Errors In The Frontline Wal-Mart Special

I got an email from Bob Peterson, who carefully examines many of the errors in the Frontline report on Wal-Mart. His thorough analysis can be found here. Good stuff.

More proof, as if we needed it, that the people who criticize Wal-Mart are not the ones who need to shop there.

Can We Get Greenwald To Do Another Film?

This one sure seems to have helped! From AP

The world's largest retailer said Saturday that it expects to post a solid 4.3 percent gain in same-store sales for November, helped by better-than expected sales during the post-Thanksgiving day shopping rush.

Genuine Frontier BS

Or Bad Statistics. These numbers, based on research I did for the "Why Wal-Mart Works" book earlier this year, are not statistically possible. But look at 1)Who funded the studies and 2)Who did them.

From AP:

Researchers said random purchases at 60 Wal-Mart stores in California found that the wrong price came up 8.3 percent of the time. At 78 stores in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, check-out scanners rang up the wrong price 6.4 percent of the time. In both states, some prices rang up higher and some were lower.

The recent studies were commissioned by the Union of Food and Commercial Workers, which has been unsuccessful in its attempts to organize Wal-Mart workers for years, and released by a UFCW-backed campaign group, Wake Up Wal-Mart. The research was conducted by the University of Illinois-Chicago Center for Urban Economic Development and the University of California-Berkeley.

Wal-Mart cannot be faulted on logistics and IT. WalmartWatch is just getting boring now.

WMT Stock Price Since Greenwald's Film Premiered

Wal-Mart stock has gained about $12 billion in market cap since Robert Greenwald's mockumentary premiered in New York.

Thanks Bob!

Or maybe it was OUR film that did it. Yeah, that's it! Call Lee Scott!

Huffington Post

The folks at HuffPo were good enough to run the following op-ed yesterday.

DEFENDING WAL-MART by Ron Galloway

In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged the productive, inventive minds of the world are constantly belittled and attacked by the envious and agenda-driven in a society whose squeaky wheel gets the most grease. Sound familiar?

Wal-Mart, hate it or love it, will always be the subject of controversy. I set out on my own to find out what makes the retail giant and employer of over 1 million Americans tick, and I made a film about Wal-Mart, called Why Wal-Mart Works, and Why that Drives Some People C-R-A-Z-Y.

Why does Wal-Mart make some people crazy? Because they started selling groceries in California, that's why. A certain union got unhinged and funded a staff of 35 at WalmartWatch to do nothing but use member dues to pester Wal-Mart. Is it a prudent use of union dues to pick on a store most of their dues-paying members enjoy shopping at? Unions and assorted special interests (the National Petroleum Marketers Association, hmm...) are comically obsessing on a store 138 million people voluntarily shop at every week. It's just a store. The anti-Wal-Mart campaign is the biggest waste of time and resources since the last 3 Star Wars movies.

Speaking of Hollywood, why are they picking on Wal-Mart? Wal-Mart is Hollywood's biggest customer, responsible for nearly 40% of DVD sales. Except of course, my film's DVD, which they won't carry. Check out SAG's website, Wal-Mart is a guild signatory. Did Robert Greenwald's anti-Wal-Mart film use union crews and pay guild wages? Just asking...

Has Wal-Mart lost the life savings of investors, as WorldCom did? Did Wal-Mart just fire 30,000 workers, many of them union, as GM just did? Does Wal-Mart stiff its workers on their pensions, as the airlines are doing? No, no, and no. Wal-Mart saves families nearly $2,000 a year on average, Wal-Mart is hiring, and even part-timers at Wal-Mart get an employer match in their 401-k!

I firmly believe no special interest group in this nation benefits the poor and blue collar as much as Wal-Mart does. Ask a single Mom where she shops. I'll tell you where she shops. Money is freedom, and by saving families money, as is its mission (Always Low Prices), Wal-Mart literally provides their customers more freedom in their daily lives.

Wal-Mart's detractors are focused and well organized in their sub-optimal media assault on the company. I think that Wal-Mart believes that by doing their best to fulfill their responsibilities to their associates and customers, the need to defend their success and innovations should be an afterthought. In today's world, it's not.

