Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Part of WalMart's business is inventory control.
Which they do very well: they rarely run out of stock of items that sell, like toilet paper and cheap TVs.
By all reports, Kobos don't matter to the store managers, with stories ranging from unopened boxes lying around empty kiosks to not carrying them.
By all indications, selling Kobos was a HQ idea that most store managers see no use for so they ignore them. Most of those stores also have greatly reduced book sections too. They figure they have better uses for the floor space, maybe selling video games.
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There are no longer
any Kobos sold in Walmart stores. So what store managers think about them is immaterial. The only Kobos ever stocked and sold in
some of the Walmart stores (during this partnership) was the Aura Edition 2, and Walmart cleared those out last December. So store managers are currently completely out of the loop on this. What's baffling to me is that Walmart's online store often doesn't have Kobos to sell. That's a strange "partnership." An odd way to develop a "U.S. presence." Currently the cheapest Kobo Walmart "sells and ships" is the $169 Libra, which you can
pre-order for a June 30th shipment. Or you can
pre-order a $249 Forma "sold and shipped by Walmart" that is due to be delivered on July 2nd. As for the the Clara, Walmart is selling them for a company called "ElectroCell" for $150 (2 day, free shipping), which is $20 higher than a regularly priced Paperwhite and $60 higher than the Kindle Basic. Right now, Kobo and their "U.S. partner" are completely ceding the low-end market to Amazon.