Water Mellon for Summer

There are trunks outside the residential area to sell Water Mellons.

I bought one yesterday and one today. They are so sweet. I like it a lot.

Although it is obviously illegal to sell by directly parking a car at the entrance of a residential area, I like this kind of “direct sell”. Although they don’t have a business license to operate, they have really nice goods.

This may be the forth time I buy water mellon this year. The previous few times, I bought it at super market. Really expensive and more importantly, tasted bad.

When the farmers were forced to sell their product to super market, they have lower margin than direct sell, and those who offer lowest price, instead of better quality have more chances to enter super market. That may be the reason I cannot find good water mellon there.

How I love those old good days when there is no super market and there are cars full of water mellons on the street!

P.S. I visited the first Wal-mart in Shanghai for the first time. It is a very American-style shopping center. I don’t like it. People didn’t react well with the opening of the shopping center. Something must go wrong. I still didn’t finger out what is going wrong, but I just feel it is not right. When I was in Wal-Mart, the only thing I can think of was, get out of here ASAP. It seems even not competitive than the Hymall 500 meters from my home.

I hope Wal-Mart will not be another failure case of “successful Amercian company getting trouble in China”.

13 thoughts on “Water Mellon for Summer

  1. Yes, Wal-mart just failed in South Korea. They got out of that market altogether.

    I also hope that Wal-mart can adapt well in China, rather than indulging in their god given American proud.

    Afterall, Wal-mart is not McDonald.

  2. What’s the problem of wal-mart in Shanghai? It is a famous hypermarket in USA, I want to take a look when I am in Shanghai

    next time, is it located in Pudong?

  3. It is just at the Pudong end of the Nanpu Bridge. The location is not good to find though. It is in a very wired location – that is not easily accessible by major transportation.

  4. I would not be surprised if a LOT of the surplus walmart stuff from Korea

    is on a boat right this minute bound for walmart shanghai. I would expect that when closing a store you have to dispose of all the stock. Since no one in

    korea wants the stock it might be an interesting thing to keep your eye on the chinese stock to see if there are any korean stickers or duty/customs marks on it. Anyway if if WALMART is that souless in Shanghai then they are in for a hard time as well.

    A.

  5. I wonder why Wal-mart selected an undesirable location. With the money they have, and the saving they got from closing down the stores in Korea, they should be able to pay for a better and more accessible location…

  6. The retail giant of Uncle Sam is not invincible in every undertakings of his business venture. The “one size fits all” success formula of Wal-Mart has little or no room to adopt the oversea markets, when it confronts with patriotic Koreans, the chance for Wal-mart in Korea is limited. The same also happens to Wal-mart in Germany.

    It is like to stick an America flag on foreign soil!

  7. The key to walmart’s success is that they are usually located in the suburb area where there is not a lot of traffic, and plenty of parking. More importantly, walmart is targeted at middle to low income families, which in shanghai they are meant for higher income families.

  8. here’s wal-mart’s problem… in the united crap of america, they sell junk — poor quality items. all the products they get are made in asia (india, china, korea, pakistan, etc) they purchase from importers for pennies on the dollar by bullying them. also, as tracey points out, they target middle-low income families whose main concern is cost over quality (ie. they buy the cheapest stuff ‘cuz that’s all they can afford with their cashflow). so… when trying to apply this formula to asian countries they run into problems… 1) what do they sell in china if everything is already made there? no price advantage over the guy down the street or markets. 2) middle-low income families in china has a totally different meaning. so their definition of middle-low income becomes mid-upper in china whose main concern isn’t cost over quality. i’d bet that if wally stays in the asian market, they will try to bully their way to success as they have done in america… ie. if allowed to, they will try to dominate sources (farmers, factories) so they are guaranteed lowest cost and increased profit margins. wal-mart sucks, don’t shop there. i hope they fail miserably in their quest for world dominance.

  9. Hmm, anyway Wal-Mart have the best and cheapest bread of all the malls here.

    And I only buy my minced beef there, 10 kilo at a time.

    Ask for freshly minced. Perfect for home made burgers and Spaghetti Bolognese !

    Address : 252 Linyibeilu. Parking is free.

    I won’t mention the employment policies or wages of that mall chain.

    Only say that there is a reason why the american owner is SO rich !

    And the worker’s rights in China are in fact non-existing in the private sector,

    so this must be just heaven for him…

    Other things I buy at Lotus (Thai owned) in Super Brand Mall near Oriental Pearl Tower, Lujiazui. Parking very expensive.

    And at Carrefour (French owned). They had a problem recently with overdated meat, so beware… Biyunlu shop is definitely the best (if you don’t go for the meat). Free parking.

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