Part VIII: Guns, And Wal-Mart
February 26, 2003
9:10 AM CST
I’m aware that a whole bunch of people out there buy guns and ammo from Wal-Mart (not to mention all the other household stuff), and that’s fine. A couple of people know that I don’t especially care for Wal-Mart myself, and have written to talk about it.
I’ve worked in and around the retail industry for over twenty-five years, for small operations and huge chains, and on two continents, so I know a little whereof I speak. Here are my thoughts on the matter.
1. I don’t like one organization, especially a retailer, to have a huge (or near-monopolistic) market share. I don’t think it’s healthy for the economy, despite the short-term consumer savings that a large organization brings to the market. When most of the smaller operations get put out of business, the community suffers, both economically and in spirit.
2. Despite the folksiness of their public demeanor, Wal-Mart is a pretty damned predatory company in their dealings with both suppliers and competitors. They go after competition with a ferocity and lack of conscience that are truly disturbing. That’s fine, of course—it’s good business—but at some point, that attitude will turn around and bite the consumer too. When you become the only game in town, eventually you become arrogant. If Wal-Mart tries to deny that this will happen to them, they’re ignorant of history: it always happens. Always.
3. Most insidiously, when one store becomes the sole channel for a specific product, it becomes progressively easier for that product to be controlled by legislation. When there’s only one faucet, it’s easy to stop the flow of water—when there are thousands, it’s more difficult.
4. Along the way, eventually, product choice becomes narrower when only one or two stores control all the sales. When all a store cares about is what sells now, the more esoteric items disappear because they either don’t move quickly enough for the store to generate profit, or the price is increased to generate a larger profit. So you either won’t find it, or it will be too expensive. This is Retailing 101.
That’s it. I don’t think that Wal-Mart is good for the country in the long-term: near-monopolies seldom are.
As far as the gun business is concerned, I don’t think Wal-Mart is good for the country right now. To their credit, they’ve made guns and ammunition cheaper in rural areas, and many people swear by them. But when you live in Wahoo, WY and Wal-Mart is the only game in town, don’t think for a moment that you’re going to have the ultimate gun store in Wal-Mart, because you won’t.
Frankly, Wal-Mart doesn’t give a shit about the gun business. It’s just another product category to them, like shirts or jeans, and most of their decisions are made at head office in Bentonville, not at the local level. If guns and ammo become too problematic for them in terms of regulation, product movement or return on investment, they’ll drop the category without a second thought—once again, that’s good business, and you can’t fault them for it—but gun owners will be totally screwed.
Sure, the gun store is more expensive: because he doesn’t have the daily profits from other categories like toys, CDs and sweatshirts to keep him in business. I know how it works: you shop around at the local gun stores, get all the information from the guys behind the counter, and then go to Wal-Mart because that Remington 870 is $80 cheaper there. Congratulations. You got a great deal—and shafted the guy whose entire living depends on your dollars. If you’ve done this kind of thing before, and this paragraph didn’t give you a twinge of conscience, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Wal-Mart can survive without selling guns and ammo. Your local gun store can’t. Think about it.
