Nike sues Wal-Mart as the retail giant storms Manhattan and sells cars
Filed under: Shopping, Black Friday
Wal-Mart in the News
Wal-Mart customer checks out at Wal-Mart in San Jose, Calif., Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008, sales of groceries and back-to-school products helped its August same-store sales rise 3 percent, beating expectations. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
AP
Back to school advertisement at Wal-Mart in San Jose, Calif., Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008, sales of groceries and back-to-school products helped its August same-store sales rise 3 percent, beating expectations. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
AP
New Kids on the Block members (L-R) Danny Wood, Donnie Wahlberg, Jonathan Knight, Joey McIntyre and Jordan Knight sign copies of their CD "The Block" at Wal-Mart on September 3, 2008 in East Meadow, New York..New Kids on the Block Sign Their New CD "The Block" - September 3, 2008.Wal-Mart.East Meadow, New York United States.September 3, 2008.Photo by Janette Pellegrini/WireImage.com..To license this image (55616078), contact WireImage.com
WireImage.com
New Kids on the Block members (L-R) Danny Wood, Donnie Wahlberg, Jonathan Knight, Joey McIntyre and Jordan Knight sign copies of their CD "The Block" at Wal-Mart on September 3, 2008 in East Meadow, New York..New Kids on the Block Sign Their New CD "The Block" - September 3, 2008.Wal-Mart.East Meadow, New York United States.September 3, 2008.Photo by Janette Pellegrini/WireImage.com..To license this image (55615970), contact WireImage.com
WireImage.com
New Kids on the Block members (L-R) Danny Wood, Donnie Wahlberg, Jonathan Knight, Joey McIntyre and Jordan Knight sign copies of their CD "The Block" at Wal-Mart on September 3, 2008 in East Meadow, New York..New Kids on the Block Sign Their New CD "The Block" - September 3, 2008.Wal-Mart.East Meadow, New York United States.September 3, 2008.Photo by Janette Pellegrini/WireImage.com..To license this image (55615957), contact WireImage.com
WireImage.com
Wal-Mart Asia President and CEO Vicente Trius poses in front of the company's logo during an interview in Hong Kong September 3, 2008. Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's top retailer, is considering its first stores in Southeast Asia and expects to approach 10 percent growth in international sales to $100 billion this fiscal year despite a global economic slowdown. The retailer, long a perennial runner-up to Carrefour in China, is enjoying a huge leap in market share as it advances in a $1 billion acquisition of local chain Trust-Mart, expected to be fully completed by 2010. REUTERS/Bobby Yip (CHINA)
Reuters
Wal-Mart Asia President and CEO Vicente Trius poses in front of the company's logo during an interview in Hong Kong September 3, 2008. Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's top retailer, is considering its first stores in Southeast Asia and expects to approach 10 percent growth in international sales to $100 billion this fiscal year despite a global economic slowdown. The retailer, long a perennial runner-up to Carrefour in China, is enjoying a huge leap in market share as it advances in a $1 billion acquisition of local chain Trust-Mart, expected to be fully completed by 2010. REUTERS/Bobby Yip (CHINA)
Reuters
Wal-Mart Asia President and CEO Vicente Trius drinks during an interview in Hong Kong September 3, 2008. Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's top retailer, is considering its first stores in Southeast Asia and expects to approach 10 percent growth in international sales to $100 billion this fiscal year despite a global economic slowdown. The retailer, long a perennial runner-up to Carrefour in China, is enjoying a huge leap in market share as it advances in a $1 billion acquisition of local chain Trust-Mart, expected to be fully completed by 2010. REUTERS/Bobby Yip (CHINA)
Reuters
Wal-Mart Asia President and CEO Vicente Trius speaks during an interview in Hong Kong September 3, 2008. Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's top retailer, is considering its first stores in Southeast Asia and expects to approach 10 percent growth in international sales to $100 billion this fiscal year despite a global economic slowdown. The retailer, long a perennial runner-up to Carrefour in China, is enjoying a huge leap in market share as it advances in a $1 billion acquisition of local chain Trust-Mart, expected to be fully completed by 2010. REUTERS/Bobby Yip (CHINA)
Reuters
Wal-Mart Asia President and CEO Vicente Trius speaks during an interview in Hong Kong September 3, 2008. Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's top retailer, is considering its first stores in Southeast Asia and expects to approach 10 percent growth in international sales to $100 billion this fiscal year despite a global economic slowdown. The retailer, long a perennial runner-up to Carrefour in China, is enjoying a huge leap in market share as it advances in a $1 billion acquisition of local chain Trust-Mart, expected to be fully completed by 2010. REUTERS/Bobby Yip (CHINA)
Reuters
Wal-Mart, meanwhile, continues to roll through this holiday season trying to drum up as much business as possible as consumers tighten their belts. On the east coast, they're taking a page from Target's play book and opening mini-locations in Manhattan. Reuters reports that the retailer will have a temporary spot in Times Square and will have a roving truck, mostly to promote its exclusive release of AC/DC's Black Ice album.
