Thrift Means - Supporting Majors and Minors of Product Movement

It hardly makes sense that an auction & retail site like Ebay should have to contend with Walmart Online for market favor, but it does. The interaction and value offered by each company's site is completely different in nature!

Though Amazon offers a more broadly developed mimic of the Ebay platform, Walmart is right there to steal the thunder of both of them...if it can. If what we've seen over the last 30-40 years is any indication, then we should expect Walmart Online to effectively obliterate most other options for acquisition of unique and quality items. Imagine eCommerce in another 30-40 years, if we don't get this right. Walmart's owner opened doors in Arkansas back in 1962 and enjoyed the kind of growth progress we'd expect through their five and dime offerings that appealed to so many types. The thought was "saving people money so they can live better". Well, maybe that's the gist. We think it's grown into something a little more than that...but we'll leave it to you to decide how to interpret the beast that it is today.

In 1970, Walmart went public. All the natural momentum of a successful venture became a new kind of less-friendly societal monster, fed by interests that serve up rather than serve down. Since then, 'thrifty' Walmart is known for "providing a return of more than 160,000 percent to its initial investors". We love Walmart and have shopped its stores many times ourselves; however, not so much lately. While we shop Walmart regularly enough to still call ourselves Walmart Shoppers, we've taken a serious path toward remembering other options...because they're options we don't want to lose the way we lost the local offerings of our respective neighborhoods...including the five and dime stores. Our best advice is to shop Walmart for groceries that aren't possible to acquire locally (they'll do the shopping for you now) and essentials like toothpaste, while reserving hard-earned monies for supreme quality in clothing (meant to last years) and thrift shopping when possible in order to recycle and upcycle.