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...becoming contractor, importer and wholesaler, Wal-Mart expects not only to save money on the buy but also to cut down on inventory by speeding up the supply lines. Wal-Mart gets most of its towels from India, and today it reorders once a month. If one pattern gets hot and sells out early, sales are lost. In going direct, however, Wal-Mart will make the factories in India part of its Retail Link system. That allows vendors like Sara Lee (Hanes underwear, Bryan bacon) to dip into Wal-Mart's computers and track sales and replenish supplies constantly...
...Wal-Mart figures to take 20% of the cost out of procurement over the next five years and improve gross-profit margins by nine percentage points worldwide on general merchandise it buys directly. In retailing, this figure is astonishing. Think about that $6 billion worth of goods from China. Multiply by .09. Take to bank...
Global sourcing can provide the ammunition Wal-Mart will need to wage price wars against such powerful retailers as France's Carrefour, Holland's Royal Ahold and Germany's Makro. Each of these European companies got to foreign markets long before Wal-Mart...
...ASDA, the British chain Wal-Mart bought in mid-1999, the company was selling men's jeans for about $24 after paying $14 per yd. for 50,000 yds. of material to make them. Then the buy was moved to Bentonville, and the conversation went something like, "We'd like 6 million yds., please. Now what's your price?" Try $4.77 per yd. As a result, ASDA slashed its retail prices in half and upped its annual jeans sales to 1 million, from 174,000. ASDA is acquiring some 2,000 products from Wal-Mart's global network...
...traffic is not all one way. ASDA's George brand of apparel is one of the most popular private-label lines in Britain, and Wal-Mart recently launched it in the U.S. "We're selling apparel anyway," says Claire Watts, Wal-Mart's fashion boss. "Would it kill us to be a little more up to date?" Designers from ASDA and from Wal-Mart headquarters now go on trend-spotting trips together, an exercise associated more with hip brands like Nike, and one that sounds perilously outside Wal-Mart's core competency. Watts insists that her group isn't trying...