On the other end of the country, Wal-Mart is trying to sell cars. Arizona's KTAR reports that two Wal-Mart's in the Phoenix area will host Live X Auto Exchange, which is setting up show rooms. The special areas will only have one car, but plenty of TV screens and computers to hook up buyers and sellers with special software.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
10-17-2008 @ 2:16PM
paul said...
Serves Nike right. I have no sympathy for Nike, a company which was one of the first American companies to abandon local manufacturing to pay slave wages to asian workers while paying mega millions of dollars to stupid pro athletes (and greedy CEOs).
Go suck a lemon, nike.
Reply
10-17-2008 @ 2:38PM
Tia said...
If you are employing Wal-Mart to teach Nike a "lesson" because you disagree w/ Nike's manufacturing processes... you need to educate yourself on Wal-Mart's manufacturing processes. They basically enslave Chinese workers to manufacture everything so that we can buy Wal-Mart items at .97 cents. They charge these workers rent and utilities to live in a Wal-Mart worker dorm... even if the workers don't live there, Wal-Mart still deducts rent from their paychecks- but let's them slide on utilities.
Give me a break! Wal-Mart is NOT an "all-American company" coming to teach others a lesson.
10-17-2008 @ 3:02PM
debie said...
You've got to be kidding. Nike deserves the same protection regarding copyright laws as anyone else. Yes, they sent their production overseas but where do you think the merchandise Walmart sells comes from? It certainly is not here. Our country sold us out (mostly Clinton who opened free trade with China). The unions also sold us out. Instead of being happy with having a job and working for a decent wage, the unions have decided that the workers needed all kinds of benefits to go with and a ridiculous wage for a job that didn't even require a high school education. I don't have all the benefits the union jobs offer. We don't have health insurance, we pay as we go. We don't have a 401K, we save and invest what money we do have. Don't side with Wal-mart on this one, everything that you buy there comes from China, that's why it's so cheap. They don't pay their manufacturers anything. People need to learn to live within their means regardless of what those means are. If that were the case, we would still have manufacturing jobs here.
10-17-2008 @ 6:43PM
hwh said...
Paul, both of these companies, but especially Nike, are like tthe old Southern plantation owners, they use slave labor to produce overpriced looks to sell to disadvantaged Americans, especially poor black kids. The suit by Nike is just a ploy to get their plantation economics an advantage over the other plantation. Your critics must understand that the U.S. Copyright Act was designed to create protection for authors and other creative talent to get benefits from their original creative genius, not for a large corporate conglomerate who causes poor ghetto kids to rob liquor stores to afford their celebrity non-creative and non-original foot decorations to get a financial windfall the cost of which will only be passed on to these same poor kids.
10-18-2008 @ 10:05AM
mary said...
Walmart is an Un-American company? Give me a break! They soley exist because we as AMERICANS demanded products at better prices. People live day to day spending money on extravagances and ridiculous things. (ie:Apple Iphone, $100 school supplies). But yet when it comes down to basic necesseties and household goods , they want to save money. Let me tell you what...thank God for Walmart, where else would we be able to make our money go so far? As for "enslaving" foreign workers? Try looking at the manufacturers of the goods over there. They contract for specific prices and underbid to get the sale, then THEY make consessions to lower their production costs. I can't feel sympathy for people who don't look at the big picture. Just about everything is made wholly or in parts from other countries. It's those countries who do not have laws mandating worker's rights and minimum wages. Their governments don't give a crap about them. So how would you expect a retail company to govern other countries? Voice it to the governments over their who are 1 step away from 3rd world. And thank Walmart for giving the American public a way to feed and clothes our families without spending the mortgage money on sneakers for $80. And by the way , Nike and such companies are in business because people keep buyin their overpriced products. Maybe you should check and see where their sneakers are made! you might find yourself in a hypocritical situation. Do your research...when you look at the distribution centers, truck drivers, stockers, cashiers, all the way to the door greeters, Walmart supports more AMERICAN paychecks than any other company I know.
10-18-2008 @ 2:03PM
Brad said...
You're an idiot, Paul. What right minded company would pay higher wages for worse employees?
10-17-2008 @ 2:23PM
jbjg24m said...
i agree what Paul said!!
Reply
10-17-2008 @ 2:27PM
kat said...
