“It was never clear who Maxxi was for. It wasn’t cheap enough for the poor. But there was no appeal for the middle class,” said Ordecy Gossler, 40, a public accountant filling his cart with cleaning supplies and toilet paper at Atacadão, a rival chain run by France’s Carrefour. “When they announced in December that both Maxxis were closing, no one in my office knew where they were.
”“It’s a market that has always been high on potential, but has been a roller-coaster ride in terms of its performance,” he said. “It happens to be on a downturn at the moment, and I’m sure it will do what it always has done, which is improve.”
In the UK they’re called ASDA. They were an existing British chain Walmart bought a decade ago. I know people who work there. It’s still a fairly good place to work, not the hellhole stories I hear about workers in the US, but they have made a lot of cutbacks in the last six months or so, cutting staff levels, closing the workers canteen and so on, but then business is tough for their rivals Tesco and Sainsburys as well. Tesco were the shining star and golden boy but they suffered some huge problems recently and have closed a bunch of stores, and even abandoned some stores that were only weeks away from opening. It’s Aldi and Lidl that is hurting them.
Seems like Wal-mart has been shutting down and downsizing quite a bit the last year and a half.