Is Wal-Mart paying attention to its critics who have urged the store to shrink in size to accomodate the scale of the small towns it seeks to enter? Hardly. The misnamed “Neighborhood Market” that Wal-Mart is experimenting with in Arkansas, has been just a blip on the screen compared to the ferocious superstore roll-out that Wal-Mart has planned for the next several years. Now the London Free Press online reports that Wal-Mart Canada is testing out a “half-size” version of its discount stores north of our border — not the same prototype as the Neighborhood Market in the U.S.. In the small town of Kapuskasing in North Ontario (pop 10,000), Wal-Mart is closing down the Woolco store that it turned into a Wal-Mart only five years ago (when the company took over 122 Canadian Woolcos) and is building a new 57,000 s.f. store hard by the Trans Canadian highway. Wal-Mart told the media that the Woolco store did not fit the Wal-Mart format, because it was on 2 levels (horrors!) and was connected by a small escalator (gasp!) outside the store in an adjoining mall. “We hope to learn alot from this smaller store format,” said David Ferguson, the President of Wal-Mart Canada. “We may find that 65,000 s.f. is better, or 55,000 s.f. We will glean information that will tell us, in general guidelines, that a community with a certain income base, population mix and size, is capable of generating a certain volume of market share…” (How’s that for a good summary of what your town means to Wal-Mart?). For smart growth advocates who hoped to see a trend in Wal-Mart downsizing its stores, neither the 4 Neighborhood Markets in Arkansas, nor this 1 store in Kapuskasing amount to any serious trend in retailing. But it does go to prove that Wal-Mart is capable of building smaller prototypes, and that communities should certainly ask the company to lose the supercenter proposal and come back to local officials with a much smaller store. Citizens should argue that a smaller store would help Wal-Mart “learn a lot”.By the way, although Woolco’s 2 story building was a turn off for Wal-Mart in Canada, the company boasted about a two story building it put up in the U.S. — the only such store in its entire inventory.
In the span of 5 short years, Wal-Mart has become the largest discount store in Canada. According to the London Free Press, Wal-Mart’s entry into the market forced Canadian stores like Biway, Saan, and Bargain!Shop to all scurry to locate in smaller towns, and all three companies are up for sale. In addition, larger companies like Zeller’s and Kmart Canada have taken a major hit on their profits. Soon after Wal-Mart entered Canada, Kmart Canada was sold to the Hudson’s Bay Company, the same firm that owns Zellers. By the way, how much market share is your town able to produce for Wal-Mart? Pretty soon Canada will closely resemble the U.S. landscape, with Wal-Mart superstores within yelling distance of one another. O Canada!
