk to a fellow human in person). I really hope they make it.

I kind of feel the same way, but damn if this isn't one of those things that me from 15 years ago would think was insane.

People like Microsoft? Apple is being brought up on anti-trust issues? Walmart is "good" now? What even is this reality we live in?

Just so you know, Walmart is not the underdog. Walmart sells many multiples the volume that Amazon does, and to boot, most of the products sold are owned by Walmart. Amazon is merely a fee-taker on the majority of the product sales that it facilitates.

Can you post evidence to support those claims?

These are not controversial claims.

Walmart revenue is $514 billion. Amazon revenue is $232 billion. Currently, about half of the retail revenue of Amazon is marketplace sales, where Amazon does not own the merchandise but simply warehouses it on consignment and charges fulfillment fees, or in some cases simply places a drop-ship order for it.

About 70% of Amazon sales are from third party sellers. So if you are comparing apples to apples you have to just look at the ~30% that is direct from Amazon. And with first hand experience with Amazon's Vendor program they go further than a lot of other retailers in pushing costs onto their vendors such as making them eat returns etc.

> you have to just look at the ~30% that is direct from Amazon.

Except due to commingling you might get something from a 3rd party Fulfilled by Amazon instead of Amazon's supply chain.

> And with first hand experience with Amazon's Vendor program they go further than a lot of other retailers in pushing costs onto their vendors such as making them eat returns etc.

I know Walmart is very severe with their vendors, do you believe Amazon is worse?

That number is included in the marketplace vs 1P sales. The 3P seller gets credited when their commingled item is sold. Amazon gets credited for the sale when it is the one they own that is sold. That's how it works. A lot of sellers also opt out of commingling so it is really not as much of a factor as is sometimes portrayed. There are only certain kinds of items that are disproportionately impacted by it.

>I know Walmart is very severe with their vendors, do you believe Amazon is worse?

I mean, Walmart is harsh, but Amazon is just an insane robot as it relates to most vendors. Think more maliciously dumb than evil.

Walmart is the reason vast numbers of people can no longer buy anything good locally. They were killing local stores before Amazon was.

I'm rooting for their death, as I have since I first heard about them in the mid 90s, pushing out local music retailers so they can sell the censored, watered-down crap they strongarmed labels into producing.

Never spent a penny there, never will.

>Implying local is better

I've found local/mom and pop is significantly more expensive, than our national counterparts.

https://efficiencyiseverything.com/dog-food-per-dollar-store...

I don't think lowest income Americans could live at their current standard of living off local mom and pop stores.

>Implying megacorp forcing their values on people is undesirable

In my area, music stores managed to survive Walmart for the most part because they got into buying and selling used. Stores like Best Buy also cut into local music sales substantially.

The end result was inevitable, however, regardless of Walmart or Best Buy. First Napster, then Apple, then Spotify. If anything, the local music store survived by offering a premium, through their knowledge, sense of community, vinyl offerings, etc. while Best Buy and Walmart have retreated on music sales.

You can stop this type of progress. While the romantic idea of local shops is appealing, the reality is not. High prices, inconvenient hours, and limited selection pale in comparison to incredible selection, low prices, and 24-hour availability.

Thankfully, streaming solved this particular issue-- You no longer need a local music store in your community to ensure that you're not stuck listening to censored junk.

Lowes bought the Craftsman line from Sears so you can still buy good hand tools.

Good may be a bit too generous to Craftsman. I've never found their hand tools reliable. Their powertools less so.

Worst was a ratchet where the first thing to break wasn't one of the teeth on the gear, but instead the pawl, meaning instead of simply slipping and still being mostly usable, it became immediately useless. Which is just annoyingly bad engineering.

Depends on one's window of time when buying Craftsman. Anything in the last ten years is definitely crap, fifteen-twenty years ago was becoming hit-or-miss, anything older than that was definitely good. My father was a tool-and-die maker since the 60s, and always had Craftman tools. Err, correction, still has; I'm sure a ratchet or two has been lost to abuse (i. e., "cheater bar"), but last I checked the vast majority of his collection is intact.

So when the old farts bemoan that old Craftsman quality, they're talking two decades ago.

Oh I'm well aware they used to make very quality products. Craftsman at one point was re-branding high quality products, like Abus locks. But that was again, 50 years ago. Their recent tools have left me disappointed with issues coming up far too soon. Not that I'm easy on tools but still.

Lowes might sell Craftsman tools, but Stanley bought the name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craftsman_(tools).

Yesterday we were looking to buy a few movies, Amazon was 6x the price of Walmart.

I no longer choose Amazon, I actively search for the best deal now.

costco > target > walmart in my book

Reply on news.ycombinator.com