Retail giant fails!!

[SomeRandom]

Okay so usually when companies find success in their own country, they will decide to branch out into the wider market. (Read the world.)

To succeed one obviously needs to not only adapt to the various regulations and legal restrictions, which vary country to country. But also study the local culture carefully to find the right “in” so to speak.

This doesn’t always happen though. From lack of research to failing to adapt to cultural differences, giant conglomerates don’t always succeed in the global market.

Here are a few of my personal favourites

Starbucks. Australiastan
Ozzies are apparently known as “coffee snobs” with even our McDonalds here having to invest hard into developing coffee good enough to win over locals. (Well okay good enough for fast food.) Branded here as “McCafe” and indeed Hungry Jacks (Burger King) doing the same to compete
Indeed there are many locally owned small coffee shops near me like everywhere. And yes even franchises.
Starbucks tried opening here a few years back and absolutely bombed in the market. Not only did the taste fail to win over many locals, the stores were often seen as “too cold.” Here coffee shops are seen as a “cozy” place to talk to friends or even hold informal business meetings. The cold “out the door with your cuppa” attitude employed by Starbucks didn’t really jive with locals
The Seattle based company (is that right?) closed down many stores and sold what was left to the owner of our 7/11 (independent convenience petrol/gas store.)
They continue to operate under the Starbucks name (there’s even a couple near me) but they are no longer owned or supported by their US parent company here. Indeed they are still losing money for their owner, afaik. Though tourists might still frequent them just as a novelty thing lol
(Not a coffee drinker myself but I will say, I vastly prefer a cappuccino from Gloria Jeans or even Coffee Club here lol)

Don’t know if it failed necessarily, but I will say, not a fan of Baskin and Robbins. There’s one down the road from me and the fam and I went there just to try it out.
Quite inferior to locally owned Ice Cream shops, imo.

Walmart in Germany
Apparently Walmart snapped up a bunch of failing supermarkets/small retailers and tried to jump into the market.
But they failed to adapt to the local culture. The story goes that the company implemented an overly enthusiastic “US based” work culture in stores which served to only confuse employees. Indeed they required employees to be overly nice to customers. Apparently the locals thought this was quite inappropriate social behaviour and freaked them out. Wouldn’t fly here either
In addition to other rather dumb business choices, like trying to go against the local unions, they were ultimately defeated in the marketplace of ideas lol
(Incidentally Walmart can’t open here in Australia since it’s business practices are practically illegal here. Indeed they were rather illegal in Germany too.)

EBay apparently failed hard in China. Not understanding their competition and why they were successful in the market to begin with. Their competitor offered interactive and fun shopping experiences, with direct messaging from buyers to sellers whilst EBay by comparison looked boring and ultimately failed to win over the locals.

What about you?
Can you think of any catastrophic bungles by retailers? Doesn’t necessarily have to be failed international attempts.
Go ahead and comment as you wish

 

[John53]

Okay so usually when companies find success in their own country, they will decide to branch out into the wider market. (Read the world.)

To succeed one obviously needs to not only adapt to the various regulations and legal restrictions, which vary country to country. But also study the local culture carefully to find the right “in” so to speak.

This doesn’t always happen though. From lack of research to failing to adapt to cultural differences, giant conglomerates don’t always succeed in the global market.

Here are a few of my personal favourites

Starbucks. Australiastan
Ozzies are apparently known as “coffee snobs” with even our McDonalds here having to invest hard into developing coffee good enough to win over locals. (Well okay good enough for fast food.) Branded here as “McCafe” and indeed Hungry Jacks (Burger King) doing the same to compete
Indeed there are many locally owned small coffee shops near me like everywhere. And yes even franchises.
Starbucks tried opening here a few years back and absolutely bombed in the market. Not only did the taste fail to win over many locals, the stores were often seen as “too cold.” Here coffee shops are seen as a “cozy” place to talk to friends or even hold informal business meetings. The cold “out the door with your cuppa” attitude employed by Starbucks didn’t really jive with locals
The Seattle based company (is that right?) closed down many stores and sold what was left to the owner of our 7/11 (independent convenience petrol/gas store.)
They continue to operate under the Starbucks name (there’s even a couple near me) but they are no longer owned or supported by their US parent company here. Indeed they are still losing money for their owner, afaik. Though tourists might still frequent them just as a novelty thing lol
(Not a coffee drinker myself but I will say, I vastly prefer a cappuccino from Gloria Jeans or even Coffee Club here lol)

