I'm writing to reflect on this item that Eric posted:
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Whole Foods sales top $1 billion
By R. Michelle Breyer
Austin American-Statesman Staff
Published: Nov. 12, 1997
Whole Foods Market celebrated its first billion-dollar year, reporting
record sales and earnings for fiscal 1997.
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And the subject line that Eric put on it: Organic is expanding.
How do Whole Foods' increased sales revenues reflect or demonstrate
an "organic is expanding" trend?
What this article says to me is that WF's profits have increased. Its
increases in sales may have more to do with corporate takeovers and
product line management than any reflection on organics per se.
Let's not confuse the two.
What I see in this story is that Whole Foods' revenues have expanded
as they've absorbed local competitors and their sales. Whole Foods
sells a lot of conventionally produced foodstuffs. The article
spoke of "natural" foods, and I don't know what that means. (What
are unnatural foods? Twinkies? PowerBars? Foods modified by
application of fire?) I don't see any data here around organics.
And I'd want some, before concluding Whole Foods has helped "expand"
organics. It may be they're cleaning up on awareness built by other
forces and entities.
Sure, the potential is there. Like Microsoft could start producing
an operating system with half the common sense utility and
reliability of Mac's OS 1.0 beta.
But I'd like to see *data* before crediting them with something the
smaller businesses here have been doing for twenty or thirty years
(e.g., Mifflin St. Co-op, founded 1969, Willy St. Co-op, incorporated
1973; that says CO-OP, not CO-OPT). Hell's bells, friends, a Texas
chain supermarket, expansionist in nature, mega-corporate in culture,
and desperately dependent on cheap fossil fuel can't hardly come to
the Upper Midwest and take credit for folks' attitudes hereabouts of
cooperation, community building, and alternative agriculture. :^)
In some communities, Whole Foods is the only source of organic or
"natural" foods. In others, WF moves into an area and takes over
markets served and cultivated by smaller whole or natural or organic
foods stores. They sometimes move customers out of the economic
(and social) flows that nourish these smaller businesses. They
convince those customers that it's easier to shop at WF and "less
convenient" to shop at smaller businesses.
My understanding is that this hasn't happened in Madison; customer
loyalties to Mifflin, Willy St., Magic Mill, etc., are pretty strong
here.
This consolidation of markets may appear as an increase in black ink
for WF, but what's the real nature of this good news? Is it possible
to sort out WF-the-corporate-entity from organics-the-social-movement
from Whole Foods' actual impacts on the organics market? How can we
distinguish between WF taking over existing markets and an actual
expansion in organics' market share?
Economies of scale require large, anonymous market interactions.
It's a fact of communications work in any sector (business,
agriculture, education, love, etc.) that there's some limit to how
many relationships you can have and still get things done without
going bazonkers. It may vary from person to person or organization
to organization, but time and energy remain limiting factors.
I see Whole Foods finessing this tension in a particularly 90s way:
they give great customer service on a store-by-store basis. I've
never seen a big corporation bend so far backwards to accommodate
some of the most wacky customer demands I've ever read. They post
their customer feedback/request forms, and I swear, it embarrasses me
sometimes to see what some customers are asking for--they put the
P.U. back in puling. And WF always answers with a completely
straight face...though I know that the pens of some of the employees
in Madison must have their Irony Phasers set to full stun.
But I don't know how well WF serves producers of locally, organic, or
sustainably grown foods. I don't see a producer, community, or
activist feedback bulletin board at Madison's WF. I've been telling
them for nearly two years now about some of the specialty producers I
hear about or get to know...and haven't seen many of these on their
shelves, and when I ask, the answer is, well, they can't deliver
their products at the quantities we need to make the shelf space
worth our while.
Economies of scale.
I own a microbusiness. I don't feel particularly excited about this
bigger-is-inevitable trend in organic, natural, and whole foods
retailing. At the same time, I have deep concerns that we move
sustainable and organic agricultural practices and principles into
the reach of more people. In ways that EVERYONE can afford AND that
don't bastardize their original intent nor dilute their power. I'm
not sure how that will play out. I do know that building and
honoring human relationships (communication, and not of the mass
sort, though some of that will also be needed, Mr. Turner, if you're
listening) has something to do with it. One of the primary
motivating forces we see in Wisconsin in the organic movement are
human things, like the restoration of a sense of safety, trust, and
connection, mediated by food.
I'd like someone with an economics background to look at Whole Foods
and inform all of us: how can we sort out the actual growth and
expansion of the organic or natural foods markets from WF's corporate
takeover, drive-out-other-players strategies?
Personally, when I look for evidence that organic is expanding, I
look to the growth of CSA, of farmer's markets; the strengthening of
local co-ops; the formation of new co-ops; the increase in community
gardens; and the so-called "soft" stuff like growing awareness,
information, and learning communities around the concepts and
practices of organic farming and sustainable living.
Yours in curmudgeonly hopefulness, sharpened by today's headlines
about Microsoft and Kodak. Thanks for listening.
peace
misha
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Michele Gale-Sinex, communications manager
Center for Integrated Ag Systems
UW-Madison College of Ag and Life Sciences
Voice: (608) 262-8018 FAX: (608) 265-3020
http://www.wisc.edu/cias/
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The Force is a lot like duct tape. It has a
light side and a dark side, everyone has it,
and it holds the universe together. --Mister 3D
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