To me, this looks like an article about two businessmen coming together, and failing to reach a deal that both find satisfactory.

Ah, but Wal-Mart is one of the parties. So when a journalist relays the encounter, “mundane business meeting” becomes “epic duel,” in which our hero, the independent lawmower maker, bravely stares down the evil corporate behemoth!

I say good to the little guy for holding on to the values his company and his customers believe to be important. And good to Wal-Mart for recognizing that the guy has a good product, and attempting to get that product on its shelves.

Despite the reporter’s best efforts to squeeze some anti-Wal-Mart sentiment out of the guy, he wouldn’t budge:

“I’m probably pro-Wal-Mart. I’m certainly not anti-Wal-Mart. I believe Wal-Mart has done a great service to the country in many ways. They offer reasonably good product at very good prices, and they’ve streamlined the entire distribution system.

Succumbing to the reporter’s premise, he adds:

And it may be that along the way, they’ve driven some people out of business who shouldn’t have been driven out of business.

Of course, the fact that they were driven out of business is a pretty good indicator that they probably should have been.

Thanks to Matt Hogan for the link.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 18th, 2006 at 1:19 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.