Don’t know if it failed necessarily, but I will say, not a fan of Baskin and Robbins. There’s one down the road from me and the fam and I went there just to try it out.
Quite inferior to locally owned Ice Cream shops, imo.

Walmart in Germany
Apparently Walmart snapped up a bunch of failing supermarkets/small retailers and tried to jump into the market.
But they failed to adapt to the local culture. The story goes that the company implemented an overly enthusiastic “US based” work culture in stores which served to only confuse employees. Indeed they required employees to be overly nice to customers. Apparently the locals thought this was quite inappropriate social behaviour and in addition to other rather dumb business choices, they were ultimately defeated in the marketplace of ideas lol

EBay apparently failed hard in China. Not understanding their competition and why they were successful in the market to begin with. Their competitor offered interactive and fun shopping experiences, with direct messaging from buyers to sellers whilst EBay by comparison looked boring and ultimately failed to win over the locals.

What about you?
Can you think of any catastrophic bungles by retailers? Doesn’t necessarily have to be failed international attempts.
Go ahead and comment as you wish

Bunnings failed in England.

 

[SomeRandom]

Bunnings failed in England.

Oh really! Did not know that!
Why may I ask? Better competition?

 

[John53]

Oh really! Did not know that!
Why may I ask? Better competition?

Not sure. Maybe not enough bogans.

 

[SomeRandom]

Not sure. Maybe not enough bogans.

Fair enough

 

[John53]

Fair enough

Bunnings UK abandoned by Wesfarmers after being sold for £1

 

[PoetPhilosopher]

One company which I see as a case of many "don't do's" is GameStop. Here's a few of the controversial things they've done:

-Occasionally selling open games as "New" (and not by accident)
-Buying up companies which causes the purchased company to fail, and loses money themselves for the parent company in the process
-Company identity crisises
-Being an entrepreneur in ways which doesn't pay off
-And I'm sure there's more.

 

[exchemist]

Okay so usually when companies find success in their own country, they will decide to branch out into the wider market. (Read the world.)

To succeed one obviously needs to not only adapt to the various regulations and legal restrictions, which vary country to country. But also study the local culture carefully to find the right “in” so to speak.

This doesn’t always happen though. From lack of research to failing to adapt to cultural differences, giant conglomerates don’t always succeed in the global market.

Here are a few of my personal favourites

Starbucks. Australiastan
Ozzies are apparently known as “coffee snobs” with even our McDonalds here having to invest hard into developing coffee good enough to win over locals. (Well okay good enough for fast food.) Branded here as “McCafe” and indeed Hungry Jacks (Burger King) doing the same to compete
Indeed there are many locally owned small coffee shops near me like everywhere. And yes even franchises.
Starbucks tried opening here a few years back and absolutely bombed in the market. Not only did the taste fail to win over many locals, the stores were often seen as “too cold.” Here coffee shops are seen as a “cozy” place to talk to friends or even hold informal business meetings. The cold “out the door with your cuppa” attitude employed by Starbucks didn’t really jive with locals
The Seattle based company (is that right?) closed down many stores and sold what was left to the owner of our 7/11 (independent convenience petrol/gas store.)
They continue to operate under the Starbucks name (there’s even a couple near me) but they are no longer owned or supported by their US parent company here. Indeed they are still losing money for their owner, afaik. Though tourists might still frequent them just as a novelty thing lol
(Not a coffee drinker myself but I will say, I vastly prefer a cappuccino from Gloria Jeans or even Coffee Club here lol)

Don’t know if it failed necessarily, but I will say, not a fan of Baskin and Robbins. There’s one down the road from me and the fam and I went there just to try it out.
Quite inferior to locally owned Ice Cream shops, imo.

