Could It Be Time to Call Your Stock Broker?
Recently I had an interesting conversation with an industry friend; one that started out as a debate about Wild Oats and ended up with NBN thinking about the perennial also ran a lot differently.
What I noticed is this. So what if Wild Oats is the also ran in the natural supermarket channel. They’re the only also ran running. In other words they may be number two but nobody else is within miles of becoming number three.
Furthermore as NBN’s friend convinced us, Ron Burkle, who has put his folks all over the Wild Oats organizational chart, doesn’t need to bolster sales and revive Wild Oats because he knows that sooner or later some mid-size conventional store will be more than happy (desperate, really) to buy Oats for top dollar.
And until the right suitor comes along, things might grow or not, but being #2 in a field of two, isn’t such a lousy place to sit. In fact it seems rather cozy, especially with Burkle’s bucks and brains backing up a large part of the business.
