Cart Blanche?

"They say, 'Well, we're not going to carry the barbecue sauce.' "

But wait! You represent a major multinational corporation! Why wouldn't you hold the line?

"Well, you just lost 20 percent of your barbecue sauce business for the year. By the time you get back to Chicago from Bentonville, you're fired."

Fishman's article wasn't easy to report. No one at Wal-Mart would talk to him, and suppliers were terrified by the very idea. Wal-Mart is "our biggest customer by far," a Dial executive told him. "We have a great relationship. That's all I can say. Are we done now?"

The article -- based mainly on conversations with people who used to do business with Wal-Mart -- got more response than anything Fast Company had ever done, Fishman says. A significant percentage came from businesspeople hungry for advice on working with the world's biggest retailer. "I could have opened my own little 'How to Deal With Wal-Mart' consulting firm," he jokes.

Instead, he got a book contract -- and kept trying to understand what "always low prices" really means.

'A Layer of Toxic Sludge'

What it means right now is that our shopping cart is filling up.

In go the Barbasol shaving cream (92 cents) and the Dial soap (eight bars for $3.50). In go the energy-saving light bulbs (two for $8.44) and the ordinary 60-watters (eight for $1.67) and the Easter chocolates in the shape of soccer balls, basketballs and baseballs ($1.66). We still haven't found my daughter's socks. But by the time we hit the grocery section I'm starting to lose all restraint: I stock up on OJ, pasta, shredded cheese, clementines and breakfast cereal.

So what if the house-brand cornflakes end up tasting like cardboard? An 18-ounce box is just $1.33!

Fishman, meanwhile, has been tempering his running commentary on Wal-Mart prices with observations about how those prices are achieved.

Prowling the health and beauty section, he reminds me that some years back, just about all deodorant brands came in paperboard boxes. Then Wal-Mart said: Boxes costs money, they take up space, who needs 'em? Pretty soon, deodorant didn't come in boxes anymore.

No harm done there, unless you were a box manufacturer: Wal-Mart was using its clout to force waste out of the system. What's more, Fishman says, it passed on most of the savings. Its main goal, when forcing suppliers to economize, is to keep prices down, not to increase its extremely low profit margins. Its formula is simple: Low prices equal volume equals growth and thus success.