Dumping Amazon Prime

[Ashful]

Jeff Bezos has commented that he expects Amazon will go out of business in the future. The world changes and eventually corporations lose their way. Look at GE and Westinghouse, they both were corporate giants that invented the power industry, they got big and bloated and lost the ability to adjust the business model. Westinghouse got broken up and sold in many pieces, Jack Welch bought a lot of long term health insurance debt for too much money and raided the reserves to make GE look good during his reign but saddled the future GE with unsustainable debt. GE has sold off most of what made the company great.

I hear what you're saying, but GE and Westinghouse were in a different situation, as big R&D-heavy companies facing competition from foreign manufacturers with operating costs many times less than theirs. Even with reasonably good management, the cards were stacked against them. But Sears lost out to domestic competitors, most of whom actually started out from a disadvantaged position, but weren't making as many bad decisions.

 

[bogieb]

Further to that, I was watching a documentary on dollar stores (I believe Dollar General is the big one in the US) where they offer consumers a fairly limited selection of goods at bargain basements prices. The corporations order that select few goods in such high quantities they get bottom dollar pricing.

Seems like that's the shift in retail, and I know my purchasing decisions are heading this way, one retailer (Amazon) to supply the specialty items I need, and a dirt cheap retailer to supply the staples we use daily. Seems traditional retailers are being squeezed from both ends.

We've lost 2 big box stores (Sears & Target (formerly Zellers)) in the last 10 years in my city, but everytime I turn around there's another dollar store opening. We now have 6 Dollar stores for a city of 70,000 people.

My town of 6,000 has a Dollar General and a Family Dollar.

 

[Ashful]

It's probably been nearly 20 years since I went to any dollar store, so I just checked "dollar store" on Google Maps, and there's none in my town. But if you draw a circle 10 miles out, it picks up a few, a mix of Dollar Tree and Dollar General. Closest is 5 miles.

 

[brenndatomu]

My town of 6,000 has a Dollar General and a Family Dollar.

Our town is only about 25% larger, and there is 3 "dollar stores"

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Dollar General has an interesting store location plan. They search out areas that Walmart won’t find attractive and throw stores there. It works for them, their growth has been spectacular.

 

[bogieb]

Dollar General has an interesting store location plan. They search out areas that Walmart won’t find attractive and throw stores there. It works for them, their growth has been spectacular.

Walmart tried for 5 years to build here (we really do draw a lot of people from the surrounding areas since the closest city is 30 miles away). Also, the town next door is a college town so for 2/3 of the year their population goes up dramatically from 5-6k (depending on which website you look at).

A couple of years ago Walmart finally decided to throw in the towel because the town kept changing what they required, including making them physically change site location by a couple of miles becuse they would have been "too close" to a registered historic site (but not within a historic district, or even within town itself). They had the land cleared, the DOT stuff completed and were ready to break ground when the town came up with extra stuff that would cost millions more. So now there is no Walmart but we did get the Dollar General to come in and build a small building in town. Great swap since they pay chit (less than fast food and much less than walmart) and are closed on a regular basis during regular business hours.