New Wal-Mart caters to jet set

By Robert Frank, September 26th, 2012

Wal-Mart officials are crowing about their newest store's strategic location, which opened, Sept. 19, just blocks from Pierre Eliot Trudeau international airport.
“It's in a really convenient location,” enthused Alex Roberton, the retail chain's director of corporate affairs for Canada. “Because it's so close to the airport, we see a lot of travelers come through here.”
“I don't have the exact figures for sales of suitcases,” he said, “but we make sure that those aisles are well-stocked.”
The Dorval store is the fourth of 16 new facilities that Wal-Mart has announced it will open. Located in the two-storey former Zellers outlet in Dorval shopping centre, Wal-Mart planners had to deviate from one single floor layout that characterizes most Wal-Marts around the world.
”We've put in a shopping cart escalator so you don't have to use the elevator to go up and down,” Roberton said.
“It is a separate escalator between the up and down escalators,” explained the Pointe Claire native. “You load your cart and you go up on the regular escalator.
The former Royal Canadian Navy officer, who served at sea for eight years before returning to Montreal, likened the retail giant to running a ship.
“It takes lowered costs for every single area of the business so we can keep prices down for customers,” Roberton said, “because that is what Wal-Mart is all about: reducing the cost of living for Canadians.”
He cited an example from Wal-Mart's green program.
“During the summer, the lighting in 300 of our 330 stores is controlled by head office,” he explained. “We bring the lighting down to two-thirds of full intensity.”
“That one initiative saves us $1.5-2 million per year,” he concluded. “It's just one of the ways that we take costs out of our operation that we can pass on to customers.”