It's cold consolation for Wal-Mart to have an entire era names after them, as the WSJ did in an A1 story today. Cold because it's the end of the era that the story talks about, not the start, and while the article notes that Wal-Mart will continue to have huge influence in retail, that it's time of dominance is over. RIP.

Here is the key section:

But that very focus on scale is now a weakness, for the world has changed on Wal-Mart. The big-box retailing formula that drove Wal-Mart's success is making it difficult for the retailer to evolve. Consumers are demanding more freshness and choice, which means that foods and new clothing designs must appear on shelves more frequently. They are also demanding more personalized service. Making such changes is difficult for Wal-Mart's supercenters, which ascended to the top of retailing by superior efficiency, uniformity and scale.

"All retailers have a formula. They grow as far and as fast as they can with that formula," says Love Goel, a former Fingerhut Cos. executive and now chairman and CEO of Growth Ventures Group, a Minnetonka, Minn.-based private-equity firm that invests in retail businesses. Wal-Mart has outgrown its supercenter recipe, but efforts to win growth from more affluent consumers have fallen flat, he says. "They have hit the wall."

Wal-Mart declined to make an executive available for an interview and declined to respond to written questions, citing an upcoming meeting with Wall Street analysts.

Put Dell in the same category -- there sure was a Dell Era, and it too has passed. Some will look at this as simply another example of how rapidly business changes, and how companies that don't adapt fall from grace. I see it through the lens of communication -- and with Wal-Mart and Dell both, their troubles were signaled early via the way the dealt or didn't deal with issues that struck to the core of their brand. They did not respond, and started the long slide. For Dell, it was taking their eye of their legendary customer support. That was at the core of their brand, low cost, great support. THey lost that, and low cost alone won't cut it for them. For Wal-Mart, it was the series of image blows they took that moved them from being the quintessential American feel good company to a company that was not good for America. They saw these initial stories as PR problems and not as brand challenging problems, and responded accordingly. By the time the figured it out, the damage was done.

We all love the comeback, so there is no doubt that sometime in the next year or two we'll be reading/hearing about how Wal-Mart is "back". But the era -- it won't be.

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