Wal-Mart increases its hold on China

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: 13% in the second half of 2007 over a base of $650 billion.

“The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want,” Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, wrote in his autobiography. And really, if you think about it from the point of view of the customer, you want everything: a wide assortment of good quality merchandise; the lowest possible prices; guaranteed satisfaction with what you buy; friendly, knowledgeable service; convenient hours; free parking and a pleasant shopping experience. Today, Wal-Mart is a global company with more than 1.9 million associates worldwide and more than 7,000 stores and wholesale clubs across 14 markets. Wal-Mart clocked $ 348 billion in fiscal 2007 revenues and recorded sales of more than $90 billion in Q3 of fiscal 2008. Wal-Mart employs 1.9 million associates worldwide and more than 1.3 million in the US, making it not only one of the largest private employers in the US, but the largest in Mexico and one of the largest private employers in Canada.

Next year, Wal-Mart expects to add 48 to 49 million square feet globally, which is an increase of 6% in fiscal year 2008 over fiscal 2007. During each of the following two fiscals, Wal-Mart expects to increase square footage between 48 million and 52 million square feet, an increase of 5% to 6%. To put this into perspective, in fiscal 2005, India had a mere 21.5 million square feet of space in malls which, some reports state, has increased to 50 million square feet by end of 2007.

Wal-Mart alone is responsible for about 10% of US trade deficit with China. About 70% of the products sold on Wal-Mart’s shelves are made in China. It has moved its global sourcing headquarters to Shenzhen, a city transformed from a sleepy fishing marshland into a world-class role model in just over a decade. Ten years ago Shenzhen’s main port did not exist.Today it is on the verge of becoming the third busiest port in the world. Of the Wal-Mart’s more than 6,500 global suppliers, experts estimate that as many as 80% are based in China. And this figure can go up significantly if you include the suppliers of Wal-Mart suppliers based outside China. If Wal-Mart was a country, it would be in the top ten trading partners for China.