When Wal-Mart Comes to Town
How one small town reacted to Wal-Mart's opening three stores in the area.
Published July 1993
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLEFor a hundred years Bath, Maine, had done just fine, thank you. Downtown-business owners worked hard, sometimes flourished, and always sustained a small but vital economic community that was the lifeblood of the town. Then Wal-Mart arrived
Gediman's appliance store occupies a sagging storefront on Centre Street in the town of Bath, about halfway up the coast of Maine. Gediman's opened in 1931 and kept on selling to townspeople right through the depression -- a dollar down, a dollar a week. The store subsequently was passed down through two generations of the Gediman family and then into the hands of Jayne Palmer, who, with her husband, Russell, bought the business seven years ago. The Palmers put in long hours so Gediman's will stay in business, affirming the human connection that has given their store life here on Main Street USA in an era when so much of the retail action has long since left for the malls. People wander into the Palmers' store to sit in easy chairs and eyeball the large-screen TVs, as if they were settling in over morning coffee in the Palmers' kitchen. Gediman's offers easy terms balanced by a quaint sort of accountability. "I get grandmothers coming in, making sure their children are up-to-date on their payments," says Jayne.
A block farther down Centre Street stands Burgess' Market, which Charlie Burgess Sr. opened in 1942. The store fills about 7,000 square feet of space yet carries most everything a traditional supermarket four times its size does. A swing through Burgess', with its tight and brimming aisles, amounts to an adventure in merchandising, with hand-lettered signs signaling specials at every turn. An expansive and well-manned butcher's case and a bakery in the rear of the store accent the sense of service and familiarity that pervades Burgess'.
Charlie senior passed the business on to his son Charlie junior, who routinely worked 14-hour days until a heart attack slowed him down, at which point his son Craig stepped in to help. Ask Craig Burgess how business is going, and he'll ask you, "Which one?" Burgess owns a computer store in Bath and a convenience store one town over. He runs a tax-planning and financial-planning business off his desktop. If you mention you've been talking to Craig, townspeople are likely to give you a knowing, sideways glance, as if to ask, So what did he try to sell you.
Back downtown on Bath's main shopping street, Front Street, sits Renys Department Store, its high ceilings dissipating the hazy glare of fluorescent light. A broad, creaky staircase at the store's center descends into a basement brimming with bargains. Renys is known for buying up odd lots and spicing its displays with quality brand-name goods at hard-to-pass-up prices. Halcyon Blake, the owner of Halcyon Yarn, a mail-order yarn business in Bath, says Renys is more bazaar than department store. "You go in there and you never know what you're going to find, whether it's Woolrich shirts at 80% off or some other incredible deal," says Blake, relishing the thought. "At Renys there's always an element of surprise."
Bob Reny actually has 15 such bazaars scattered across Maine in small towns like Bath, whose population is about 10,000. He has been in business 43 years, working with his sons Bob junior and John, and when he describes his retailing methods, it is clear that Reny revels in surprise: "We do crazy things around here. You never know what tomorrow's deal is going to be, because we don't know." Dave Morse, who publishes seven small papers along the coast, says Reny "gives his customers incredible value." He also gives them good theater. A few years ago, when New York City refurbished Yankee Stadium, Reny sent a couple of trucks down to the city to collect old seats and other fixtures from the rebuilding of Ruth's house. He then peddled some of the goods off the back of his trucks in the city, before returning the rest to Maine to be sold in his stores.
* * *At a rough count Bath has some 100 merchants like the Palmers, Burgess, and Reny. Many are small-town shopkeepers given to working in comfortable proximity to -- if not in solidarity with -- one another. In a place like Maine, cooperation is a notion that takes a backseat to more native traits such as independence, resourcefulness, and stubbornness. But those attitudes shifted about two years ago, when the merchants of Bath first heard that a different sort of business was coming to town.
That business was begun by an entrepreneur named Sam Walton, who started out in a small town not unlike Bath. In 1950 Walton opened Walton's 5&10, in Bentonville, Ark., and by 1962 he had grown the chain to 15 locations and opened his first discount store. These so-called Wal-Mart stores then multiplied in the 1960s and 1970s, as discount stores took market share from conventional department stores with their higher overhead costs -- and higher prices. From 1960 to 1985 annual sales by discount stores in the United States exploded from $2 billion to $68 billion, with Wal-Mart responsible for igniting much of that growth.
