Sam Walton's quotations

about why he established WalMart in Bentonville, Arkansas :

"It was good for me because I wanted to get closer to good quail hunting, and with Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri all coming together right there it gave me access to four quail seasons in four states."

"We were forced to be ahead of our time in distribution and communication because our stores were sitting out there in tiny little towns and we had to stay in touch and keep them supplied"

" In retail, you are either operations driven - where your main thrust is toward reducing expenses and improving efficiency - or you are merchandise driven. The ones that are truly merchandise driven can always work on improving operations. But the ones that operations driven tend to level off and begin to deteriorate"

"From the very beginning, we never believed in spending much money on advertising, and saturation helped us to save a fortune in that department"

"The way management treats the associates is exactly how the associates will then treat the customers."

"The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want"

"There's not an individual in these whole United States who has been in more retail stores than Sam Walton"

Bud Walton (Sam's brother)

"I was impressed with the giant Carrefour stores in Brazil, which got me started on a campaign to bring home a concept called Hypermart - giant stores with groceries and general merchandise under one roof."

chicken pics in retail

Here are some pics of chicken shot all over the world.

Chicken feet, sold in Carrefour Mexico. Very common there and used in soups.


Chicken promotion in Wal-Mart




Chicken promotion in, Shanghai Carrefour China
Chicken promotion in Ushuaia, Argentina in a La Anonima store. There, chicken is mainly sold frozen...

Play Food

Saxton Freyman is an author and artist, author of several illustrated books made of carved fruits and vegetables. He has a real talent to give human figure and lively expresion to a simple fruit.

Carl Willat realized a commercial for Safeway.com using it's character. Click here to watch it (it's the smiling orange), so cute !

Other retailer to use his talent, the new urban concept from Carrefour : Carrefour City. Located in Paris, the store shows illustration by Saxton Freymann in the fresh products area. Good job Anna !

Football land art in Carrefour Argentina

During 2002 Football World Cup, I was in charge of Carrefour store (called Norte at that time) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As everybody knows, Football in Argentina is a second religion. If (only) less than 2% of the population is playing football, 9 over 10 people is supporting a local team. That's even one of the first question you're supposed to answer when a baby is born : which team will he (or she !) be supporter...

In 2002, just after the peso crisis, we had to give back confidence to customers and employees. I got this idea to organize a contest between stores to emulate them : your store as the best supporter of the National Team. Results were impressive where all employees came with the "albiceste" shirt (official shirt) and decorating the supermarkets as land art performance. Here are some pictures of the stores located through the Santa Fe avenue (Vidt, Palermo, Berruti).

super size me !

I shot this photo in a mall in Las Vegas last year. Just impressed by the parachute size ! 

The effect of obesity is impressive in the US and Central America. In the 60's, the average man weighed 75 kg and the woman 63 kg. Women have actually reached 74 kg and men are now 87 kg in average.  In textile, most of the Caribbean and South American countries retailer supply their need in mega warehouses located in Colon a duty free city lost in the middle of nowhere. I met last year in Colon, Panama a textile supplier who told me that he recently had to triple the size of his showroom dedicated in XXL sizes due to the raising need. 

On the other way, you may find in Colombia the best sellers strings locally called "hilo dental" (aka "dental floss") vs. "mata passion" (or passion killer) represented with the bigger sizes. 

PS : the other photo was shot in Medellin at a Carrefour fashion show in Colombiamoda.

Fake Carrefour (2) : Carnefour !

"Que diferencia", or what a difference says ironically the billboard in front of this typical butcher's shop in the Suba area of Bogota, Colombia !

For the anecdote, I shot this picture just days before the opening of the Carrefour store, close from it. 

Who copies who ?

brie de meaux ?

Have you said Brie de Maux or Brie de Meaux ? 

"Maux" my be translated in French by "troubles" which is not quite the kind of thing you expect from a cheese. The Brie de Meaux, is said to be the king of all cheeses since 1815 (unlike being the best ...;) during the Vienna Congress directed by Talleyrand. Anecdote,  the cheese nominated King of all Cheeses during the Congress where coming from the farm of Mr. Courtier, mayor of Villeroy at that time ...

Photo shot in a Carrefour hypermarkets in Medellin, Colombia. That's an explanation for the price of 30500 Colombian pesos per kilo (10,4 euros / kilo).

Calculators in Beijing and Las Vegas

I shot this photo in a Carrefour in Beijing and was particularly amazed by the range of choice and the quantity offered. Something strange for an occidental, no ?

Some months after, in Las Vegas, during International Consumer Electronic Show, Sharp  presented one of the ancestor of calculators, the EL-805. The model exhibited, amongst the top notch technology devices, was the first calculator ever, pocket sized with LCD (Liquid Crystal Display). It has been released in 1973. I liked very much the nice (and useful ?) strap that emphasizes the pocket size innovation...

Nice display of a broom promo

I liked very much the display of this broom promotion, photo shot in a Carrefour supercenter, in Buenos Aires Argentina.

Not very productive for human resources but the "m

ass" effect, undoubtedly, is very effective !

If you find interesting or nice displays of products, do not hesitate to send me your photos to be posted.

Instinct vs. "Super Crunching" ?

Google is changing our lives. How ? By turning data into profits. His data mining and capacity to deal and sort out conclusions that makes sense from terabytes of data has changed everything. We’re switching from the power of the experts and experience to the realm of standard deviation and logarithmic formulas (formulas better kept that Coca-Cola recipe !).

Ian Ayres book’s describes amazing examples of application of “Super Crunching” in fields as different as Wine testing (predict future value of Bordeaux vintage upon average summer temperature and rain level during harvest) or Casinos. I was impressed to learn that Harrah’s Casinos predict how much his gamblers are ready to lose and still enjoy the game to be able to come back. The “pain point” of the gambler is estimated with information like age, sex and wealth through his zip code area. Passed the determined "pain point" or maximum estimated loss, a gift / invitation is gently offered to the selected customer ! How to transform a big loss in enjoyable experience...

The interesting point with Super Crunchers is the way it describes the switch between instinct or experience vs. quantitative analysis to predict outcomes.

Transposed to the Retail area, it seems that defining the product to be promoted is, in most cases, more the result of an opportunity rather than a deep analysis of its profitability, cannibalization effect or capacity to attract new customers.For example, this photo shot in Carrefour where all kind of shampoo are in promo in the same time.

Nesquick Promo

Impressionnante promo !

On se demande comment font les clients pour acheter leur boite de chocolat en poudre favorite... sans tout faire tomber !

Retail + Religion

Photo prise à Pâques à Bogotá, Colombie.

On peut espérer que les ventes de thon en boite (vert : à l'huile / bleu : à l'eau) furent bonnes.

Ce qui est sûr c'est que la productivité des employés n'est pas vraiment au rendez vous pour monter une telle TG...