The Peak of Big Box Mart

This article is pretty interesting and reveals a lot about the financials of Wal Mart as of the last two years. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290347,00.html
There has been only a very small increase of sales last year and the sales have only increase about 1% since the beginning of the year. This is a sign that sales are going flat. Not to mention the failed designs of the world largest retailer in Furniture and trendy clothing.
They are forced to give deep discounts on school items to even the big ticket items like large flat screen tv's.
We have recently seen the same thing happen with retailer K-Mart. There was a spirt of great growth and then it level off and they almost declared bankruptcy before Sears stepped into the picture. Ever since then they have been offering "up 70% off" items on a regular basis.
An person who owns a business or knows how to work one is to decrease profit and costs to entice customers to shop. Giving way free things "deep discounts" has been a good way to drive more traffic with the hope to increase sales, or a sign of desparation of sale.

In comparison Target has grown nearly 5% in their sales from last year and are up just over 2% from that already this year. No "deep discounts" from this retailer have been announced, growth of stores and sales has been steady.

Can Wal-Mart have eclipsed and will this be a down turn? I sure hope so. The world's largest retailer is also a big economic problem for the country and people done even know it. Sure we all love the low prices but at what cost. Things dont last as long and arent as good of quality. Perhapse if you know more of the business side you can understand.

The wal mart problem is two fold. First, when you have a company (distributor) with a product they have someone to advertise, ship, and sale the item. Sure this may drive the cost of items up with all these "middle me" but in the end it is better for the economy. All of these create jobs and generate money for other companies and those who are employed by these companies. Well just like everyone has noticed outsourcings is a big money saver. More recently Wal-Mart has applied to their apple juice "from China or Malaysia" on it. So the distributor is over seas which elimiates money and jobs from our own economy thus damaging it. I do not dispute the fact that this middleman problem isnt good on either side, but I dont like to be a fence sitter and I for one would rather pay more money to have more jobs and more money flowing through my own country. More possibility of return to me.
Second, since they are such a big company they can tell a distributor what price they will sell their stuff at. For instance Colgate toothpaste. Colgate says we have some product for you to sell and Wal-Mart says we will take it at this price which is much less than they would normally get from another company. This limits the sales of Colgate impacting jobs and pay for employee and profit for that company.
There are rumors that Wal-Mart is trying to buy out their off-shore distributors in order to cut the cost of importing tax since they will be shipping their own stuff to US shores. Once again cutting profit to the government by tax and increasing spending and evenutally taxes to me.

Now i know this sounds like a conspiracy but in a way it may be. Watch this, it is a more comical and understandable version of what I have been trying to say. http://www.jibjab.com/originals/big_box_mart