The sales guys at Walmart are licking their chops at the prospect of huge worldwide sales during the coming weeks of the World Cup soccer extravaganza.
At Wal-Mart, grand-scale soccer fever is a new by-product of its growing presence abroad and the increasing importance of Hispanic shoppers at home. Twenty percent of its $312.4 billion a year in sales now come from overseas, and seven of the 14 overseas countries where Wal-Mart operates are fielding teams at the tournament. Overseas offers the world's largest retailer space for more store openings and higher sales growth rates than the U.S.
Walmart, firmly established as a mainstay in U.S. retailing, is focusing on international growth in the near future, as this article states. The World Cup gives Walmart the stage to do it, especially as they create special World Cup related promotions and in-store sales efforts.
Wal-Mart ordered much merchandise centrally from its global procurement office in Arkansas. Wal-Mart stores across the world carry the same team jerseys, flip-flops in national colors, and boys' underwear sporting the flags of competing countries. Stores in Britain and Germany ordered the most, Wal-Mart says.
In Britain, the current best-seller at Wal-Mart subsidiary Asda is a $9.30 garden gnome wearing a shirt modeled after the English flag. "We've had to fly in an emergency order," says Asda spokesman Dominic Burch.
Well, come on...who wouldn't want their own English-flag-wearing garden knome???
In all seriousness, Walmart is doing what any good retailer (small or large) would do: Focusing their sales efforts on this global event, and making sure they capture their share of the big time spending that takes place for a few weeks every four years.
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