I hate the tv

That last post learnt me of FastCompany the magazine, and I ran into this great piece: The Walmart You Don’t Know bashing some more…

Snip snip:

Wal-Mart priced it at $2.97–a year’s supply of pickles for less than $3! “They were using it as a ’statement’ item,” says Pat Hunn, who calls himself the “mad scientist” of Vlasic’s gallon jar. “Wal-Mart was putting it before consumers, saying, This represents what Wal-Mart’s about. You can buy a stinkin’ gallon of pickles for $2.97. And it’s the nation’s number-one brand.”

What really got me going on this topic is the theme of the Snapper post…It hurts companies to sell out their brand names to walmart for whatever the sales numbers are.

I’ve bought one of those enormous things of pickles for $2.97 from walmart last year, they sucked. They were much worse than some others I bought from the regular grocery store. The best part is that they were probably fine before the rediculous Walmart all-night-stocking system got ahold of them (and they were, for example, left outside on a pallette for a week or something).

I have seen Snapper mowers in walmart and figured they were just another has-been ex-American uber-company now relegated to a badge on a chinese product. Well Slashdot’s got a great piece on Jim Wier, CEO of Simplicity, which bought Snapper, on how he came to the decision to not sell his products at Walmart:

Every year, thousands of executives venture to Bentonville, Arkansas, hoping to get their products onto the shelves of the world’s biggest retailer. But Jim Wier wanted Wal-Mart to stop selling his Snapper mowers.What struck Jim Wier first, as he entered the Wal-Mart vice president’s office, was the seating area for visitors. “It was just some lawn chairs that some other peddler had left behind as samples.” The vice president’s office was furnished with a folding lawn chair and a chaise lounge.

And so Wier, the CEO of lawn-equipment maker Simplicity, dressed in a suit, took a seat on the chaise lounge. “I sat forward, of course, with my legs off to the side. If you’ve ever sat in a lawn chair, well, they are lower than regular chairs. And I was on the chaise. It was a bit intimidating. It was uncomfortable, and it was going to be an uncomfortable meeting.”

….

Selling Snapper lawn mowers at Wal-Mart wasn’t just incompatible with Snapper’s future — Wier thought it was hazardous to Snapper’s health. Snapper is known in the outdoor-equipment business not for huge volume but for quality, reliability, durability. A well-maintained Snapper lawn mower will last decades; many customers buy the mowers as adults because their fathers used them when they were kids. But Snapper lawn mowers are not cheap, any more than a Viking range is cheap. The value isn’t in the price, it’s in the performance and the longevity.

On a related note, NPR had a very good piece on China buying our brands names a few months back.