CEO for Premier US Company Sits on Lawn Chair in Wal-Mart VP Office

[The Whiskey Priest]

Jim Wier, CEO of lawn equipment company Simplicity, maker of Snapper Lawn mowers, visited Bentonville, Arkansas to tell Wal-Mart to stop selling his product. When he arrived at the office of the Wal-Mart VP that he was to met with he found the office furnished with lawn chairs and lawn chaise loungers, according to Wier the office gave the appearance of being furnished with things left as samples by other vendors. Wier says the meeting was conducted with him preached on the edge of a chaise lounger, with his knees up around his chin……….

The story of this meeting is reported at this site: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapper.html


Wal-Mart must be the cheapest company ever to come onto the face of the earth. Wonder if that carries over to the quality of consumer goods they sell?

[Vincardog]

1. Do you think that is why their shit falls apart on the way home?

[Sydnie]

2. He went to tell them NOT to sell his products?

WOW!

[donco6]

6. Yes.

He could see that competing with $99 mowers would force him to cheapen his product, which is known for its quality. He wouldn't do it.

Bravo! It's a Snapper for me.

[Sydnie]

8. I just read that article

Kudos to Snapper and Weir. We need more like him!

[Hubert Flottz]

13. I have a 10 hp Snapper and it STILL works great.

It's was made in 1990 and it still runs great. My yard looks like a putting green all summer and I don't do any of that yard Nazi stuff, I just run my old Snapper rider once a week...

I threw a mower that my wife bought me at Wally-Mart in 1999, in the trash last summer, because the deck rusted away so badly, the wheels were falling off. My dog got deathly ill after eating one of their breakfast burritos and my vet bill was almost $700.00! I got a horrible skin rash from some Jon Wayne toilet paper, that my mother bought on sale there, last year! My daughter bought me a fishin' pole there 2 years ago and I still haven't caught a single fish on the damned thing, because the handle fell off in the lake the first day I took it fishing and caused me to lose the biggest bass I'd ever hooked in my life. It was a damned good thing the big bass got away though, because I tried to take a picture of another large fish, that I'd caught on my Sears-n-Rareback fishin' pole, later on that same day and the super deluxe zoom lens, fell off the brand new War-Mart digital camera, that my son had bought me that same Christmas. I just thank Gawd I didn't get my boat there, or I prolly wouldn't be around to tell you about it!

[Sequoia]

14. Good story!

[Hubert Flottz]

15. Wally World's boat department gives a whole new meaning to...

"Chinese Junk". That's all they sell in the entire place, the best I can tell and they build their stores with illegal alien labor. If you want cheap they got it, but you get exactly what you pay for. JUNK!

Edit...A republican lady decides to try horseback riding, even though she has had no lessons, nor prior experience. She mounts the horse unassisted, and the horse immediately springs into motion. It gallops along at a steady and rhythmic pace, but the freeper lady begins to slide from the saddle. In terror, she grabs for the horse's mane, but cannot seem to get a firm grip. She tries to throw her arms around the horse's neck, but she slides down the horse's side anyway.

The horse gallops along, seemingly impervious to its slipping rider. Finally, giving up her frail grip, the repub lady attempts to leap away from the horse and throw herself to safety. Unfortunately, her foot has become entangled in the stirrup, she is now at the mercy of the horse's pounding hooves as her head is struck against the ground over and over.

As her head is battered against the ground, she is mere moments away from unconsciousness when to her great fortune............
George, the Walmart greeter, sees her dilemma and unplugs the horse.

And you thought all they did was say "Hello!"

[niyad]

3. if I had a lawn, I would be purchasing one of the snapper mowers today-

as it is, I am going to tell all of my friends with lawns to do so. BRAVO!!

[donco6]

4. That Wier sounds like a good guy.

From the article:

If you know nothing about maintaining a mower, Wal-Mart has helped make that ignorance irrelevant: At even $138, the lawn mowers at Wal-Mart are cheap enough to be disposable. Use one for a season, and if you can't start it the next spring (Wal-Mart won't help you out with that), put it at the curb and buy another one. That kind of pricing changes not just the economics at the low end of the lawn-mower market, it changes expectations of customers throughout the market. Why would you buy a walk-behind mower from Snapper that costs $519? What could it possibly have to justify spending $300 or $400 more?

That's the question that motivated Jim Wier to stop doing business with Wal-Mart. Wier is too judicious to describe it this way, but he looked into a future of supplying lawn mowers and snow blowers to Wal-Mart and saw a whirlpool of lower prices, collapsing profitability, offshore manufacturing, and the gradual but irresistible corrosion of the very qualities for which Snapper was known. Jim Wier looked into the future and saw a death spiral.

[greatauntoftriplets]

5. What an impression that office must make on visitors...

and I DON'T mean a good one.

:eyes:

Typical WallyWorld crapola.

[ClintonTyree]

9. I'm wondering if they hadn't been tipped off...........

about his decision and were being bigger assholes than they usually are. It sounds like something they'd do.

[ClintonTyree]

7. Props to Mr. Wier!

Wal*Mart is the scourge of the earth. I'm glad he told them to go pack rock salt up their ass.

Looks like I'm gonna' have to buy me a Snapper!

Everything Wal*Mart sells has planned obsolescence built into it. I always say, you get what you pay for. If you buy shit, you get shit, and shit is all that Wal*Mart sells.

[Rabrrrrrr]

10. I wish every CEO had his integrity

Not only the integrity to not sell to WalMart, but the integrity not to make useless pieces of breakable earth-destroying shit.

I mean, Jesus Christ, we're at the stage of our country's abominable growth that we're using disposable mowers?

That's goddamn sick.

Sick.

[Fridays Child]

11. He has the right attitude but is the Snapper factory a union shop?

eom

[Telly Savalas]

17. It looks like it.

According to this page it is.

And the tone of the Company History page at Simplicity's website seems to corroborate this. (Average seniority in excess of 21 years. Don't see that much these days.)

[Fridays Child]

18. That seals the deal, then.

The next lawnmower we buy will be a Snapper.

[cherokeeprogressive]

12. I don't know about all Walmarts but

a 30 second search of the Walmart website turns up only five mowers, two of which are electric. The $99 dollar model is electric. The next in line is $178 and is electric. Is someone here going to argue with the notion of mowing your lawn with electric lawn mowers? Gasoline mowers are one of the MOST polluting machines used in this country. I wonder how many people know that? Snapper makes NO electric mowers.

The three gas-powered mowers are made by Black-n-Decker. Their prices are $229, $278, and $427 respectively. I've never had anything made by B-n-D break or need to be returned, and I've owned plenty of their power tools.

There were no mowers offered in the price ranges that the author mentioned.

Just thought I'd put that out there.

[Beaverhausen]

16. Don't know about Wal Mart?

http://walmartwatch.com/


lots of info there.

[cherokeeprogressive]

20. I think what I said was that I didn't know about "all" Walmarts

What I do know however, is that a brief search of the Walmart website doesn't support what the author claims about what lawnmowers are sold there, and what their pricing structure is.

[Coexist]

19. Or better yet...

http://peoplepoweredmachines.com/mower_compare.htm#compare

I had to use one in college one year - it came with the house we rented. It actually worked great.