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defrogFresh from my inbox to yrs:
That’s from a press conference in Hong Kong yesterday announcing that Wal-mart is establishing its regional HQ in HK.
Which is an amazing coincidence, because just the other day, the Bridal Unit and I were walking through the Fu Tung shopping arcade, one of many publically-owned shopping arcades that were recently bought up by The Link for privatization, and is now undergoing renovations. We were talking about how one of the outcomes of the Link purchase was that all the rents had gone up, which meant small mom-and-pop stores were being forced out of business and were being replaced by local and international chain brands – which means all these shopping arcades will lose whatever individual character and local flavor they had.
Progress!
So there’s no better time for Wal-mart to turn up, really, though I don’t know if they’re going to actually open a store here. They’ve had one just across the border in Shenzhen for some time now, but I’ve never been in it.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m not 100% anti-Wal-mart. I admit they got a lot of my business in my starving college days simply because they really were the cheapest game in town, except for Big Lots, but you definitely get what you pay for there. I’m also not particularly against franchising as a business concept, though I do think there is such a thing as overdoing it, and I think it can make a good business less special or meaningful. (The idea of McDonald’s as a decent hamburger stand in San Berdoo is much cooler than what it’s evolved into.)
Anyway, I do think it’s fair comment to say that the economies of scale that the Wal-marts and Starbucks and other logos of the world have leveraged to get where they are has come at the expense of small businesses, and the local flavor they give a town. Maybe that doesn’t matter when yr on a tight budget, but I do think it’s one reason why retro/nostalgia trends keep popping up. We know we’ve lost something along the way, and we’re not sure how to get it back.
What would Horatio Alger do,
This is dF
That’s from a press conference in Hong Kong yesterday announcing that Wal-mart is establishing its regional HQ in HK.
Which is an amazing coincidence, because just the other day, the Bridal Unit and I were walking through the Fu Tung shopping arcade, one of many publically-owned shopping arcades that were recently bought up by The Link for privatization, and is now undergoing renovations. We were talking about how one of the outcomes of the Link purchase was that all the rents had gone up, which meant small mom-and-pop stores were being forced out of business and were being replaced by local and international chain brands – which means all these shopping arcades will lose whatever individual character and local flavor they had.
Progress!
So there’s no better time for Wal-mart to turn up, really, though I don’t know if they’re going to actually open a store here. They’ve had one just across the border in Shenzhen for some time now, but I’ve never been in it.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m not 100% anti-Wal-mart. I admit they got a lot of my business in my starving college days simply because they really were the cheapest game in town, except for Big Lots, but you definitely get what you pay for there. I’m also not particularly against franchising as a business concept, though I do think there is such a thing as overdoing it, and I think it can make a good business less special or meaningful. (The idea of McDonald’s as a decent hamburger stand in San Berdoo is much cooler than what it’s evolved into.)
Anyway, I do think it’s fair comment to say that the economies of scale that the Wal-marts and Starbucks and other logos of the world have leveraged to get where they are has come at the expense of small businesses, and the local flavor they give a town. Maybe that doesn’t matter when yr on a tight budget, but I do think it’s one reason why retro/nostalgia trends keep popping up. We know we’ve lost something along the way, and we’re not sure how to get it back.
What would Horatio Alger do,
This is dF
