Arkansas Retail by Bob Andelman

While Gov. Bill Clinton makes a run at the White House, retail giants from Little Rock and Bentonville are competing for the hearts and pocketbooks of Florida consumers.

Wal-Mart and Dillard Department Stores are coming on strong in urban Florida markets such as Tampa Bay. It is coincidental that the two publicly-held companies grew up and are based in the same state; it is not coincidental that they are succeeding.

"If you were to say, 'Pick one of the last states where you would expect to find the best retailers in the country,' I suppose Arkansas might be one of the last you'd pick," says Carleton Bob Meyers, president of Fairfax-Burke, Va.-based Factory Outlet Consultants and Shopping Center Consultants. "It'd certainly be the last place I'd pick to find the richest man in the country."

Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart and billionaire to whom Meyers refers, is building new Florida stores seemingly at will, in both his established discount store format and his newer Sam's Club wholesale membership format. From 75 stores in 1988, the company jumped to 118 Florida stores by early 1992, second only to Texas in total stores. There are also 18 Sam's Clubs open in Florida -- including one in Bradenton -- with four more to open across the state by year's end. "We've been pleased with the stores in Florida," says spokesperson Jane Arend. "The market has been very good for Wal-Mart."

Nationwide, Wal-Mart has 1,728 stores and is opening new ones at a rate of 150 annually; to illustrate the chain's growth potential, there are 23 stores in California and Oregon, Idaho and Montana are only getting their first Wal-Marts this year.

"I think they're sharper operators than most people," says shopping center developer Craig Sher, president of the Sembler Company in St. Petersburg. Sembler built two Wal-marts and sold the company land in Pinellas Park for a Sam's Club (although Sam's refuses to comment on when or if the store will be built).

"They're extremely penny-conscious. That relates to everything -- operating costs, pricing of merchandise, land acquisition. Their stores cost half what a Target does to build and they pass that savings on. Then they combine that with really good service. It's like Home Depot, which is not an attractive store but it conveys value. They're always well stocked and you can get in and out." "Even at my level, I still take great delight in shopping at Wal-Mart," says Meyers. "I carry a Wal-Mart briefcase. A rich man loves a bargain; a poor man needs one."

Wal-Mart prides itself on employee loyalty and state-of-the-art business systems which allow stores to communicate directly with the home office in Bentonville via satellite for inventory updates, sales patterns monitoring, credit card clearances and transmission of educational videos. Stores can range in size from 30,000 square feet to 130,000 square feet. Newer stores generally top the chain average of 75,000 square feet. Ten percent of Wal-Mart's 380,000 employees nationwide are over the age of 55; the number is even higher in Florida.

In Lakeland, the Grove at Lakeland Square is one of many Florida sites where Wal-Mart is expanding a fairly new store. Opened as recently as Spring 1989, Wal-Mart is adding 20,000 square feet to its existing 89,000 square feet. "Their business has been very strong," says Carlos Guira, manager for the Grove.

For Largo, Wal-Mart's arrival meant not just the rehabilitation of a deserted Zayres/Ames location but the enhancement of several blocks of strip centers on Missouri Ave. With Wal-Mart coming in across the street, K mart hastily moved to improve its property and ABC bought and rehabbed an old lumber market into an appliance superstore.

Clearwater is still waiting for Wal-Mart. The chain was at one time expected to locate at the corner of U.S. 19 and Gulf to Bay Boulevard; more recently, there was talk of leveling Loehmann's Plaza to make way for a Wal-Mart, although that seems no closer to fruition, either.

A knock against Wal-Mart comes from the smaller retailers it briefly competes against.

"They've killed a lot of the Mom & Pops," says Sembler. "They sell so many things so cheaply it's incredibly difficult for local stores to compete." The developer says that in centers where Wal-Mart takes root, the local store mix is changing from a retail to a service orientation. As Sembler puts it, "How do you sell toys, clothes or auto parts against them?"

"They're so good that wherever they go, everybody gets nervous," says Meyers. "I suppose there is no tougher competition."

Bob Beall is one Florida retailer who actually benefits from the continued expansion of Wal-Mart. The chief executive officer of Bradenton-based Beall's Department Stores and Beall's Outlet Stores says that wherever Wal-Mart goes, he wants ones of his apparel stores in the same shopping center -- despite the fact they compete. "They just generate an awful lot of traffic and we get our share of it," according to Beall.

Meanwhile, at a time when national retail chains are struggling with bankruptcy, Dillard -- which operates 198 stores nationwide -- is scouring the country for choice competitors to buy, as it did in Florida with Ivey's and Maison Blanche. Dillard is conservative, make no mistake; it bid for some Allied-Federated stores (Maas Brothers, Burdines, Jordan-Marsh) but refused to up its price when the figure it submitted to Allied's bankruptcy judge was rejected.

"They are a very well-respected retailer, among the most respected in the country today because of their buying savvy, their ability to predict trends in retailing," according to Meyers. "In terms of department stores, I suppose they're the brightest of the new stores. If I was building a shopping center I would definitely want to go after Dillard."

Dillard reported its 1991 sales were $4 billion, up 12 percent over 1991. Net income for the year was $206 million, an increase of 13 percent. This during the same year Dillard acquired eight stores from Maison Blanche (closing one for expansion) and built 10 new stores. Two existing stores were replaced with larger units and five stores were closed.

The arrival of Dillard on the Tampa Bay scene saved the day for several malls. Dillard bought Ivey's at Pinellas Square Mall and Clearwater Mall, for example, to enter the local market, then increased its presence by taking over Maison Blanche stores all across Tampa Bay. The chain was a mixed blessing for Lakeland Square; the Polk County mall was expecting Dillard to become its sixth anchor when it suddenly took over Maison Blanche in August 1991.

"Acquisition" might be the middle name of Dillard Department Store chairman of the board William F. Dillard, who founded the company with an $8,000 investment in 1938. Besides recent trophies such as 10 Maison Blanche and 23 Ivey's stores, the Dillard kingdom has been built through the purchase of regional chains such Pfeifer's of Arkansas, Blass (Little Rock), Leonard (Dallas/Ft. Worth), Stix, Baer, Fuller (St. Louis, Kansas City), John A. Brown (Tulsa, Oklahoma City), Macy (Kansas City), Diamond (Arizona, Nevada), Joske (Texas), Cain-Sloan (Nashville), D.H. Holmes (Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi). The company's day-to-day operations are now handled by President and Chief Operating Officer William Dillard II. end

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