Wal-Mart's Most Wanted
Attention, affluent shoppers. The retail giant is bent on capturing your dollars
Sometimes joining with grocery chains, the unions have had some triumphs. In Turlock, Calif., the City Council passed an ordinance banning retailers larger than 100,000 square feet. Wal-Mart, which planned to place a 226,000-square-foot store there has sued to overturn the restriction. Meanwhile, Maryland's state legislature recently passed a law that would have forced Wal-Mart to pay more of its workers' health benefits. Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich vetoed it, but the UFCW is lobbying for the same bill in all 50 states. "We're the focus of one of the most organized, most sophisticated, most expensive corporate campaigns ever launched against a single company," Scott told shareholders.
Bad press. Blank says Wal-Mart shouldn't blame the unions but the press it has gotten over the discrimination lawsuit and the fines it paid for federal child and immigrant labor violations. "It is going to be a problem as Wal-Mart gets into markets where price isn't the only consideration, and people can afford to ask, 'Does this company reflect my values?'" he says, noting that Wal-Mart has opened only four of the 40 Superstores it said in 2002 it hoped to in California. Bob McAdam, Wal-Mart's vice president for community affairs, says that figure is a four-to-six-year goal. "Even in places where we've seen opposition, once the stores open, they are phenomenally successful," he says.
Resistance to new stores could pose a problem, however, since many of those planned locations are in more-affluent areas. "It's a complicated issue, because large numbers of people want to shop at Wal-Mart. They just don't want them across the street," says Edward Weller at ThinkEquity Partners in San Francisco. But based on how Wal-Mart has reigned supreme since the early 1990s, he and many analysts are betting the company will weather its current woes. And if U.S. growth proves difficult, there's the rest of the world, which already accounts for 20 percent of the retailer's business. "I don't think Wal-Mart can ever be underestimated," Weller says. "They are so very good."
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