Show How does the biggest get I 7 v bigger Annys Shin The Washington Post Mart Wal-Mart has a problem In 93 percent of American households one person shops at its stores at least once a year and that's not good enough for the company The retailer wants to continue growing to keep investors happy But how howl If it cant can't attract new shoppers to push up its sales it must get the occasional ones who dash in for bargain dog food or paper towels and then hurry out to cross the aisle and load up on clothes and panel flat-panel televisions For a year Mart Wal-Mart has been trying to get those sporadic and mostly higher- higher income customers to do that It designed a line of clothes up-to-the-minute up It stocked its shelves with organic cotton sheets and sustainable fish It wished its customers a Happy Holiday not a Merry Christmas It hired civil rights leader Andrew Young to burnish its image It joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce This year it began remodeling nearly half its stores On Thursday Mart Wal-Mart reported a a. a decrease in November sales at stores open at least a year a rare decline that weighed down holiday prospects for the entire retail sector Many of Marts Mart's core customers disliked the new clothes and skinny jeans which also failed to set setoff off a serious buzz among the fashion conscious Merry Christmas is back after the American Family Association and the Catholic League launched a boycott In May Vial Val pulled out of South Korea and followed that with a a. a retreat from Germany in July In August Young quit after making inflammatory remarks about ethnic ethnie grocers in African American communities In September Wal-Mart Wal said it was getting rid of layaway which analysts said sent the wrong message to the 20 percent of its customers who do not have a bank account You got to ask yourself What happened said Howard Davidowitz chairman of Davidowitz Associates a retail consulting and investment banking firm finn in New York that has done work for Target and Kinart More important for Wal-Mart Wal has the retail approach of stack em em high and sell em em cheap which transformed a little company from rural Arkansas into a achain achain achain chain of more than stores and bellwether of the a American economy run its course on its l home ome turf in a box said Charles Fishman a senior writer for the magazine Fast Company and author of the book The Mart Wal-Mart Effect Theres a limit to the market for what they're offering They're smacking up against it Wal-Mart's Wal management does not ha have ve to be reminded of its predicament In October chief executive H. H Lee Scott Jr acknowledged the rapid switch to hipper nipper clothing worked in urban stores but not nationwide I l. l J |