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Kenneth Stone, professor of economics at Iowa State University, began five years ago to study the Wal-Mart phenomenon in his state after he noted the commercial life of many towns being hollowed out by the huge intruder. Few scholars had paid any attention. Now Stone is in demand all over the U.S., lecturing on the nature of Wal-Mart and how to deal with it. Stone estimates that Wal-Mart's stores -- a combination of general merchandise, groceries and wholesale clubs -- could, if growth in the 1990s equals that of the 1980s, gross $200 billion annually...
...Mart is already the largest retailer, smothering Sears and K Mart. "The impact of a corporation of that size and that involvement in the life of this country is immense," declares Stone, who recently held meetings with the merchants of St. James (pop. 4,300) and Madelia (pop. 2,100), Minn., two small communities gasping in a web of Wal-Marts. He advised them, as he has countless other small-town merchants, on how to deal with the arrival of a Wal-Mart in their region. "I don't fight Wal-Mart," Stone insists. "If you believe in the free...
Stone talks about finding special merchandising niches not occupied by Wal- Mart, about improving service, extending store hours. Within the growing network of frightened storekeepers, the town of Viroqua, Wis., is held high as the David that successfully fought Goliath with community promotion, searches for new businesses and government help. In Sanford, N.C., Richard Lawrence took Stone's counsel and began to cruise the Wal-Mart that opened in January, comparing prices and merchandise in his store, Mann's Hardware, a town fixture since 1927. He became more competitive in gifts, paint and hardware and reopened an industrial-supply line...
...delicacy of Stone's presentations and the litany of stores and communities that have survived Wal-Mart, there is a brooding inevitability about the data in Stone's studies. Small communities of static population sooner or later lose business from their downtowns to Wal-Mart, which sinks its roots at their edges. Surrounding communities with no Wal-Mart are devastated. Independent stores in growing areas generally rise with the tide even with Wal-Mart scooping up a big share...
Some of this was surely inevitable in our moiling capitalism; Wal-Mart, perhaps, has done no more than finish off bad shopkeepers and lazy combines. Its bright, clinic-clean stores are the boondocks miracle that Walton wrought...