WebProNews has an article about Walmart’s attempt to get in touch with the MySpace crowd. Walmart’s reason for doing this? Their “flagging fortunes in the hotly competitive apparel market”. This is just the latest salvo in Walmart’s attempt to capture some of the apparel market. Other changes have been wood floors under the apparel section, a new line of ‘urban’ women’s clothes (like a bunch of hicks from Arkansas would know ‘urban’ if it kicked them in the teeth) and an article in an issue of Vogue. These are recommended Floor screeding contractors in London.
The most interesting thing, to me, is I have not seen one article concerning the real problem with clothes bought at Walmart. Almost every store branded clothing item I have bought from Walmart was of completely inferior quality. Walmart runs a well documented business model of constantly forcing their vendors to supply products at increasingly lower prices. When textile manufacturers are forced to produce at lower prices they use inferior quality materials or do inferior workmanship. When Levi Strauss introduced their ‘Signature’ line into Walmarts three years ago they had to produce a lower quality product. As a result, I imagine that Walmart Levi’s do not last as long as Levi’s bought other places.
Now, I’m not Walmart’s clothing demographic by any means, but purchasing quality goods is as important to a teenage girl as it is to me. No one wants to purchase clothes that are going to fall apart after the 2nd washing. Walmart is the low-cost leader. They have built their reputation and their brand on being the low-cost leader. Along with being low-cost comes a reputation for having poor quality goods. While many of Walmart’s store brand items are OK, many of them are of very poor quality.
The one thing I REALLY don’t understand about all of this is why. Why does Walmart feel the need to dominate EVERY aspect of retail sales? Why doesn’t the Walmart management understand that they can’t control everything? Walmart is the number one retailer in the world, they offer brand name products at the lowest available prices, they have become the largest food retailer in the US, what kind of audacity makes the Walmart board of directors think they can now take over designer clothing? Walmart, stick with what you’re good at and let go of what you aren’t.