Posted on 04/12/2011 6:52:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
Leslie Dach, former senior aide to Al Gore, was the impetus behind Wal-Mart's failed shift to "green," upscale items that fit the progressive agenda for what Americans should be buying.
After suffering seven straight quarters of losses, today the merchandise giant Wal-Mart will announce that it is “going back to basics,” ending its era of high-end organic foods, going “green,” and the remainder of its appeal to the upscale market. Next month the company will launch an “It’s Back” campaign to woo the millions of customers who have fled the store. They will be bringing back “heritage” products, like inexpensive jeans and sweatpants.
Few may recognize it as such, but this episode should be seen as a cautionary tale about “progressives” and social engineering experiments on low-income Americans. This morning’s Wall Street Journal article is blunt:
That strategy failed, and the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant now is pursuing a back-to-basics strategy to reverse the company’s fortunes.
The failure, in large part, can be pinned to Leslie Dach: a well-known progressive and former senior aide to Vice President Al Gore. In July 2006, Dach was installed as the public relations chief for Wal-Mart. He drafted a number of other progressives into the company, seeking to change the company’s way of doing business: its culture, its politics, and most importantly its products.
Out went drab, inexpensive merchandise so dear to low-income Americans. In came upscale organic foods, “green” products, trendy jeans, and political correctness. In other words, Dach sought to expose poor working Americans to the “good life” of the wealthy, environmentally conscious Prius driver.
Dach’s failure should be a cautionary tale for President Obama: last week he scolded a blue collar man in Pennsylvania for driving an SUV, and he has previously admonished Americans to get out of their gas-guzzlers and into electric cars. Dach’s failure should also put Michelle Obama on notice; she has been pushing her White House organic vegetable garden as a model for working Americans.
Like other real-world experiments, the Wal-Mart story exposes the failure of progressivism in the marketplace, as the Dach strategy has been a fiasco: the merchandising turned off low-income (and largely Democratic-leaning) customers. Says former Wal-Mart executive Jimmy Wright:
The basic Wal-Mart customer didn’t leave Wal-Mart. What happened is that Wal-Mart left the customer.
Dach convinced the company to steer away from founder Sam Walton’s core values. At the core of Dach’s campaign was to prove that Wal-Mart was “going green.” He brought in Vice President Gore to speak about environmental issues: they actually screened his global warming film, An Inconvenient Truth, at a quarterly meeting of Wal-Mart empl0yees and invited environmental groups. Expensive organic foods were showcased in their produce section. Trendy and pricey environmentally safe products were put on the shelves.
Richard Edelman of Edelman Public Relations — who had once hired Dach — noted that Dach constantly pushed Democratic Party health care and environmental agendas inside the giant company. Writes the New Yorker:
Richard Edelman suggested that he is seeing Dach’s influence on the company. Edelman called Dach an “idealist” who has carried to Wal-Mart his fervor for such traditional Democratic causes as universal health care and environmentalism.
The Sierra Club’s Carl Pope seemed pleased that Dach was inside the enemy camp, confiding to the New Yorker:
One of the remarkable things about the environmental movement is how rarely people from our side end up on the other side, and Leslie is on the other side.
But Dach’s fervor only sunk the company. Andy Barron, a Wal-Mart executive vice president, told an investor meeting:
Clearly, we’ve lost some of our focus on what I would call the core customer. … You might say, in short, that we were trying to be something that maybe we’re not.
George Siemon, CEO of Organic Valley — the nation’s largest organics cooperative — said to the WSJ:
Is the Wal-Mart customer ready to embrace a full set of organics products? The answer is no, not yet.
This is probably not what Michelle Obama wants to hear.
For leading the failed experiment, Dach was awarded three million dollars in stock and a hundred and sixty-eight thousand stock options, in addition to an undisclosed base salary.
Summing up the mess, mechanic Mike Craig told the WSJ:
Wal-Mart just went and broke it.
Interesting. I never knew they had those types of products. I lived in Texas and the Wal Mart in Conroe and Porter never had those types of Products, and now I live in Lexington KY, been to three different Wally Worlds, and never saw those products. So I think they musta been marketing them in bigger cities?
When you’re struggling to make ends meet, you have little time for Leftist ideology.
Speaking of Target (OK, I know we weren’t) I was shopping there last night and a lot of ths shelves were empty or half empty.
There was a lot of ‘facing’ where they move all the items on a shelf to the front to give it a good appearance, but behind one or two bottles or cans of an item there were entire shelves empty.
This just seemed incredibly odd to me... anyone notice that in other stores? the container water shelves were almost 100% gone. I bought some of the remainder just because it seemed ominous.
