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USA:Wal-Mart ‘thumbs down’ Mullins partnership |
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2004-11-1
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It is bad news for former textile workers at Mullins plant of Anvil Knitwear, as Wal-Mart has refused a partnership deal with the closed textile mill.
Mayor Wayne George said a vice president for Wal-Mart called him Wednesday and said the company was not interested in signing a multiyear deal to the buy clothing from the plant.
Claire Watts indicated that a five-year commitment was too long and that Wal-Mart would listen if the town and Anvil submitted a new plan, George said.
"She said she had a chance to review our business model, had several people look at it, but they could not make it work financially," George said.
Wal-Mart spent a lot of time looking at the proposal but found the deal would mean higher prices for customers, spokeswoman Karen Burk said Thursday.
Burk also said that it was unrealistic to believe one deal could rescue the economy in Mullins, which lost 600 jobs when the Anvil Knitwear plant closed in 2002.
Former workers had a plan to bring back 350 of those jobs to Marion County by asking Wal-Mart to buy clothing from the company.
George was part of a group that pitched a business plan to Wal-Mart executives at the company''s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., last month. The plan included a possible clothing line called "ProsperiTEES."
Supporters of the idea said Wal-Mart could create good will by the move. Wal-Mart has been in a courtroom battle with residents over its plans to locate a Supercenter in neighboring Florence County.
The town and Anvil''s proposal to Wal-Mart executives said their research showed that South Carolina Wal-Mart shoppers would pay more for a T-shirt made in America. A shirt manufactured at Anvil in Mullins would cost about 75 cents more than a shirt made outside the United States, according to the research.
Wal-Mart "gave absolutely no credence to the validity of our ''buy American'' research," Florence attorney Marguerite Willis said.
Wal-Mart spokeswoman Burk said the company regularly does business with domestic suppliers, but in this case, the company''s research indicated that customers would not be willing to pay more for products made in the U.S.
"While most of our customers would probably agree with this philosophically, they just aren''t willing to pay more for domestically made merchandise," she said.
George said Watts told him the ProsperiTEES idea was presented well and offered to listen to future proposals. But George said he isn''t sure if Wal-Mart would be interested even with a shorter term contract.
George said he will talk with some economic development officials to see which direction to take next. "We''ll just have to live with this, but we''ve been here before," he said.
George said another prospect had contacted the city in the past five days about the Anvil property. "The people who worked at Anvil want to go back. I am sad about them," he said. "But we will keep plugging along." |
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