Friday Blog Round-Up: Doldrums Edition

WAL-MART KILLED THE MAGAZINE STAR
After Wal-Mart’s decision to stop selling over 1,000 magazine titles this week, not only are magazine publishers running to their mommies, but magazine readers are asking, “Whaaaa?” Does Wal-Mart think its shoppers are illiterate? I mean, who doesn’t enjoy Better Homes and Gardens?

Wal-Mart’s Magazine Purge [Jossip]

What happens when a retail giant who controls 20 percent of magazine newsstand sales drops 1,000 titles from its racks? Untamed terror!

Wal-Mart this week announced the major trimming, dropping the heaviest anvil on Meredith Corp., ousting circulation stunners Better Homes & Gardens and Ladies Home Journal, as well as Fitness. Fellow heavyweight Town & Country, from Hearst, will also disappear, as will Hachette’s Home and Metropolitan Home.

Wal-Mart Thinks Customers Don’t Read Magazines [Media Bistro]

This is a piece about Wal-Mart in which we’re not going to take any cheap shots. We’re not going to say anything about how their stores have wrecked rural economies worldwide, their hostile stance towards unions, their gross underpayment of workers, their demeaning public relations campaigns… we’re not going to mention anything about that. Because that would be unfair.

But Wal-Mart, who are responsible for more than 20% of retail magazine sales in the United States, have decided to stop carrying more than 1,000 magazines in their stores.

WAL-MART GETS THE NOD FOR “WORST STOCK OF 2008”
Motley Fool crowned Wal-Mart the “Worst Stock of 2008” this week. Others weigh in on the retailer’s prospects:

Lee Scott will be so proud [The Writing on the Wal]

Now you’d think with economic catastrophe looming, Wal-Mart would be a great bet for the future since Wal-Mart loves human misery. However, they’ve screwed up making money for anybody but the Waltons from all the human misery we’ve had since 1999, so I can’t see them doing much better this year either.

Contra Goldman, Wal-Mart called worst stock of 2008 [BloggingStocks]

Wal-Mart shares are pretty much where they were in 1999—in the $45 to $50 range. Does that mean it’s the worst stock to own in 2008? For Wal-Mart to grow revenues in the double digits, the figure must be in the tens of billions of dollars. Based on its sheer revenue size alone, Wal-Mart should be growing in the low single digits, right? Does the market recognize this when pitting it against retailer competitors who have higher growth rates? I suspect that it does not.

WAL-MART’S GREEN STORES...STINK
Wal-Mart announced plans to build four green stores this year. The company’s planning to use some unusual building materials, but also raises some concerns from environmentalists.

“Green" Walmart Has Decorative Moldings Made From “The Leg Holes In Disposable Diapers” [Consumerist]

The store features “decorative floor boards and moldings are made from the material leftover from making the leg holes in disposable diapers.”

Yes, really. We weren’t aware that producing “leg holes” resulted in a lot of waste, but we sure are happy to hear that it’s being put to good use.

Wal-Mart and Phony Environmentalism [Working Life]

If the term “greenwash” hasn’t been given its own entry in the dictionary yet, let me propose that, when it does, it is linked directly to the word “Wal-Mart”. For those not yet familiar with the term, “greenwashing” occurs when a company pretends to be environmentally progressive yet is quite misleading about its true efforts to save the planet.

And, in this area, as with just about everything ranging from unveiling a new “health plan” for workers to its impact on communities, the Beast of Bentonville shows, again, its hypocrisy. To much press hoo-hah, Wal-Mart announced the other day that it was, according to a Reuters story, opening “four stores that use 25 percent less energy than its supercenters that were in operation in 2005.”

Frankly, Wal-Mart is not the only company engaging in “greenwashing”. But, as the big boy on the block, it deserves singling out because it is using p.r. to obscure its devastating impact on the environment. The sad reality is that if Wal-Mart really wanted to “go green” that would be a huge development for the planet because of the influence the Beast has on markets around the globe. We’re still waiting.

Speaking of electronics...[Writing on the Wal]

While Wal-Mart helps its suppliers “grade” themselves, workers in Asia are getting slowly poisoned by the electronics Wal-Mart sells by the truckload. And what, by the way, is Wal-Mart’s position on forcing the same recycling standards on electronics sold in America as they have in Europe? [Insert sound of crickets chirping.]

