Food for Thought
Have you read anything about recent book price wars between Amazon and Wal*Mart?
Here’s a blog post from an independent book store in MO that conveys some of my own feelings.
The same thing happened/happens with needlework. Wal*Mart sold DMC floss for less than independent retailers could buy it wholesale. Retail prices on patterns at chain craft stores were lower than what some independent designers paid to print theirs. Where’s the Wal*Mart floss now? What’s the selection of patterns like at chain stores? And where is your local needlework shop today?
Mass production to reduce costs and healthy competition are not bad things. They have their place. But where, I wonder, is that place, exactly?
Maybe we need to re-think the value of cheap and free products.
Termination dust brings change.
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Jane T Wrote,
Walmart has killed so many small town stores. We used to have a store that sold fabric and was the only place you could buy such without going over 60 miles to the city. Now the new Walmart stores have quit carrying fabric. It wouldn’t bother me one whit if Walmart went out of business and the tiny shops could come back. They only care about being greedy and getting the market and then abandon the market when all of the tiny town America shops are dried up and gone away.
Link | November 11th, 2009 at 1:00 pm