I agree that Nike is just a greedy company; underpaying cheap foreign labor (not even paying the workers $100 a month=equivalent of a price of a pair of its shoes) and charging us here in the good ol' usa hundreds for a shoe that probably cost between $ 4-18 to make-despite teh Shox technology and all....its a show for gods sake. Pathetic is what they are. And trust me, NO ONE would look at the bottom shoe and think it as a freakin' NIKE shoe.
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10-17-2008 @ 2:28PM
Jean said...
Sorry, but where do you think most of the junk in Wally World comes from?
Reply
10-17-2008 @ 2:38PM
chipster said...
I know I'm not blind, but I don't see ANY similarity between the two sneakers in question! The Wal-mart shoe looks like every other cheap sneaker with the holes all over it and the mesh patches (or whatever that material is). I think this is a desparate attempt by Nike at getting some easy money, I guess $100 minimum per pair of sneakers just isn't enough for them. I don't know where you can get a $40 pair of genuine Nike sneakers, so where the writer of this article got her info from, I have no idea.
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10-18-2008 @ 10:07AM
De Lyn said...
Thank you. I thought I must be losing my eyesight because the only slight similarity I see are the heels...the same heels that almost every brand of athletic shoes sports today.
10-17-2008 @ 2:33PM
Jane said...
Paul, isn't that the pot calling the kettle black? Wal-Mart is really no better. Are their shoes American made? I think not. Never mind the wages they pay their workers, Union busting tactics, and discriminatory wage history.
Both are corporate machines only out to make a buck, regardless of how. It's nice to see them messing with each other, instead of "regular" people for once.
Reply
10-17-2008 @ 2:44PM
sg said...
Very well put Jane! I'm sure both giant companies are underpaying slave laborers in foreign countries.
Reply
10-18-2008 @ 1:56AM
Cyndi said...
I have a pair of shoes that look similar to the Nike Shox, and yes, I bought them at Wal-Mart. But you better believe that not one of my friends has sd "OMG, you have the new Nike Shox!!". No, but I have heard "Hey those shoes look kinda like the new Nike Shox. I bet you got them cheaper and they look way better than the Nike version." Does Nike not realize that all big box stores copy or imitate the bigger name brands. So what if Wal Mart decided to use one very minute part of the Nike Shox design?!?!?
Reply
10-17-2008 @ 3:01PM
chemdah said...
I agree with Paul and Tia. I work for Wal-Mart. It is not the American Dream Store people think it is. It is there to make money. Nothing else. By any means. Same goes for Nike.
But; it is the demand by the buying public, that fuels the greed.
Hmmm, wonder what the solution could be?
Reply
10-17-2008 @ 3:01PM
jim said...
both companies are driving the usa into the ground !! walmart with laughable wages and buying asian junk,nike for selling 200.00 sneakers and paying mostly american athelets millions in sponsorship.only to use slave labor.when is america going to wake up and put a stop to this? we can put both of them out of buisness if we wanted to, but oh yeah thats right it means more to be hip and up to date with the newsest sneakers than it is to care about the kids working to make them.so let's all go to wally world wearin our kid slave labor shoes and put the us in the dirt some more WAKE UP AMERICA !!!!!!!
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10-17-2008 @ 3:02PM
FL said...
Only an idiot would confuse Wal-Mart's shoe for the Nike model. And only an idiot would pay Nike prices!
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10-17-2008 @ 3:01PM
Mary said...
NIKE should just shut up. It's bad enough that they use overseas slave labor to make thier products, they should look before attacking another company because they think they are going to lose money. Shame on NIKE! I am sure thier profits are fine considering they use slave labor. As for Walmart, they suck too so they deserve each other.
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10-17-2008 @ 3:03PM
Faith said...
I agree with the others. This sneaker at walmart does not even look anything like the Nike shoe! lol. I was like what the heck! That is like them telling Walmart they cannot sell ANY sneakers! Most clothing, shoes, and accessories are knockoffs of pricier versions! Did the Crocs company sue all those dollar store imitations that we saw everywhere!? Please! As long as it doesn't look like the exact same shoe and they haven't slapped a similar logo on it then I say what is the harm?! Some people cannot afford to pay nearly 100 bucks for a pair of shoes! Personally I never have and never will unless they are guarenteed to last me for years to come!
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10-17-2008 @ 5:54PM
Keith said...
Nike isn't suing Wal Mart because the shoe looks alike, they are suing over the Shox in the heels, and they do look a lot alike. And Wal Mart does suck BIG time and I never step foot in one of those places. I don't even like being seen in their parking lot driving through to another store. I don't want people thinking I would shop that Crappy store.