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To: damniseedemons who wrote (16274)	1/18/1998 5:16:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Right, Sal. Do you have any evidence that Wal-mart has lost money for years on any particular store? They've closed stores, you know. I do plenty of shopping at Wal-mart, unlike most around here, I'm sure. They got their good points and their bad points. In general their prices are good, not exceptional. I can handle Sam Walton as a hero of business a lot better than Bill, he didn't quite have the overwhelming hubris thing about him. In general, he brought a better selection at a better price to most of the places Wal-mart went into at the beginning. Mostly, Wal-mart got to be big by going into rural places the big chains of the time wouldn't bother with, not by driving people out of business by selling things at a loss. When, exactly, did Wal-Mart ever give anything away to drive somebody out of business? For two years running, that seems to have been Microsoft's main business plan. Standard Microsoft business practice, I know. I wish more people understood that. Think Sam ever thought of building his own little Xanadu when he was the richest guy in the world? When they opened the local Wal-mart and he flew in, the story was that all the store managers dressed up to go out someplace fancy to eat. Sam took'em to the Wal-mart lunch counter. "If it's good enough for the customers, it's good enough for me". Think Sam ever personally directed his lawyers to go into court with a "beyond the comprehension of mere mortals" line in any of his numerous legal battles? Somehow, I doubt that. Cheers, Dan.

To: damniseedemons who wrote (16274)	1/18/1998 6:59:00 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Respond to of 24154

Sal, Eventually WalMarts fall prey to the fact that they can not stock all things. They do however act as category killers in may areas. The Price clubs exploit a sub group of the Wallmart product repertoire so well that they had to form the Sams club to fight them. I suppose the next level is the company store, like a sony store, and sony sells only within that store and captures the full verticality of the market. A second thing is that with the Wall marts you end up with a product with a factory door price of $100 sold retail for $110, more or less. However with MSFT a copy of Win95B costs around $2 to produce with manual. Less for bulk loads where MSFT just invoices them and Dell etc prints and loads it. So the merchandise analogy fails. Bill