Walmart in Germany
Apparently Walmart snapped up a bunch of failing supermarkets/small retailers and tried to jump into the market.
But they failed to adapt to the local culture. The story goes that the company implemented an overly enthusiastic “US based” work culture in stores which served to only confuse employees. Indeed they required employees to be overly nice to customers. Apparently the locals thought this was quite inappropriate social behaviour and freaked them out. Wouldn’t fly here either
In addition to other rather dumb business choices, like trying to go against the local unions, they were ultimately defeated in the marketplace of ideas lol
(Incidentally Walmart can’t open here in Australia since it’s business practices are practically illegal here. Indeed they were rather illegal in Germany too.)

EBay apparently failed hard in China. Not understanding their competition and why they were successful in the market to begin with. Their competitor offered interactive and fun shopping experiences, with direct messaging from buyers to sellers whilst EBay by comparison looked boring and ultimately failed to win over the locals.

What about you?
Can you think of any catastrophic bungles by retailers? Doesn’t necessarily have to be failed international attempts.
Go ahead and comment as you wish

I remember thinking what a crap shop Walmart was, when I lived for a while in Houston. Nothing you could put your finger on, just that it seemed a bit cheap and tacky, with an unimaginative range of slightly shoddy goods on the shelves. It never quite had what you wanted. The few items I bought from them broke or wore out very quickly. I'm not surprised it failed in Germany.

Tesco tried to get into the US supermarket business and failed. Marks and Spencer is failing, or has failed, in France.

It does seem to be quite hard to get the cultural nuances right in retail, especially when what you are offering is not unique but just another variant of something that already exists.

 

[PureX]

Years ago when the big exclusive nightclub scene was all the rage in New York, the club owners decided to expand and open clubs in other big cities. These were clubs that people would stand in line in front of waiting for the bouncers to deem to let them in while the celebs and the 'pretty people' would skip the line and walk right in.

They spent millions of dollars building and opening one of those clubs in Chicago, not realizing that in the mid-west that kind of grossly exclusive and elitist behavior didn't impress anyone. So when they finally opened their doors for business, they put the big bouncers on the front doors to 'sift' the crown for the pretty and famous, and immediately the 'regular' folks standing in line got angry. It was winter when the club opened and so the crowd began pelting the door-keepers with mud and shlush from the street. This went on for a couple of weeks until lots of street punks started showing up only for the purpose of harassing the door-keeper-bouncers and the cops would have to be called. Meanwhile the desired "elites" were embarrassed and scared and quit going. By the time the owners figured out that the exclusivity that made their clubs so popular in New York and elsewhere was exactly what was killing it in Chicago. But it was too late. The city had turned on them, and the club soon closed for good. Even the new building was torn down because they'd built it in a weird, out of the way, place.

I was quite proud of Chicago for that.

 

[Brian2]

Woolworth's attempt to compete against Bunnings with Masters hardware failed.
Every time I saw a Masters store it was right across the road from Bunnings.
Really, right across the road?
Spreading Masters into places without Bunnings stores would have been a better strategy imo.

 

[Stevicus]

What about you?
Can you think of any catastrophic bungles by retailers? Doesn’t necessarily have to be failed international attempts.
Go ahead and comment as you wish

I've never been a fan of Starbucks. I never could see why some people are so enamored with that place to the point that they'll wait in a long line at a drive thru when they could just as easily pick up a cup of coffee at QT or Circle K.

Walmart is what it is. Before Walmart came on the scene, I might have gone to K-Mart or Sears or Monkey Wards, but they're all gone now. Sears was once a great success story, yet they couldn't seem to adapt and found themselves left behind. Target seems to be surviving, although they're not much different from Walmart. As for their business practices, they're capitalists. Walmart does what capitalists do.

