Word: marteli
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...compared with 2% for Visa and MasterCard). A chastened Amex has now chopped its vendor fee to 2.8%, and the ploy seems to be working. Since 1992, the company has moved boldly into / establishments regarded by consumers as plastic-essential, including -- choke on this, yuppie scum! -- Sears and K Mart. This year alone, AmEx expects to sign more than 200,000 new businesses...
...people's purchasing habits, AmEx can enclose targeted discount offers in its monthly billings that encourage clients to ring up more charges on their cards. And who knows? Perhaps the back-to-values '90s still have room for some '80s-style snootiness. Maybe Baryshnikov shops at K Mart...
That stubbornness has forced the huge company, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, to think small. In a deal that reflected the determination of Wal- Mart to conquer all 50 states, the firm last week agreed to build a sharply scaled-back outlet near the downtown area of St. Johnsbury (pop. 8,000) as the price of admission to Vermont. Not that it will be a mere boutique. At 75,000 sq. ft., the store will dominate the town's landscape, yet it will still be modest by comparison with the discount palaces of 120,000 sq. ft. that Wal- Mart...
...Vermont the compromise reflects the recognition that Wal-Mart will bring jobs to depressed parts of the state. Even nervous merchants agreed that the company could generate fresh business for everyone by attracting customers to downtown areas. Governor Howard Dean himself journeyed to Arkansas last October to make the case for building near Main Street and attracting shoppers there. "If you want to come into Vermont, our growth areas are downtown," says Steve Bradish, a leader of the statewide group Vermonters Against the Wal. "They are not suburban sites and cornfields...
...truce could prove only temporary. A lot of Vermonters think of the battle in symbolic terms, referring to the store chain as "Sprawl-Mart," a term conveniently supplied last year by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Wal-Mart opponents vow to fight the retailer's efforts to build stores in the more suburban locations of St. Albans and Williston, where Wal- Mart has unsuccessfully sought permits for the past four years. As the company surely knows by now, Vermonters give ground grudgingly when they give...