How did Kmart fail and Wal Mart become the biggest company in the world?
Posted on :
10-14-06 |
It’s interesting to me, that while growing up in Atlanta, there were K-Mart’s everywhere. K-Mart’s in every city, on damn near every block. I don’t remember there ever not being a K-Mart, and the term “Blue Light Special” was synonymous with great deals to some, and cheap crap to others.
Mom took us to K-Mart when we were kids. It was fun to roam around the isles, and look at the toys, hide under the clothes racks, and to try to figure out how to turn that damn blue light machine on when no one was looking. But there was a dark side to the K-Mart culture. In school, if someone didn’t like your clothes, they were referred to as “K-Mart” clothes. If they didn’t like your shoes, you had K-Mart shoes. "Where did you get those shoes, the K-Mart"? In our world where you were supposed to have the coolest new stuff, it was looked down upon you if you wore the latest K-Fashions. It was perfectly acceptable to eat any McFood, but god forbid if you wore K-Clothes.
Somewhere along the line, K-Mart became extremely uncool, a sign your folks had no money, a testament to the lower middle class. Year by year, K-Mart’s reputation sank lower and lower, and one by one their stores started to close. As they were closing, Wal Marts and Target’s started popping up to take their place, and now today as we all know, Wal Mart is the biggest company in the world.
So my question is this… how did Wal Mart manage to kill the K-Mart? Wal Mart sells even cheaper crap, crap that no American ever helped make, and have somehow single handedly made it ok for 50,000 people in a 10 square mile area to all have the exact same coffee table, the exact same pictures on their walls, and the exact same bath soap holders. How in a mere 20 years did we go from a country that demanded that we not look like everyone else, to having Rooms to Go packages for our living rooms? When did K-Mart stop being used as the term for cheap, and Wal Mart become the end all be all store to buy everything you need?
Was it just a drive to save money? Did we somehow feel sorry for China? Or is it as simple as K-Mart had a bad marketing firm, and let the collective conscience of America believe that their products were no good, while Wal Mart swept in and took all their customers? Obviously as Americans, we like to be thrifty at times, but usually it’s so we can be extravagant at other times. But I can’t help feeling bad for the ol’ K-Mart, they missed the boat, they did something wrong, they could have been the number one guy all over the world right now.
How far will America go? Will there be a swing back to having more expensive custom built items? Will one day Wal Mart be synonymous with cheap, and there will be a revolt by the kids in this country, and they won’t let their mom’s take them to Wal Mart anymore? Or have they become so ingrained in our society as to be unstoppable?
I suppose only time will tell… but for now, I bought an entertainment center for 90 bucks at the Wal Mart, cause I didn’t like the ones at Target, and it has my new 32” TV from Best Buy resting neatly inside it with the magic of Tivo, so I suppose I shouldn’t be bitching.
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