As for bungles by retailers, I'm sure there have been many. New Coke is one that comes to mind as an example of bad decision-making at the executive level.

 

[SomeRandom]

I've never been a fan of Starbucks. I never could see why some people are so enamored with that place to the point that they'll wait in a long line at a drive thru when they could just as easily pick up a cup of coffee at QT or Circle K.

Walmart is what it is. Before Walmart came on the scene, I might have gone to K-Mart or Sears or Monkey Wards, but they're all gone now. Sears was once a great success story, yet they couldn't seem to adapt and found themselves left behind. Target seems to be surviving, although they're not much different from Walmart. As for their business practices, they're capitalists. Walmart does what capitalists do.

As for bungles by retailers, I'm sure there have been many. New Coke is one that comes to mind as an example of bad decision-making at the executive level.

Good to know that others think Starbucks is overrated.

I don’t really blame Walmart, I blame the seeming lack of reasonable regulations they have to adhere to. I mean both Germany and my country are capitalist countries last I checked. Both seem to regard their practices as way too overboard and even rather creepy lol

Agree about New Coke. The hell was that?!! Lol

 

[Stevicus]

Good to know that others think Starbucks is overrated.

I don’t really blame Walmart, I blame the seeming lack of reasonable regulations they have to adhere to. I mean both Germany and my country are capitalist countries last I checked. Both seem to regard their practices as way too overboard and even rather creepy lol

Agree about New Coke. The hell was that?!! Lol

It strikes me as interesting, considering that your country and Germany are nominally capitalist, but tend to be far more progressive. Even here in the U.S., I find that some of the biggest advocates of capitalism tend to live or be more closely associated with liberal states, so their perceptions of capitalism may be formed by that. Those who come from less liberal or less affluent areas see a different face of capitalism. So, what you see as "way too overboard and even rather creepy" is, for some of us, "business as usual."

 

[Revoltingest]

Starbucks has very good hot chocolate.

 

[Nimos]

What about you?
Can you think of any catastrophic bungles by retailers? Doesn’t necessarily have to be failed international attempts.
Go ahead and comment as you wish

Pizza hut comes to mind, obviously thinking that they could do as MC Donalds etc. The problem is that in Denmark, in general, we have very good Pizzerias at a decent price. So serving "fast food" quality pizzas here is a death sentence, unless they are of decent quality and very cheap. Which they can't deliver.

So they didn't last long, might be a few left, but in general, I think they are done for if that is the case.

 

[JustGeorge]

I've never been a fan of Starbucks. I never could see why some people are so enamored with that place to the point that they'll wait in a long line at a drive thru when they could just as easily pick up a cup of coffee at QT or Circle K.

Walmart is what it is. Before Walmart came on the scene, I might have gone to K-Mart or Sears or Monkey Wards, but they're all gone now. Sears was once a great success story, yet they couldn't seem to adapt and found themselves left behind. Target seems to be surviving, although they're not much different from Walmart. As for their business practices, they're capitalists. Walmart does what capitalists do.

As for bungles by retailers, I'm sure there have been many. New Coke is one that comes to mind as an example of bad decision-making at the executive level.

I miss K-Mart. They sold about the same as Wal-Mart or Target, but the shops weren't so stinking big. I really hate big stores.

We have both a Wal-Mart and a Target, and we almost never use the Wal-Mart. I don't think I've been in one in almost a decade. Other than that calendar business, one reason we choose Target over Wal-Mart is the customers. You've got idiots in both, but we have idiots that seem to use Wal-Mart as a gathering place(sometimes this includes the employees). I think ours might be a little worse than some in other locations, based on what I've heard from others.

Though, there was an instance in a Starbucks within Target where someone walked into the cafe, and... dropped a deuce on the floor. That was probably the biggest idiot thing yet, though quite unexpected. Other than that fellow, it seems the majority of the idiots at Target are in management.

