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Comment by jasonwatkinspdx | Hacker News Reader

Wal-Mart have always been pure bastards to their supply chain.

My family had a small manufacturing business that went bankrupt years ago. At one point we were making a part that ultimately ended up on a WM product. Periodically WM's folks would come around and do a strong arm routine trying to renegotiate the contract. It got bad enough my dad adopted the habit of bringing a couple of the very burly folks that worked in the fabrication shop to sit in on meetings and reduce the intimidation BS.

They are a ruthlessly scummy business and have been for a very long time.

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Someone close to me related the story of when they almost put one of their products in Wal-Mart's stores in Canada about 2 decades ago. One big showstopper was that they were asking for the quality to be reduced so that the price could be lower. The vendor I know refused, saying that their product lasts a long time and they are proud of it and they wouldn't sign unless that stipulation was removed. A few months later the head of Wal-Mart Canada visited the vendor and asked when they were going to close the deal and he was shocked when the vendor said they wouldn't sign unless that provision was changed! He wasn't used to hearing no from potential vendors! The deal never happened and to this day the vendor is really glad they didn't go down that road.

There's a great writeup on a company that experience similar:

https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart

That story, by Charles Fishman, is part of his book The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and How It's Transforming the American Economy :

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0143038788

It's worth reading.

"Buy it from Amazon!" Oh, how fitting.

As I understand it he later gave in and now they sell the lawnmowers. https://www.walmart.com/browse/patio-garden/lawn-mowers/snap...

Did Wal-Mart get another company to make a cheaper version of that product that's similar but sufficiently different that it's not infringing? That's their trademark move.

"Make it cheaper or we'll make it cheaper for you."

This is very common among big box stores as far as I know–often companies will make a special cheaper version just to get the deal done so they can sell in these big chain stores.

I often keep an eye on the product number if I'm every buying electronics or tools at a big box store to see if it's different than what I find online for what is ostensibly the same exact product, as that can be an indication that you're buying a cheapened version.

This is how Wal-Mart maintains its position, and grows to where it is today. Thats Business at their level.

I sympathize however. Strong Arming small and middle sized businesses, which are the bedrock of American Capitalist Power is just egregiously scummy. This is also what I think is currently gone wrong with the American Capitalism, but thats another comment, somewhere, sometime I guess :)

I'm not sure small and medium businesses are really the "bedrock of American capitalist power." Maybe you could argue they're the bedrock of American values or something like that.

Just to see if we were right or wrong, I found this article. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/77398

Here are stand out ones from the article. For just small business alone. I actually thought middle size business would have had figures like this.

* Small businesses create 75 percent of the net new jobs in our economy. * Small businesses pay more than 44 percent of the nation's private payroll. * More than 50 percent of the U.S. private gross domestic product is generated by small businesses. * Almost 97 percent of exporters are small businesses.

Those numbers are certainly much better than I expected, but "capitalist power" is kind of abstract and I was thinking such a thing was better represented by GM, Lockheed Martin, Apple, etc. -- i.e., companies with resources and influence to rival some sovereign powers.

yea, I hear ya! I can live with that :)

But Amazon doesn't do this to their vendors.

They most certainly do and have.

Take Books and Ebooks for a good example.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/cheap-words

I was referring to these smaller firms as was addressed in the comment.

Regarding the major book selling firms, Amazon are the good guys because a relatively few book firms control the market. Amazon is helping to improve the customer experience by lowering the price of books.

> Amazon are the good guys because a relatively few book firms control the market. Amazon is helping to improve the customer experience by lowering the price of books.

they're replacing an oligopoly that is exploiting their customers with a monopoly though.

amazon hasn't really started exploiting its monopoly status yet (to my knowledge) toward the consumers, but a lot of authors have already started to complain about it.

I looked into this issue awhile ago and may have even written about it in HN. The publishers are trying to take a larger share of the income from Amazon for eBooks over traditional publishing leaving the authors with less than before even though production costs for publishers are far lower for eBooks. Amazon was trying to work to get authors at least the same proportion of the money they get for eBooks as for hardcopy traditional books.

They are also a very large, non-homogenous business which has had some great people work for them as well as some very shitty people.

The best managers there are the ones who largely disregard the incentives placed before them and respect the complexities of working at such a large scale. It sounds like the people who would show up at your dad's were enabled by management who cared more about bottom line sales than understanding how to appropriately treat a supplier with limited volume.

I'm sorry this was the experience you had, but there are just as many talented, respectful, and generally honorable people that work there and I wouldn't want them to get lumped in with the scum. (Source, have worked at WM home office)

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