In Atlas Shrugged John Galt is a fabulous businessman and inventor, yet is constantly criticized for benefiting society as a whole through his innovation and success. In the book, the question is famously asked, "Who is John Galt?"

Sam Walton is John Galt.

We're back

Rob and I have finished the initial madness involved with promoting the film. We promise to be better about blogging from now on. This was the busiest 3 weeks of my life.

Thoughts from Rob Galloway

FLW TOUR

I remember in 1996ish, I was producing fishing programs for ESPN
Outdoors. I was hired to work on the FLW Tour, a professional bass
fishing series. The tournament's title sponsor was Wal-Mart. Every
other weekend or so, I'd be flying into some part of the country,
renting a car and ending up in a Wal-Mart parking lot. The large
television tent where we broadcast the tournament results and
weigh-ins would be constructed in the parking lot of each location.
Because the set-up was the same in each location, there would be times
where I couldn't remember what city I was in. I don't know how many
times I'd go strolling through Wal-Mart before and after my work. The
craziest thing would be arriving somewhere that had turned very cold.
We'd haul into the Wal-Mart and look for gloves, long underwear, and
ski masks. It was all to prepare for the early 6am launches where
you'd be in a bass boat with a top bass fisherman and filming him (or
her) as they sped off to their fishing hole. Something about going 60
and 70mph in a boat at that time or morning made my teeth grind.
Holding on for dear life, one hand on the handle, one holding the
camera, I would think over and over, "how did I exactly get here?"

Bass fishing is extremely large. I remember a quote several years ago
that were over 50 million recreational fishermen in the United States.
Bass fans would pile into the Wal-Mart parking lots all over the
country when we'd come into town. The local Wal-Mart would always
played a big role in the event, and their community would show up in
hundreds to catch a glimpse of their favorite bass fisherman.

I'll never forget the first supercenter we travelled to with the FLW
Tour. I walked in and my jaw dropped. I remember thinking, if you
forget your bread, there's no going back once you get all the way
across the store to fishing supplies. For someone with ADD, the
supercenters were always a fun challenge.

It's been been over four years ago since I retired from I called my
"bass boat beatings."
It was fun to explore the parking lots and people of Wal-Mart again
this year, not from a bass fishing adventure, but from a documentary
looking into the "WHY WAL-MART WORKS."

We're done

"Why Wal-Mart Works" is color-corrected and is being duped, thanks to brother Rob, who finished everything while I was debating Greenwald all week (it seems).

Thoughts on the Lou Dobbs show last night soon....

Finishing the edit

Rob and I are in the edit booth right now finishing things up. It's weird finishing up a film while surfing the web reading the news about it. It's been an odd week.

We'll have an article by Ann Zimmerman in the Wall Street Journal on Monday or Tuesday.

My Distributor Part 2

According to the AP:

Wal-Mart said that it has no plans to sell DVDs of the positive film on Wal-Mart in its stores, but they can be purchased on http://www.whywalmartworks.com.

Guess that settles that!

My distributor

From the blogosphere "To counter Greenwald's offensive, Wal-Mart is distributing a video by Ron Galloway that says nice things about them. Though he claims no financial assistance from Wal-Mart, I have learned that Wal-Mart hooked up the director with a local Fayetteville distributor, Hannover House, who sell most all their product to W-M."

Whatever. And my response:

It's Ron Galloway, from "Why Wal-Mart Works." Sorry, Wal-Mart didn't hook me up with Hannover House. If you do a D&B you will find they are one of the only financially stable video distributors left. They also pay through a "lockbox" at a bank whereby the bank collects all monies and pays all parties (me, the replicators, art designers) before the distributor. My wife informs me I need to make my money back on this film, but soon. I tend to listen, because she is a surgeon and knows how to handle a knife.

Wal-Mart is also Dreamworks' biggest customer, and Universals', and Image Entertainment', etc.

Who Is Paying For My Film?

I get asked that a lot. My budget is $85,000 and it's not like two brothers can't piece that together from savings and credit cards.

