By JORDAN McLEMORE
News Editor
Growing up and living in a small town is hard for many people, but those who stick it out and make the best of it, love the small-town atmosphere.
The communities band together and support one another.
This includes the idea of shopping local because many times this is the only option. The small “mom and pop” stores are where many of the townspeople spend their money to buy the essentials for their families. But all of this changed when the conglomerate chain stores come rolling into town: Walmart. Many times it is cheaper to shop here, and the smaller stores can’t compete.
This means that many times these small businesses shut their doors permanently and give in to losing their livelihood. Numerous small towns are like this, relying on the smaller stores to accommodate their needs then moving to Walmart when they come in with cheaper prices. But what happens when even Walmart decides it is more cost-effective to shut down many of their stores in the smaller towns, leaving them without a store in sight for miles around?
When Walmart came into town and shut down the hometown stores, it left many with the only option of shopping at Walmart, and even employing much of the town. In 2016, Walmart announced that they would be closing 154 stores in the U.S. and another 115 globally. This includes six in Oklahoma, all of them in small towns, according to USA Today. With these closings, there are 16,000 employees that are out of a job. What will these small towns to do?
Luckily, Alva isn’t one of those small towns that would suffer from a Walmart closing in town. Even so, Alva still has a strong community that supports the local stores, such as Alva’s Market. If there wasn’t a Walmart or Alva’s Market, the community would have to drive to Enid, an hour, away to do any kind of shopping, including stocking the essentials.
Whenever asked, an unnamed Walmart official here in Alva said that around 80 people are employed through the store in Alva, but could support as many as 125 employees to be able to run the store efficiently. It is hard to tell how many shoppers come through the store every day but as many as 1,000 can come through on a busy day. When compared to Alva’s Market, these numbers seem huge, when they have around 200-300 shoppers on a daily basis.
Walmart employee Christopher Punto works in the electronics department at the Alva location, and he said that on a regular shift, he has as many as 100 shoppers seeking electronic help. This number would have to shift to Radio Shack to meet their needs, but since they are only open regular business hours, they would have a hard time meeting the needs of the community.
The Alva Walmart caters to the college students that attend Northwestern with their low prices and sales for the items they require to attend college, many times far from home. Sophomore Jessica Carpenter says she usually goes to Walmart about 1-2 times a week and spends on average $45 each time on essentials such as snacks and laundry detergent.