Released on = December 13, 2006, 3:44 pm

Press Release Author = Multicultural Business Council

Industry = Small Business

Press Release Summary = JJ\'s House of Music will close at the end of December,
unable to find a successful strategy to compete with Kmart, Wal-Mart, and the
Internet. This story reveals how any business can compete against the retail giants.


Press Release Body = Bristol is very unique in that it is one very few American
cities whose borders transgress a state line. Some of the city is in the state of
Tennessee while the rest of the city is located in Virginia. What is not unique
about Bristol, TN/VA, is that the Bristol Herald Courier quoted store manager Leon
Peters as blaming the business failure on Kmart and Wal-Mart.

In an interview with Peters, Multicultural Business Council\'s Together News
discovered that although he did mention to national retail chains, he emphasized it
was only part of the problem. The root problem, according to Peters, is that
competition of the major chains and the Internet caused deterioration in JJ\'s sales
volume.

Once known for offering custom guitars and other musical instruments, the store
eliminated those items from their merchandise mix about a year ago. They were
finding it difficult to sell these items while the chain stores offered opening
price points at mass-production retails as opposed to JJ\'s higher-priced handmade
products.

People tend to want to believe discounters like Wal-Mart are detrimental to local
businesses. This view fails to understand guiding principles behind the Wal-Mart
merchandise philosophy. The secret behind Wal-Mart is very simple -- sell only items
they create tremendous volume. Each merchandise category consists of the
best-selling items that can be ordered in bulk. This creates tremendous efficiencies
throughout their entire distribution network.

Wal-Mart\'s philosophy requires carrying only items appealing to broad demographics.
This leaves local businesses the opportunity to reach out to sub-demographics not
reported by the U.S. Census Bureau or Nielsen.

In Bristol, opportunities existed by reaching out to South American, Latin American,
and African students attending the local colleges. Creating a cultural experience
the students and local grass roots musical talent would have resulted in a
differentiated marketing plan enough that Wal-Mart wouldn\'t even attempt to compete
against.

Local communities will continue to suffer the loss of local businesses if they don\'t
realize that local demographics are changing faster been Wal-Mart can or will adapt,
according to Multicultural Business Council (MBC).

"Wal-Mart\'s distribution and merchandise philosophy prevents it from addressing
localized sub-demographics," says Rick Weaver, MBC spokesman and retail expert. "For
Wal-Mart\'s pricing structure to work, they need to ship truckloads to a single
location. For example, in some suburbs of Metropolitan Detroit, the South Asian
population represents up to 15% of the population. This is far below what Wal-Mart
can address, however it represents hundreds of millions of dollars in annualized
shopping power throughout the region -- enough to support up to 200 local
businesses."

MBC helps local and international companies develop strategies to compete in the
local and international marketplace. They find local businesspeople focus on
competing with Wal-Mart on a price basis.

With Wal-Mart\'s volume and low mark-on structure Wal-Mart is guaranteed to win any
price-war. However local businesses are successful when they reach out to customers
with products not fitting Wal-Mart\'s high-volume requirement. When this occurs,
local businesses find success.


Web Site = http://www.mbcglobal.org

Contact Details = Rick Weaver||1720 Northumberland Drive, Suite 202||Rochester Hills
, 48309||$$country||||248-802-6138||rick@mbcglobal.org||http://www.mbcglobal.org