But still people think Wal-Mart paid for it. Which begs the question:

Would the world's largest corporation pay for a film they haven't even seen?

I hope not.

More Fun TV

I will appear with Robert Greenwald on CNBC Monday (the 31st) around 1:40, and then again that night with him on Showbiz Today on CNN sometime between 7 and 8.

One of the volunteers arranging his screenings called today, said they hated Wal-Mart, and then asked if I was interested in doing a screening of my film. I said yes, and if any more call, I'll say yes too.

He could not have been nicer, by the way.

Tons of newspapers called today. Losing my voice again. Better get it back by Monday.

It has begun.....

I was a guest on CNBC's "On The Money" at 7pm last night. It was my first live TV show, and it was very weird. They had me sitting in a room by myself with a camera staring at my like the HAL 9000 from 2001. Then you hear people in your ear.

The composer for WWW told me when you are sitting down, if you're nervous, straighten out your legs and it will provoke a calming physiological response. He was right.

All in all it was fun. I called my opponent on the panel from Walmartwatch and congratulated her.

Good Reuters article on the film here.

Stock Footage

One reason our cost on the film is relatively low is that we used a small amount of stock footage, which these days runs around $75 per second.

So ten minutes of b-roll stock footage would cost us $45,000.

Nice work if you can get it.

ROI on WWW

I am not a political guy. Politics is a business, and it's a business I have no interest in.

I do like successful investments, however. The final budget, including publicity for this film, will be around $85,000 before Robert and I can pay ourselves. BTW, that is 6.5% of the budget for the other film.

At my royalty rate, that means I need to sell about 25,000 copies to breakeven. I feel that my distributor will hit that target, especially given this level of publicity.

Then Rob and I pay off the VISA bills and home equity lines, and our wives let us move back into our houses.

Better Busy Than Not

Well today should be interesting....

The press release for "Why Wal-Mart Works" hit Business Wire today, and I am booked on CNBC tonight sometime from 7 to 8.

My voice, however, is gone from talking to reporters.

Jim Rogers from WWW

As teased, here is part of our talk with famous author and adventurer Jim Rogers...

"Nobody is forcing anybody to go to Wal-Mart as far as I know. I grew up in a small little town everybody goes to Wal-Mart from miles around but it’s not as thought Wal-Mart’s out there with machine guns saying you got to come to Wal-Mart, people are driving from miles around because they get better prices, better quality, and better service. It’s like anybody else when they come to town, if they give a better product, people are going to buy it.

You know a hundred years ago people screamed all over Europe that products were coming from America. They railed at people who bought American products, but American products were cheaper, and better, and so people bought them. People are always going to buy products where they can get the best price. Fifty years ago it was Japan, that people railed about. Said those products come from Japan and its cheap. Well that’s the point. You want to buy good quality products that are cheap and if you can figure out where they are going to come from in advance, you should do it."

Michael Cannon Interview

Michael Cannon, the senior health policy analyst from the Cato Institute, had an interesting story in his interview for "Why Wal-Mart Works."

Something really interesting happened in Santa Fe, when Wal-Mart wanted to open a second store there. The city counsel split down the middle about whether to allow Wal-Mart to open another store, and the mayor had to break that tie. Now put aside for a moment whether it’s a good idea that entrepreneurs should need the government’s permission to open and new store and try to offer people cheaper products. If you look at that city counsel vote, you notice something interesting. Every city counsel member with a Hispanic surname voted to allow Wal-Mart. Among those with non-Hispanic or more Anglo surnames most of them voted against allowing Wal-Mart. Now that may not mean anything, but it may mean that people who are closer to low income workers who know a little more what its like to have to struggle to put the food on the table, are very appreciative of Wal-Mart, and that others who are opposing Wal-Mart have lost touch with that segment of society.

Filming in Boone, NC

Robert and I shot in Boone, NC today. We're almost done shooting, which is probably good since we are due to deliver the master in 10 days. The leaves were changing in Boone and the people were thoughtful regarding Wal-Mart. Filmed in 24p on a DVCPRO 50 camera in 16:9. Gonna look good.

We're interviewing a very famous blogger tomorrow. More to come.....