Surviving Wal-Mart

WAL-SMART William H. Marquard Tata McGraw-Hill Pp: 272 Price: Rs 450

In the history of American business, there have been corporations far more powerful than Wal-Mart-for instance, Standard Oil and us Steel-but none of them was as feared or reviled as Wal-Mart is today. True, this is a different day and age, but the universal awe that this hyphenated "beast from Bentonville" evokes is a left-handed compliment to its growing sphere of influence. It is not just suppliers, competitors, state administrations, and technology innovators, but also employers who need to keep an eye on Wal-Mart. Consider this: Wal-Mart spends $240 billion every year on buying stuff from 61,000 suppliers in 70 countries. It employs 1.8 million workers and serves 176 million shoppers globally every week. By 2010, Wal-Mart could have $500 billion in revenues.

But must Wal-Mart's relentless growth mean the death of its competitors? Not necessarily, says the author of this book. "We can all profit in the Wal-Mart World," he says. This book, then, is designed to show you how. What makes Marquard qualified enough for the job is the fact that as a former consulting partner at Ernst & Young, he designed Wal-Mart's first-ever strategic planning process and ran it for three-and-a-half years in the late 1990s. "My firsthand experiences…enable me to prescribe winning strategies for business leaders who are required to wear multiple hats, as competitors, suppliers, employers, and community members, in the world created by Wal-Mart…"

So, what's the prescription that Marquard, who now runs his own consulting firm, comes up with? The first rule, he says, is not to take Wal-Mart or any other giant head on. Instead, competitors must figure out three things: How to differentiate, what to emulate, and where to dominate. In fact, those are the choices suppliers must make as well, after they have determined whether to supply Wal-Mart at all. Marquard also looks at how employers can use Wal-Mart's poor employee remuneration to their advantage by offering workers a better and fair deal, and finally how communities must deal with overwhelming forces such as Wal-Mart.

In India, where Wal-Mart has just about signed a joint venture deal with Bharti, similar issues may arise in the future. But that's no reason to demonise the company. There are millions of households in the US that would be worse off but for Wal-Mart's every day low price proposition. In India, where the people are poorer still, an efficient retailer like Wal-Mart may actually help lift the standards of living. Yes, thousands of kiranas will shut shop in the wake of organised retail. But Wal-Mart won't be the only culprit.

R.K. SWAMY-HIS LIFE AND TIMES By V.S. Chakrapani & V. Ramnarayan Harvard Business School Press Pp: 225 Price: Rs 1,800

 

For a city that has struggled to prove time and again that advertising is a lucrative business, here comes a book that's a resolute reminder that Chennai has made a large contribution to the ad industry.

The presence of R.K. Swamy headquarters on the busy Mount Road (now Anna Salai) junction, is a reminder of the establishment of the axis that started with Mumbai and Kolkata, found a rich strike down south when R.K. Swamy Associates burst on the scene in 1973; remarkable, that the initiator was 50 years old then. Thereafter, he went on to establish streams-most significant of which remains to be Hansa Research-that have become the norm for an industry obsessed with '360 degree' approach.

The book brings a rush of accounts (pun intended) and people that have shaped the industry since pre-Independence. And ironically, little seems to have changed for the agencies as far as Chennai is concerned, since Swamy moved to expand JWT operations there in 1955. The book states that "it was not the best of times for the advertising business, nor was Madras a marketing or advertising savvy city. 'Conservative' was an understatement when it came to describing the attitude of most enterprises…" Maybe, there should be some lessons here for those struggling to keep their branches afloat.