Record closure of retail stores this year.

0:01 Speaker 1 Sunday Morning with us today is Burt Flickinger, the third and he is managing director of Strategic Resource Group. I know Bert forever. He’s one smart guy and he knows retail well. Bert Flickinger, You’ve been in retail all your life, one way or another. You’ve been in wholesale too.

0:20 Speaker 2 Tell us.

0:23 Speaker 1 It seems like retail is in trouble in our country.

0:27 Speaker 2 Give us an update, John, Retail to your present points, facing an accelerating retail ice age, with record numbers of store closings, thirty five of the top one hundred and fifty retailers filing for bankruptcy or liquidation. John, And it’s all in many cases catalyzed by Walmart, the wealthiest family in the world, making one hundred million dollars today, tomorrow,

0:51 every day this year, getting record breaking subsidies to put other retailers out of business. Why Walmart strip minds America? For example, Walmart, it’s gotten over a billion one in subsidies taxpayer funded, Amazon almost seven billion, Target almost two hundred million, Costco and all the each about one hundred million subsidies. You don’t get John, subsidies, Kroger, Winco and

1:17 other companies in the food retail don’t get so it’s instead of creating jobs, it’s killing jobs. It’s killing workers, it’s killing consumers, it’s killing farmers, and it’s killing the country.

1:32 Speaker 1 I understand. And the drugstore companies are abnormally affected. I mean, all the right aids when bank Right Aid when bankrupt, and they’re closing their stores in New York, Michigan, Minnesota, I forget all the states. What do you hear about Damon?

1:49 What do you hear about Walgreens? And what’s going to happen?

1:55 Speaker 2 John, It’s complete catastrophe for right aid and chained drug I was at Los Angeles Right Aid thrifty thirty five thousand square foot right Aid last night, refrigerated frozen grocery, food substitute supermarket, no inventory because they’re so undercapitalized and there’s so much crime. Right Aide as you reference in the bankruptcy closing the better part of the thousand stores,

2:25 and CBS and Walgreens while wall capitalized, are combined closing close to one thousand stores. It’s out of control crime California, New York, as you’ve referenced, John, but Illinois, Detroit, at every densely populated state across America.

2:43 Speaker 1 So it’s the inner city stores that are bigger trouble than the rest of the country. Is that correct?

2:53 Speaker 2 Inner city stores? John, And as we told your great Suzanne Miller of the WABC Miller Report, for every three hundred dollars it’s stolen from a Right Aid or another store. You know better than anybody in America, John, a retailer only makes one cent on the dollar profit. If three hundred dollars from Right Aid stolen today and not recovered,

3:15 that Right Aid sells needs to sell three hundred thirty thousand more just to break even on that three hundred dollars a theft. And with right Aid having thirty to forty thousand stolen per store per week per city store in the northern stores from coast to coast, the math is upside down backwards and creates a bankruptcy.

3:39 Speaker 1 Understood, So what is the future? I mean, it seems like the brick and mortar stores. In other words, you have stores all over the place for convenience to the consumer. They’re losing out to where you go on the computer in order.

3:56 Speaker 2 Toothpaste, John, You’re completely correct. And the tragic outcome of what so presently pointing out is the shoppers over forty to forty five percent are afraid to go to stores to shop. Walmant has no security. I did cover stories for Time, BusinessWeek, Tampa Bay Times that Walmart outsources security to nine to one one. So the wealthiest family in

4:25 the world doesn’t protect shoppers, workers, vendors. So record levels of maimings, made, murders, kidnappings all in store or outside of store, and Dollar General had forty nine workers murdered in five years. They’re protesting because they’re not the government leaders are now protecting the stores. And what’s worse, John, is some of the most successful stores are pumping the

4:52 money into profits and special shareholder dividends instead of protecting their shoppers, workers, and vendors.

5:00 Speaker 1 Well that doesn’t sound too good. I mean, what else would you like to talk about your Sunday.

5:06 Speaker 2 Morning, John Kroger Albertson’s CNS mergers. You know, CNS has done a very good, constructive job converting from wholesale to retail with food for lesson California Grand Union Pickley Wiggley, we’ve worked with them all. Frank Thereso, the union leader from UFCW one is saying CNS is the best unionized employer he’s gotten of all the good ones the FTC,

5:33 as you’ve pointed out so many times, so well, John is well intentioned but living in a ripband winkle age. So they’re trying to block the merger, and if it’s blocked, Albertsons is on its own. Albertson’s has already closed eight hundred and four stored in the last twenty years and being adequately capitalized but not well capitalized like Kroger. It’s

5:56 not a winner for the workers, and inexplicably some USDW locals are opposing it, while stopping Shop is closing record amounts of stores which will continue for the foreseeable future. So it’s the enlightened union leaders who told us John Kroger’s a good operator. Added one hundred and ten thousand jobs in the last twenty years just in retail with

6:18 the UCW. As food manufacturers price couges you pointed out so well, they’re selling less, closing factories, laying off workers. Kroger’s got the best manufacturing network in the country for private label. They’re adding workers and protecting the farmers who are getting less. John and this Cropier twenty twenty four than the farmers got in Cropier twenty fourteen, cash on

6:43 cash for bushel.

6:45 Speaker 1 Understood well, Bert Flettinger. I mean I pray for our country, I pray for our workers. I mean anything else people can do. I mean, as elections coming up, and I guess the people of the United States have to make a decision in Lulu over fifty.

7:04 Speaker 2 Days, John, the key decisions coming around the corner. And as we tell the union leaders, they don’t necessarily have to change parties. But take Connie Lava, the dynamic former UFCW president of fourteen twenty eight in Los Angeles, and run her against Nancy Pelosi. Run someone like Connie against Patty Murray in Washington. To stop the insanities and the

7:29 giveaways to Walmart and Amazon on one side, and stop crime on the other side. And as you said so well, so often, John, common sense at the election booth, especially when it comes to the future of the country. As you Bobinowe, Margo Andrea and John Junior have communicated so effectively to save our greatest country for another one hundred years.

7:56 Rather than worried that we’ll be out of control in the next few years.

8:01 Speaker 1 Bert Flicking Jeff, thank you for your update this UH Sunday morning, this weekend. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

8:08 Speaker 2 U g U two well and happy Birthday week and happy Labor Day week.

8:13 Speaker 1 Thank you so much