Amazon vs Walmart - Provoking the Giant | 2

Business Wars

Wondery

History, Business, David Brown, Management

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the late 1990s, Walmart is happily trucking along, dominating the American retail market. They’re expanding locations and increasing their own backend efficiencies to keep prices low. It’s a formula that’s worked for decades and they see no reason to change now.

But as Bezos expands Amazon’s offerings, he quickly realizes that he doesn’t have the infrastructure to keep up with his ambitions. His warehouses are in chaos. There is only one company that knows infrastructure at the scale he envisions: Walmart.

When Bezos starts poaching Walmart’s executives, he brings Amazon into Walmart’s sights. And they don’t like what they see.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to business wars, add free on Amazon music.
0:04.6	Download the app today.
0:07.0	It's a Saturday afternoon in 1997 in Independence, Iowa, a small town 60 miles west of Dubuque.
0:22.3	Tanyamatics throws her keys in her purse and checks her lipstick in the mirror by the
0:26.3	door one last time.
0:28.4	She's shopping day.
0:31.1	Years ago this was her favorite day of the week.
0:33.9	She'd stroll down Main Street, popping in at the pharmacy, then into Wilson's to admire
0:38.1	the new shoes and stock, on to Bill's dollar store for odds and ends.
0:43.2	At each place she'd happily stop in to chat for a moment.
0:47.1	But it's not like that anymore.
0:49.2	Hold your horses, Bobby.
0:51.3	I'm coming.
0:52.6	Tanya's 72.
0:54.8	She walks slowly to the green taxi cab.
0:57.3	Bob, the balding driver, tips his hat at her.
0:59.8	I thought you didn't hear me.
1:02.3	Just not as quick as I used to be, Bob.
1:05.7	Bob navigates through what used to be downtown.
1:08.5	There's still a handful of places open, a florist, a post office, a salon, but there are more
1:14.5	boarded up buildings than not.
1:16.6	It's been over five years since most of the stores closed, but it's still painful to
	...

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