I don’t buy clothes or organic food from Wal-Mart, can’t say I noticed anything changed.
Everyone I know has wondered WHAT has happened to Wal Mart lately. Is this why?
How is it that a ‘superstore’ has less in it than the regular store? Items that were always there are no longer carried( fabric,etc) and shelves are not restocked with basic things. Our Superstore, recently, didn’t have plastic buckets! Craft supplies are sold out and go un-stocked for months. Small appliances are now one, tiny, counter. It’s a lot of items. You’d think something selling out would mean restock and sell more-but no.
I realize groceries are the main thing in superstores now, but a store that is DOUBLE the size of the regular Wal-Mart ahouldn’t have LESS to choose from, should it?
Is that everywhere, or just here where losses to hurricanes make everyone(rightfully) wary about investing a lot in stock?
As for ‘green’ re produce- I’m not paying double for anything supposedly ‘organic’. Al Gore,eh-—lordy, you’d think a successful organization like Wal-Mart would have known their market better!
That’s what I’m guessing. They had some of that here, mostly food items, but not overwhelming.
I think this is a textbook case of the reality of the progressive left and what their policies actually do. Trendy, expensive, elitist, which completely scares away anyone on a budget.
They aren’t looking out for the common man and don’t want to. Their agenda is far more religious in nature than it is about us eating healthier or buying better products. They want to impose expensive products on us out of a sense of superior morality than anything practical.
I don’t know if the failed strategy really counts as “social engineering of low income” people - they did it because they thought there was a market for products with enviro-bullshit cachet.
I have seen that many times in stores.
HA! See, their evil plan worked!
We buy organic foods. Wal-Mart never had enough selection to even compete with a small natural foods store here in town.
You’re right- the common man is reviled by these people.
If I could banish a word from the retail market it would be
‘upscale’.
Most working people can’t afford to be ‘upscale’, shop ‘upscale’ or want ‘upscale’. That word means overpriced and extravagant. No one I know can afford to be ‘upscale’. We need, decent, basic, affordable stuff.
Yet these marketing morons revile Wal-Mart and insist everyone wants trendy, upscale, overpriced shopping- and they are astonished when these businesses go under!
There’s a place for upscale products in the retail market. Rich people do exist, after all, and want, like, fancy lamps and Bentleys and organic kobe beef and what have you.
The market will take care of things, if government doesn’t interfere. AFAIK walmart’s move to pricy organic food etc. wasn’t a result of government intervention; it was just a silly business strategy. They have been punished by consumers and have reconsidered.
Product selection has been driven by this 'focus' over the past few years. The consequence was significant.
Walmart tried a similar upscaling in the late 80s when they were in rapid expansion mode. Even during the daytime in major city Walmarts, there were few consumers.
In the late 80s/early 90s Walmart returned to the ‘made in America’ and ‘low prices’ paradigms. Customers returned.
This is just some window dressing reasons for Wal Mart’s fail. The real reason is cost of goods to the suppliers,and Wal Marts continual squeezing out of any local sourcing. IF Wal Mart were to revert to local buy policies (with subsequent reduction in transport price) with “just in time” inventory management from Bentonville’s bunker-— people would have a different view of them entirely. Each store, while still being part of a major conglomerate, would be locally centered. The company already does this demographically— example, in W. Orlando, there are whole sections of grocery shelves with Carribean/Jamaican foods-— from the islands. Specifically targeted to the demographics.
The “going green” was a stupid response to Kmart/Sears segments and possibly Whole Foods or others “greenies”, and predicated on higher markup margins for “natural organics” etc. The real marketplace will not spend extra money on this—when all they want is orange colored cheddar for cheap and macachee.
I agree- there is a place for ‘upscale’, but it’s not everywhere. Case in point. Here in N.O., where much is still in ruins after Katrina, neighborhoods are begging for grocery stores and basic shopping venues. Yet almost every project that IS planned is for ‘upscale’ shopping. Blighted area- put in upscale shopping! Supermarket destroyed by the hurricane- lets put in boutique shopping to ‘revitalize’ things!
Canal St is a perfect example. All of N.O. used to shop there. Now malls make more sense-comfort and safety wise- but they really think taking a huge Woolworth building and making it ‘upscale’ shopping and condos is going to turn Canal St into Rodeo Drive South! In a mostly poor, declining,devastated city!
Sure there are rich people who think underwear is actually worth $100 and designer bread is the ONLY thing they’ll buy, but to ignore the vast majority of retail shoppers for these few is corporate suicide.
Affordable Fruit of the Loom and bread for a baloney sandwich is what most people want.
Upscale, IMO, means you’re paying too much-and rich people who do are stupid.
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