I have often wondered the same thing. One thing to bear in mind: One probably cannot tell, at a glance, whether any particular retail style place of business is making a profit or a loss just by looking at it. Some ventures are disappointments, which I gather the owners often try hard to disguise.
The big retail failure in this case was, of course, the Wal-Mart itself. The people who sited and planned that were experts, and they were presumably backed up by the best business intelligence and logistics money can buy - but it’s gone because all that failed to turn a profit.
