Wal-Mart Buyers Up All Night In SARS Strategy

Forbes ^ | 4-28-03

[Unwavering Conservative]

Wal-Mart Buyers Up All Night In SARS Strategy

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Middle-of-the-night videoconferences are now the norm as Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s Arkansas-based merchandise buyers work around SARS travel restrictions to purchase goods from China.

At an analyst meeting in New York on Monday, Wal-Mart's treasurer, Jay Fitzsimmons, said the illness had no "significant" impact on its Asian stores or supplies, but it was forcing employees of the world's biggest retailer to get a bit more creative.

"Buyers have to be up in the middle of the night for videoconferencing" with China-based suppliers, Fitzsimmons said. He added that suppliers were shipping samples to the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company because buyers were unable to check out some of the made-in-China merchandise in person.

The highly contagious Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has infected some 5,510 people in nearly 30 countries, and has killed at least 331 people since the pneumonia-like illness broke out in China's Guangdong province late last year.

Wal-Mart's Chinese global sourcing office is in Guangdong province. Fitzsimmons said employees there were divided into three groups, who were working out of different locations in hopes of containing any possible SARS outbreak. They keep in touch by telephone, but have no face-to-face contact.

The retailer earlier this month temporarily banned employee travel to Asia due to SARS worries. Wal-Mart has 26 stores in China and 15 in Korea, and buys from many suppliers throughout the region for sale in its stores all over the world.

Employees returning to the United States from China, Singapore or Vietnam were asked to stay home for 10 days for an "observation period". Suppliers coming from the region have been asked not to come to Wal-Mart's offices.

Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service

[Ben Ficklin]

Could you provide a little more info on the NWA FTZ?

[Johnny Crab]

I hear lawyers preparing briefs and planning retirements based on finding the 1st WalMart-imported Made-In-China SARS case.....and arguing that Wally World "coulda, shoulda, woulda"....but didn't.

"The jury will note that poor little Jim Doe's toy was made in China very near ground zero of the SARS outbreak. Both he and his family suffered for months as he wasted away after playing with this imported and deadly toy."

The return of manufacturing or justice for those exporting jobs?

[_Jim]

They use it to receive direct jumbo jet flights bringing merchandise in from China.

HOW many times are you going to repeat the same thing?

[Unwavering Conservative]

There have been several short articles written on UseNet forums such as the ones you find on Google Groups about the Wal-Mart Free Trade Zone in Northwest Arkansas.

Many of them article claim that Wal-Mart is importing high-quality heroin known as "China White" by using that Free Trade Zone to dodge Customs regulations.

Now I won't claim something that far-fetched but I have driven through Northwest Arkansas before and folks at restaurants and convenience stores have told me that they do not like how Wal-Mart has jumbo jets flying in almost constantly without Customs checks.

I can't blame them folks one bit for their concern, considering that lax security let radical Islamic terrorists carry out the horrible events of 9/11.

[Unwavering Conservative]

I could care less if lawyers wreck Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart appears to have been the secret weapon the Chi-Coms used to erode the manufacturing base in our great nation.

[Unwavering Conservative]

I am sorry if my repetition in stating that irritated you.

I apologize.

[1rudeboy]

What is Wal-Mart flying-in on these "jumbo" jets? Plastic lawn furniture? Shower curtains?

[muggs]

I thought even private planes had to go through Customs.

[Unwavering Conservative]

I made an error.

I typed many of them article, when I meant to type many of them articles.

I apologize for the error.

[Unwavering Conservative]

I talked to people in southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas while I was traveling through there, and they say they believe that Wal-Mart flies their merchandise in without hardly any Customs checks, if any.

[Unwavering Conservative]

Cheap lawn furniture wouldn't be valuable enough to Wal-Mart to use jumbo jets to fly it in, would it?

[1rudeboy]

I'd better warn you that willfully disseminating false information on an internet forum in order to harm a company's reputation is legally actionable.

[Unwavering Conservative]

I read all this in Sherman Skolnick's 4-part series on Wal-Mart and the Red Chinese Secret Police.

skolnicksreport.com

[1rudeboy]

So what is being flown-in? Please see my #52 before you respond.

[Unwavering Conservative]

Sherman Skolnick's articles is where I got this info from.

skolnicksreport.com

[Unwavering Conservative]

I have no idea.

Sherman wrote about this FTZ and what he says is being flowjn in in Part 2 of his series on Wal-Mart and the Red Chinese Secret Police.

The url for that article is http://www.skolnicksreport.com/rcsp2.html

[myprecious]

I wonder how this will affect Pier 1 Imports? They get most of their products from China, Indonesia, and other Asian nations. This will have a tremendous impact for them.

I owned a Pier 1 Franchise from 1985 to 1995. One day a man came in and asked me how I liked selling products produced by near slave labor from a communist country. Much to his surprize, I spent about an hour listening to him while we sat on a stack of grass mat rugs. I had never considered the politics of the stuff, I just loved the art work and craftmanship.

[1rudeboy]

What about this alleged free trade zone? If Wal-Mart is flying stuff into this airport for distribution in the US, then how can it use a free trade zone?

[1rudeboy]

I read your link. I smell BS.

[Unwavering Conservative]

I don't know.

Posters at Usenet forums have alledged this claim.

Skolnick doesn't allege this claim in his story.

The folks at some of the usenet forums do.

I don't believe that wal-mart is into illegal activities at all.

Posters at usenet have alleged this.

This free trade zone is the talk among conspiracy buff types.