May 1, 2006
THE TIMESMEN SURPRISED AGAIN:
Guess Who's Got His Back? (MICHAEL BARBARO, 5/01/06, NY Times)
RIGHT or wrong, it has somehow become conventional wisdom: Wal-Mart is bad for small businesses, outspending, outmaneuvering and outgrowing lesser rivals until they change their strategy or close their doors.But for Sparky Electronics, a family-owned store in California that sells hard-to-find watch batteries and record-player needles, Wal-Mart is more ally than enemy, more lifeline than threat.
The 43-year-old store, which has a loyal customer base of handymen and contractors, wanted a Web site to reach consumers beyond its home in Fresno. But the big technology companies wanted up to $1,000 for a simple site, far more than the owner, Cheryl Cook, was willing to pay.
Then there was Wal-Mart. For $100, the retailer helped create sparkyelectronics.com, complete with the icon that sits above its store, an oversize electrified cartoon character. "The nice thing was that it did not cost us an arm and a leg," Ms. Cook said
For thousands of independently owned convenience stores, restaurants and hair salons, the nation's largest — and most feared — retailer also happens to be a business partner. Through its Sam's Club division, a chain of 570 club stores, Wal-Mart helps them process credit-card transactions, build Web sites, pay employees and take out loans, all at bargain prices.
In that sense, Sam's Club is an oasis within the harsh climate of Wal-Mart. At Sam's, the very qualities that make Wal-Mart such a formidable competitor — its size and hard-nosed negotiating tactics with suppliers — have been unleashed on behalf of small businesses.
Boy, it only took a few sentences to lose track of his own point, that Wal-Mart itself is a boon to small business. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 1, 2006 5:42 PM
No, no, no. His point is "Wal-Mart is bad for small businesses" (his words)--the observation that "Wal-Mart itself is a boon to small business" (oj's words) is a fact that cannot be allowed to get in the way of this main point.
Posted by: b at May 1, 2006 7:01 PMWell, the site is ugly, insanely organized (the home page is at http://sparkyelectronics.com/page/17miq/Home.html, for heaven's sake!), coded in terrible HTML (the page I checked had 144 errors), often looks broken on a Mac, and is done with four style sheets, and yet is a hard-to-update mass of tables and hard-coded font tags, which have been obsolete for at least 5 years. They'd have done better to get a local community college HTML class to do it as a project.
Posted by: PapayaSF at May 1, 2006 7:11 PMHow small is the business that they can't afford $1000 for a website?
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at May 1, 2006 10:44 PMAOG: "small," in this case, seems to spelled "c-h-e-a-p." It's their public face to the online world, so it's not the place to skimp and end up with cheesy, clunky, obsolete and hard to maintain. (Full disclosure: I've been building corporate and designer sites for a living in recent years, but I'd say the same even if I wasn't in the field.)
Posted by: PapayaSF at May 2, 2006 1:11 AMHey, we're out there AOG. We might be able to afford $1000 for a website, if you can Promise(More than your money back!) that it will be what we needed and wanted and there was no cascade failure moment and you need another $1000, I'm sorry, $3000, to deal with new circumstances.....
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at May 2, 2006 1:15 AMPapaya: Actually, it strikes me as your typical independent electrical supply house's site. I've seen a million of them.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 2, 2006 8:05 AMMr. Mitchell;
Is that not a generic problem? For instance, did that kind of thing never happen with print shops and paper advertisements before the Internet?
Moreover, if the owners didn't expect to make back at least $1000 from the website, was it really worth their time to bother?
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at May 2, 2006 11:46 AMOh, yes AOG, and we have memories. That's why we are so calm about spending that $1000+. And of course, PapayaSF did mention the new element, Maintaining. And of course, vandals.
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at May 2, 2006 12:24 PMDavid: no doubt true, but what's the long-term benefit in looking like all your competitors? A good design will make you look better than your competition, and the benefits can be enormous. Last year I worked on a website aimed at students. It was a huge project (I billed nearly $10K for just my part), but when it went live their business more than doubled.
Posted by: PapayaSF at May 2, 2006 1:53 PM