Nathan Strum

When I was a kid in the 80's, even here in what is now a dump of two towns, we had at least six department stores and a small mall. Most of these stores had a selection during the holidays that makes our bloated Walmart look pathetic by comparison and these stores were half the size. Even the little mall was very nice with a good selection of stores. Retail around here stayed decent until the Walmart A-bomb hit in late 1994.

In 1998, our Walmart upgraded to a superstore and it was all over. Walmart became the supreme retailer, homogenizing selection and telling companies what they could and could not make. Selection began to suck and online companies like Amazon found a ready market of people fed up with that.

The WalMart Effect (Previously called the KMart Effect) is definitely a real thing! Around here there was also one more thing in play, and that was retailers who never lowered their prices no matter what happened...Our family music store, for instance, competed with online sales (Not ignored them)....Much like an arcade here in the 80's who set all their games on the hardest settings...It simply drove traffic to all the other arcades while they went out of business ...