Being a monopsony with your own environmental cheering section means never having to solve real problems.

EcoLibertarian points out that while Wal-Mart might save money by manufacturing overseas, it’s paying for it at the pump. The company’s biggest incentive to go green is rising energy costs:

Wal-Mart may be the single company with the most invested in the existing - dying - system of acquiring, moving and selling merchandise. It sources things manufactured inexpensively abroad, hauls them enormous distances, sells them in very large stores often located in box-store complexes pretty far removed from residential areas.  Expensive energy, in any form, hits Wal-Mart hard. So naturally the company has the most incentive to cut waste as much as possible as quickly as possible.

NO COMMENT

Shank Found Inside Mattel Polly Pocket Toy [Consumerist]

Here’s a story that makes you wonder what sort of tools the workers at Mattel’s factories use. A “shank” (a blade wrapped in electrical tape, to be exact) was found inside a sealed Polly Pocket toy purchased at Walmart. Mattel apologized for the incident, saying:

“We apologize to the family that they found that in the toy. No matter how it got there, or what the cause of the placement of that object in the toy was. So we apologize to the family, and we’d also like to send a replacement toy to make her Christmas happy and bright.”

TAKE IT TO THE STREETS
All across the country, communities are fighting Wal-Mart. Whether it’s trying to stop the retailer from expanding, from building another store or from entering the community in the first place, local bloggers are joining the fight. Here are some highlights from this week’s site fight blogs.

Are residents winning fight against Wal-Mart? [It’s Your Times (Tarpon Springs, Fla.)]

Wal-Mart suffered another setback in the bay area last night. A decision by the Tarpon Springs Board of Adjustment forces Wal-Mart back to square one in its plans for a supercenter on the western bank of the Anclote River.

In December, Wal-Mart announced it would drop a lawsuit claiming it has the right to build a store on a 22-acre parcel in Spring Hill. The Hernando County Commission had voted the plan down in May.

With Wal-Mart, Smaller=Better [Orlando Met Blogs (Fla.)]

So Wal-Mart’s ongoing attempt to dominate the known universe with identical big-box stores where you can purchase both a rifle and some Cocoa Puffs at the same time has hit a minor setback in Central Florida, as their new store over in East Orange will be a “smaller” Wal-Mart… Residents are still unhappy, especially those who choose to air their grievances online:

We wanted an up-scale market as a concession and got a poorly run, poorly maintained and low-income venue that has already brought property values down. Thanks Mildred. I am sure you will not shop there - nor will I unless I am on welfare like most of the customers.

NORWAY EXPANDS THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY PROGRAM THAT STARTED WITH WAL-MART
Norway announced this week plans to expand its criteria for socially responsible investments, reminding everyone how the European nation’s pension discretion started in the first place: with Wal-Mart.

The socially responsible sovereign wealth fund [Salon]

The fund already excludes some 25 entities, mostly arms manufacturers and corporations guilty of grievous environmental crimes. But human rights are also a criterion. In 2005, the fund sold its Wal-Mart stake, stating in a press release:

An extensive body of material indicates that Wal-Mart consistently and systematically employs minors in contravention of international rules, that working conditions at many of its suppliers are dangerous or health-hazardous, that workers are pressured into working overtime without compensation, that the company systematically discriminates against women in pay, that all attempts to unionize by the company’s employees are stopped, that employees are in a number of cases unreasonably punished and locked in, along with a number of other circumstances...What makes this case special is the sum total of ethical norm violations, both in the company’s own business operations and in the supplier chain.

Earlier today, we referenced Consumerist’s reaction to Wal-Mex’s new debit card and its fees. Wake Up From Your Slumber has more:

Just when you thought Wal-Mart could not sink any lower, it does, with the neat package of a personalized debit card that Wal-Mart charge $8.94 to start and charge 75 cent per balance inquiry...Wal-Mart is a reprehensibly evil corporation that continue to taint America’s image by reinforcing the stereotypical preconception that America stand for ignorance, exploitation and unadulterated greed.

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, January 18, 2008

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