by Bob Brill

Created on: July 20, 2009

Is Wal-Mart The Great Satan or Our Guardian Angel?

The answer to the question above depends upon who you ask but you will probably get more votes for the man with the horns from business owners and suppliers while consumers will vote for the angelic hosts. The issue is "Green" today and while the word is so over used in our current society Wal-Mart is going gung-ho green. An announcement this week basically laid it on the line to suppliers, if you read between the lines, "Go Green" or "Go Elsewhere." The issue is really the power of the world's largest retailer to force the issue, and the hobby has already had a large taste of Wal-Mart's generosity.

You may remember when the sports card hobby was hotter than hot dealers would race to Wal-Mart for the latest Upper Deck version of it's trading cards. Wal-Mart was given the same cards with different packaging and a totally different insert set. Remember racing across the floor to beat other dealers to the few boxes the store had on the shelf of this "variation" of the current product.

The perfect example of Wal-Mart/Sam's Club power came in 1996 when the company got the exclusive on Topps Chrome Basketball. Wal-Mart went to the NBA and said they needed something different from the norm and the NBA said "okay."

"We went to our oldest partner and said what can you come up with," one NBA official told me several years ago. "Topps said the only thing it had which could fit was the new 'Chrome' Basketball."

Done Deal! Of course this was the year of rookies such as Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson. Those boxes peaked at the NBA All-Star Game week. They were selling for $800 a box! Thank you Topps, thank you Wal-Mart. An exclusive for Wal-Mart driven by some key people in the industry set a standard no hobby store could imagine.

One card company official, who had previously worked in the commissioner office at MLB and is no longer in the industry told me something at that time which literally blew me away.

"One Wal-Mart official told me that Wal-Mart's plan was to become America's Hobby Store," said the former card company VP on condition of anonymity. "And they can achieve it if they push it."

Wow. Not only the power of such a company but the arrogance. The record of how many mom and pop businesses, retailers were forced out of business by Wal-Mart is long and proven. Small towns left in the dust when a giant Wal-Mart forced the small stores out of business by undercutting prices, only to be

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