I'd say our biggest business failure here was from the city itself. Those that manage city affairs were looking for a way to keep kids off the street in the summer. They decided they'd add on a wing to the art museum targeted for youth. Well, that's all fine and dandy. Sounds like a great time. What was dumb about it? They charged 5 bucks a head. The audience they were targeting didn't have 5 bucks per kid to throw away(indeed, we are a fairly poor city). They couldn't figure out why it was so often sparsely populated.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Chef boyradee used to have great tasting canned ravioli.
I have no idea what to call it now, but it tastes like crap.

 

[LuisDantas]

Walmart attempted to establish itself here in Brazil. It failed.

 

[SomeRandom]

It strikes me as interesting, considering that your country and Germany are nominally capitalist, but tend to be far more progressive. Even here in the U.S., I find that some of the biggest advocates of capitalism tend to live or be more closely associated with liberal states, so their perceptions of capitalism may be formed by that. Those who come from less liberal or less affluent areas see a different face of capitalism. So, what you see as "way too overboard and even rather creepy" is, for some of us, "business as usual."

That “business as usual” attitude is a bit disheartening to see, truth be told.
It’s like admitting defeat in a way. A mere excuse used (or perhaps taught to folks, idk) in order to justify practices that are seen as quite cruel by many other parts of the world. Even those who are nominally capitalist.
I guess having grown up with an expectation of having at the very least “minimum benefits” (fairly decent minimum wage, mandatory maternity and paternity leave, at least a few weeks vacation and personal leave even in entry level jobs, provided one is at least part time) seeing that be denied to the citizens of one of the richest country in the world. I mean it’s a bit hard for me to understand why folks just accept such treatment.
It’s like watching Americans react to the universal healthcare systems used by the rest of the world. They seem quite impressed by the coverage and lack of cost. Then they often employ some interesting mental gymnastics in order to justify why the US model isn’t that bad. Or should I say “business as usual.”

I suppose culture makes the difference.

(The creepy part was also in relation to Walmart apparently interfering in the love life of its employees. Germans found it a bit too invasive to have their employer basically tell them they shouldn’t be dating or married to a fellow employee. Not really a thing that’s seen as socially acceptable in many places. Like if that’s true, that’s not capitalism, that’s just inappropriate, imo.)

 

[SomeRandom]

I miss K-Mart. They sold about the same as Wal-Mart or Target, but the shops weren't so stinking big. I really hate big stores.

We have both a Wal-Mart and a Target, and we almost never use the Wal-Mart. I don't think I've been in one in almost a decade. Other than that calendar business, one reason we choose Target over Wal-Mart is the customers. You've got idiots in both, but we have idiots that seem to use Wal-Mart as a gathering place(sometimes this includes the employees). I think ours might be a little worse than some in other locations, based on what I've heard from others.

Though, there was an instance in a Starbucks within Target where someone walked into the cafe, and... dropped a deuce on the floor. That was probably the biggest idiot thing yet, though quite unexpected. Other than that fellow, it seems the majority of the idiots at Target are in management.

I'd say our biggest business failure here was from the city itself. Those that manage city affairs were looking for a way to keep kids off the street in the summer. They decided they'd add on a wing to the art museum targeted for youth. Well, that's all fine and dandy. Sounds like a great time. What was dumb about it? They charged 5 bucks a head. The audience they were targeting didn't have 5 bucks per kid to throw away(indeed, we are a fairly poor city). They couldn't figure out why it was so often sparsely populated.

Always check into your demographic lol.

I didn’t realise this but despite the name and even the identical logo, our Target isn’t affiliated at all with the US brand. K Mart here too. Both are completely Australian owned apparently.

We have an Ice Cream shop called Wendy’s (a bit more sparse in locations now, unfortunately.)
So the US Wendy’s couldn’t really open here, since the name was already taken lol