MGT3120TAWIL

Today was a pretty exciting panel and it all came down to one man, Charles Fishman. My partners and I have been working for about 3 weeks to organize the perfect panel for our Baruch management class. The topic we decided on, suggested by our professor Dr. Abe Tawil, was Wal-Mart and the effect it would have on entering the NYC market. There has been a lot of fuss about this topic behind the scenes in New York Cities top offices, most of which can be found in obscure news articles, so we thought it would be interesting to delve into this topic.

We began by trying to contact Mayor Bloomberg’s office, perhaps we can get a councilman/woman to come join us on the panel. The calls were to no avail. We emailed a local vendor who does quite some business with Wal-Mart, selling a mass amount of goods to Wal-Mart each year. After some persuasion he agreed to join us on condition there would be no news outlet in which he can risk his relationship with Wal-Mart. This man obviously will remained anonymous in this article. Four days before the set panel date, the vendor backed out saying it was to risky for his relationship.

One of my partners had emailed Charles Fishman, author of “The Wal-Mart Effect”, to see if he would be interested in speaking about his book over a Skype call. Mr. Fishman graciously agreed. Finally some progress for me and my partners.

One week before the date, one other partner and I took off from school to travel NYC to find some interesting panelists. First stop: Chambers Street. We went to the City Council office and after luckily getting in without an appointment, met with Council Member Dan Garodnick’s aid. He spoke to us for a few minutes and apologetically informed us there was nothing he can do but we should email the scheduler. And that is just what we did. The scheduler replied back saying the City would have been very interested in sending someone over to participate but unfortunately there is a hearing the same time and she can not spare anyone. Some luck we’re having.

Next, we visited the NY Public Advocates office. After again being graciously welcomed without an appointment by the assistant, we were told to email some other guy who participated in a similar NYU panel and would love to talk with us. So, once again we emailed the contact and once again we were rejected. This time, ignored all together.

We then went up to Target’s NY HQ in midtown, see if they will send a representative. I know, it was a long shot and highly unlikely to happen but we were desperate! Struck out again.

Dejected and most of our hope lost, my partner and I headed back to Baruch after a couple of unrelated stops… (Did you know there are 3 Starbucks in 34th Street Macy’s!!).

As the days weaned on by we attempted to contact all sorts of people that had any far off relation to Wal-Mart to be part of our panel. No success there either.

March 16th finally arrived and apprehensively my partners and I got up in front of the class and introduced our only speaker, Charles Fishman. This was the first time this class was using skype for a presentation so we were also pretty worried something would go wrong. We hit the call button on our computer to connect to Mr. Fishman in his home in Philadelphia, and after some nerve-wracking rings Mr. Fishman finally picked up.

The presentation was a hit. Mr. Fishman spoke for about 30-40 minutes shooting off crazy, mind boggling facts about the monstrosity of Wal-Mart. Did you know Wal-Mart does as much sales as Target by St Patricks day than Target does all year? Or that the profit per employee in Wal-Mart is about $7,000 and at Exxon-Mobile it is $250,000 per employee? Or that Chile is the largest producer of salmon yet there are no natural salmon in that part of the world?

Another interesting point he brought up was how over-blown the issue of Wal-Mart entering the NYC market is. We live in a democracy he said, and if a business wants to open up they should be able to. When asked if the competition would be driven out of business, Mr. Fishman replied “consumers drive businesses out of business, not Wal-Mart”. He pointed out that the Wal-Marts in he city would be large Duane Reades, not huge superstores we imagine as they have in rural areas.

Anyway, I believe it was a great success and quite interesting to say the least.

As Dr. Tawil said a numerous amount of times, the one problem most students complain about is not having enough time. How right he is.

(Group Members: David Tawil, Jonathan Gong, Steven Esses)