A Wal-Mart Supercenter changes a community, and Carroll, Iowa, surely will not be the same after one opens there tomorrow. Economic experts, however, say life can go on for local businesses who face tougher competition with the retailing giant, reports Douglas Burns of the Iowa Independent. Burns' report takes a common event — the opening of a Wal-Mart in rural America — and investigates just what it may mean for the local economy, beyond the usual dire forecasts for local, small businesses. (Encarta map)Iowa State University professor Kenneth Stone, who has researched the impact of large retail stores, said the Supercenter will hurt local stores, but they are strong enough to handle the competition. "Stone said that retail trade centers such as Carroll generally have Supercenters. Without one, the business community loses traffic to nearby Supercenter communities like Atlantic and Fort Dodge," Burns writes. Carroll has 10,000 people, the county 21,000. Carroll's old Wal-Mart is in an unusual location, downtown. The new one isn't.
Jack Schultz, author of Boomtown USA, writes on his blog of the same name that the Supercenter could generate more business in Carroll. "There is a life with Wal-Mart ... I see it over and over as I travel around the country," he writes. "Generally, small towns appreciate their Wal-Marts and the most complaints are from towns that don't have one or that didn't allow one to build in their town years ago and today regret having let the big fish swim to a neighboring town."
Stone said the competition brought by Wal-Mart can be good for local business. "Wal-Mart's really made a lot of merchants a lot better than they had previously been just simply because they upped the competition to the point where you have to get better or you don't make it." He added, "Anybody that's selling something different from what Wal-Mart's selling is subject to benefit from the additional traffic that Wal-Mart will draw." (Read more)
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