DO NOT BUY WEDDING CAKES FROM WAL-MART please dont ruin that special occasion!!!! - Page 2

 amen

 

could the OP be joking about this? I mean posting that on cake decorating forum?? Now that is rich.  Most people on this forum already know it....People of Walmart forum would have been a better place to inform the public of this.

I smell a Gee up . 

lol this post must be a joke right?

Excellent article, but flawed.

Actually, it wields its power for the purpose of bringing insanely huge profits to Bentonville. Frequently, its overall prices are no better than those of competing retailers in an area, and occasionally, not even as good. And frequently, the only reason they're cheaper than those of competing retailers is that there are no competing retailers left.

 

The article is also incomplete: it leaves out Wal-Mart's long history of buying up farmland, just far enough outside of rural towns to make comparison shopping as inconvenient as possible, then driving the local merchants out of business, one by one, until they're the only game in town. Then they open a bigger store in a central location, and close all the original stores in the area, forcing shoppers to drive much further, and keeping the prices just low enough to discourage the local merchants from reopening, and squatting on their own vacant stores to keep any other big-box retailers from moving in. Oh, and they also promise to open local bank accounts, and pump huge amounts of money into the local economies, only to have the day's deposits automatically wired to Bentonville overnight.

 

 

What has this to do with cakes?

 

To those of us who are hobbyists, and who rarely (if ever) buy or sell cakes, not much.

 

But those of you who are professional bakers and cake decorators, YOU are among the local merchants Wal-Mart seeks to drive out of business.

 

And those of you who are customers of professional bakers and cake decorators, YOU are the ones who stand to lose a great deal of freedom of choice, if the bakers and decorators are driven out of business.

Creating profits for the owners of the business is the purpose of every for-profit enterprise, so while your statement is true it is not unique to Wal-Mart.

The main profit driver for WM is reducing costs in order to undercut other retailers with lower prices. This does not guarantee that every item will be sold at a lower price point than every competitor, but it's a safe bet that customers will spend less in aggregate at WM for a given typical product assortment, otherwise WM would not be successful. And, as you mentioned, once competitors have been forced out the "lowest possible price" will start creeping up.

Unfortunately a good portion of these cost savings are externalized, in the form of taxpayers subsidizing WM via local incentives, govt healthcare programs reducing WM's health care spending, leverage forcing suppliers to move jobs to low-cost countries with no environmental or labor controls, and so on.
I know they've bought farmland before to build distribution centers, but I hadn't heard that they buy up land just to inconvenience comparison shoppers. Where did you hear about this? Given how much land is available it seems like an awfully inefficient use of capital.

Profits, I have no problem with. It's ill-gotten gains that are the problem. And that includes profits that come from gouging employees and suppliers alike, profits that come from shipping jobs overseas, and profits that come from using market leverage to drive competitors out of business.

 

There are economists who insist that loss-leader pricing doesn't exist, at least not as a successful business model. That claim is based on the demonstrably false assumptions that (1) every retail store is an autonomous entity, existing (except for its direct competitors) in a vacuum, and that (2) retailers compete only with others dealing in the same specialty, and (3) the playing field is level. In fact, (1) a company the size of Wal-Mart can easily afford to subsidize a single store's losses for the time it takes to drive competitors out, (2) a general retailer like Wal-Mart can afford to subsidize a single product's losses out of the same location's profits on other product lines, for the time it takes to corner the local market on that product line, and (3) Wal-Mart is big enough to go far higher in the distribution chain (usually directly to the manufacturer) than most small businesses, and to demand concessions on cost, and penalize vendors who refuse to make those concessions.

 

As to deliberately placing its rural locations to make comparison shopping as difficult as possible, consider: for most small retail businesses, foot traffic is essential. That's why small specialty retailers seek out locations in downtown areas, regional shopping malls, and strip-centers. You don't see Bob and Brenda's Bakery, Doris's Dresses, Harold's Haberdashery, or Sam's Shoes deliberately seeking a "middle-of-nowhere" location. Paul's Pharmacy may not want to be right next door to Andrew's Apothecary, but Paul probably does want to be close to George's Grocery, because it means more foot traffic.

 

That's why downtown real estate, and rent in established malls and strip-centers, is so expensive.

 

But for Wal-Mart, being close to other retailers is a disadvantage: almost every other merchant is a direct competitor, and a potential challenge to the veracity of their claims of having the lowest prices in town. Foot traffic is more likely to take business away from them, than to take business to them. But as it turns out, land on the outskirts of town, unless there's some conservation easement on it, requiring it to be farmed actively, tends to be much cheaper than downtown land. And Wal-Mart can pick and choose from the available "outskirts" land, and locate its rural stores in places where, for most of the customers, they're either in the opposite direction from the local downtown, or closer than the local downtown, or most easily reached by completely bypassing the local downtown.

Agreed that ill-gotten gains are the problem. We have labor laws and antitrust laws that are supposed to stop these kinds of abuses, but unfortunately corporate lobbies and populist anti-government groups have hampered enforcement.

Loss-leader pricing certainly exists, but I'm not so sure that WM practices it. They don't need to, since suppliers who don't understand the difference between revenue and profit will happily sell wholesale at or below cost.

I understand your point about store placement now, I thought you were referring to WM buying up land and leaving it vacant to create a buffer zone. I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with setting up retail in the outskirts of town, given the size of the store properties and the associated logistics required there are often no suitable vacancies in a downtown or city center. It also saves time and money if delivery trucks do not have to navigate through a city. But as you said, low acquisition cost and distance from non-complementary competitors are probably the primary factors.

I may get blasted for this, but I can not feel sorry for anyone who purchases a wedding cake from Wal-Mart and then complains that it did not "live" up to expectations.  I mean we all know what Wal-Mart is and if try and delude yourself into thinking that it is more than that it is your bad.  It is like buying your wedding dress from a thrift store and then complaining it is stained... to quote someone else on this thread... you get what you pay for.

Is there a picture of the cake that we can see?

pretty sure the OP created a profile on CC just to post about this ...her username should give that away and based on the fact that her account was created yesterday. I hate that that happened to her, but as many said before, it's WALMART! Would you buy your dress their? Dress and cake are two of the most important things for traditional weddings. I wouldn't leave that up to Walmart.

the abuse one faces in the parking lot of a WalMart is enough to keep me from ever darkening their door. A couple of years ago, my son and I went in, suffered the din of televisions with blaring commercials, the disarray and the general insanity of hte place, only to leave without the item we were looking for. I swore then that I would never go again...and I haven't. No discount is worth the discomfort of that place. 

 

As far as a WalMart cake is concerned, who could possibly think they employ skilled bakers? That is, skilled enough to create a wedding cake.

 

Sorry the wedding was ruined,but for goodness sake!

 

jen

I smell a rat.  I think someone is trying to get us all riled up.  I've seen the WalMart cakes displayed for weddings and they don't look half bad.  Plain - unadorned - but that's all some brides think is needed.  They don't deliver and you have to select one flavor - they don't allow two flavors in one order.

 

 

haha! could turn into the longest thread in CC history.

Something very 'fishy' going on here... Why would someone make an account just to rant to decorators about how rubbish Walmart is... I've never been to one live in the UK and I know not to expect a great cake from them.