Additionally, there are potential revenue opportunities for installers in the markets Wal-mart enters. There’s a couple of companies here in Edmonton and in Calgary that have made decent coin in the last couple of years cleaning up botched jobs left behind by the clowns at Best Buy and a couple of local dealers who bit off more than they could chew. I foresee great labour opportunities coming in and un-FUBAR’ing Wal-mart AV installs.

Replying to the above comment regarding Wal Mart
clean up jobs.

I don’t see it happening. First of all, Wally World will have to sub out the installs and knowing them they are going to look for the cheapest price installer. I suspect that will be ex - Best Buy employees out to get into the business. Secondly,generally speaking, anyone buying Wally World products does not have disposable income for installations.

I say bring it on!!! They all fall under the category I like to call 1-800 idiot’s.The more these big low margin-high volume companies fail the better we true “educated” custom integrators stand out as a “value” rather than “cheap”.Wal-Mart customers expect products & services to be the lowest cost possible, therefore that is at best what they will get.If that satisfies a certain buying group, those customers do not qualify for our services that are not cheap but rather a professional value that a customer can hold accountable and call my personal cell “any” time they may have a problem and usually get it resolved in less than 2 minutes.That is custom, professional, reliable,value!!!!!!!!!!!

I agree guys!  We are called out all of the time here in Atlanta to clean-up Best Buy jobs.

After seeing this article, I decided to send an application to be installation service provider for Wal-Mart. They wrote a letter back to me and stated,
“... and wanted to let you know that we have tried this type of service in the past and it was not successful so we have elected not to move in that direction.”

I guess their supplier development department did not read this article or they have decided not to move in that direction.

Brian, that’s classic. Thanks for the update.