Nemenz vows to fight Wal-Mart with quality workers and goods

The owner of two local
grocery store chains is no fan of Wal-Mart.

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

CANFIELD — Henry Nemenz is trying to push open one of the old double doors leading into the back of his IGA grocery store in town near the Green, but it won’t open.

What the heck, he wonders, is wrong with the door? So he pushes open the other side and finds one of his employees standing there, grinning. He had been blocking the door shut while Nemenz was trying to get through.

The employee laughs and extends his hand. Nemenz laughs too and takes it. A succession of employees with outstretched hands follow suit. Nemenz presses the flesh three more times before he sits down at his desk in the back.

He doesn’t have to say he’s a good boss. He doesn’t have to say that he’s treating his people well, or that his stores — four IGAs and 16 Save-A-Lots in Northeast Ohio and Pennsylvania — have a family atmosphere.

Four smiling employees who couldn’t wait to greet him didn’t have to say it either — their actions spoke for them.

They’re part of the reason his stores are so successful — his employees, he says. It’s part of his philosophy: Treat employees how you would want to be treated, and they will extend the good will to your customers.

Customer service and personalized attention to shoppers is right up there in importance with quality merchandise, he added.

Those will be his weapons if he has to take on Wal-Mart, which wants to build a supercenter with a grocery store in Canfield if it gets the zone change it needs to build on land between Raccoon Road, the Ohio Turnpike and U.S. Route 224.

Wal-Mart, he acknowledged, “drives prices down until competition is gone.”

Wal-Mart is able to put pressure on suppliers, he said, because it becomes such a large part of a supplier’s business.

His Save-A-Lots, which he operates with his son, Henry Nemenz Jr., are able to compete with Wal-Mart on price, he said, because they are a limited-assortment store.

Limited-assortment stores, he explained, carry fewer items, and there is one brand — a private label. But the prices are low.

The stores tend to do well in fixed-income areas, he said.

In more upscale Canfield, he said, his IGA will survive by being strong in four departments — bakery, meat, produce and the deli.

But a grocery store, he acknowledges, doesn’t survive by bread, hamburger, lettuce and sliced turkey alone.

Though the smaller stores can outdo Wal-Mart in quality in those four areas on the store’s perimeter, they need to be able to compete in the “center store” too, he said.

That can be difficult, he said, because Wal-Mart has enough money to lower prices and wait it out until the competition is beat.

He said one way to remain competitive is to have a lot of weekly advertisements. He said his individual store managers also have the autonomy to raise or lower prices in response to competition.

He also said it looks as if manufacturers are finally starting to resist pressure from Wal-Mart, and are making sure that smaller chains and independent stores get the good deals, too. That has been happening in the past year, he said. “They realize it isn’t good to put all their eggs in one basket.”

Nemenz is no fan of Wal-Mart, for sure. He believes the giant retailer destroys more jobs than it creates when it drives other businesses out.

“Once Wal-Mart moves in, two out of five grocery stores [in the area] go out of business,” he said.

The company not only hurts its direct competitors, he said, but also affects other businesses in the community.

TV and radio stations and newspapers, for example, face layoffs because Wal-Mart reduces the amount of advertising dollars its competitors would have spent, he said. Wal-Mart itself rarely advertises, he pointed out.

Nemenz is looking forward to the National Grocers Association’s annual convention this week in Las Vegas, where talk will be about more ways to compete with Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, he believes that quality on the perimeter of his store plus “some of the best people in the state” working for him means “we’ll be all right.”

starmack@vindy.com