Walmart is one of the largest multinational retail corporations in the world with over 11000 stores spread over 27 countries and its beginnings are owed to Sam Walton who founded the company. With the complete name of Samuel Moore Walton, the future American businessman came into the world on the 29th of March 1918 in Kingfisher, Oklahoma as the son of the farmers Thomas Gibson Walton and Nancy Lee.
The farm itself proved to offer insufficient income for the family to support itself, after another son was born in 1921, so in 1923 the father went into farm mortgaging at the Walton Mortgage Company owned by his brother, repossessing farms during the Great Depression. They moved to Orlando, Florida and wandered from town to town for a few years until they settled in Columbia, Missouri.
Life during this period was extremely difficult but Sam had a happy childhood, even becoming the youngest Eagle Scout in the history of Missouri in the eighth grade. This achievement led him to receive the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award during adulthood as a symbol of appreciation. He was a good athlete and thus quarterbacked for the football team of his highschool.
The financial difficulties came upon Sam as well, so he had a lot of chores such as milking cows, bottling most of the surplus and delivering it to customers. In a little while the milk boy became the paper boy as well and he sold subscriptions for magazines. After graduating the David H. Hickman High School he was named the most versatile boy.
Once High School was over he wanted to find new ways to support his family and at the same time went to the University of Missoury as a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps cadet. He used to work as a waiter in exchange for meals and was the President of Burall Bible Class. The secret society on the campus called QEBH approached him; he joined the Beta Theta Pi fraternity and the college military honor society Scabbard and Blade so he truly has no free time during this period.
He graduated in 1940 with a Bachelor’s in Economics and began working only three days after finishing college at the J. C. Penney in Des Moines, Iowa as a management trainee, allowing him to earn 75 dollars a month. After eight months here he resigned since he was waiting to be called for military service and until the moment came he worked at a munitions plant of DuPont close to Tulsa. Then he joined the US Army Intelligence Corps where he supervised the security of aircraft plants and prisoner camps, reaching the rank of Captain.
He married Helen Robson in 1943 and had four children, the first one, Samuel Robson, being born in 1944 and then John Thomas in 1946, James Carr in 1948 and Alice Louise in 1949. When war was over in 1945 he left military service and began to manage a variety store with the money he saved from the army and a loan from his father in law. The store was a Ben Franklin one as a franchise of the Butler Brothers chain in Newport, Arkansas. At this time he was 26 years old.
He innovated some of the marketing concepts seen today, making sure his shelves had a large variety of options and managed to create a successful business that expanded to the Eagle department store down the street of the first one and next to the main competitor in the city.
The sales grew and thus P. K. Holmes became interested wanting to reclaim the store and franchise rights for his son. The lack of renewal options and a high rent of 5% of sales meant that he had to find new options soon. A new location was negotiated and purchased on the downtown square in Bentonville, Arkansas and a small store with a 99-year lease to expand to the next door shop since he didn’t want to end up in the same situation as before. They opened with a remodeling sale on 9 May 1950 and were already thriving.
The two stores were very profitable and he began to scout for more locations. In fact, after driving so much around the county he and his brother James Walton, who was a pilot in the war, decided to buy a second hand airplane for this task.
In 1954 a new store was opened in the Ruskin Heights suburb of Kansas City and by 1962 they had sixteen stores. At this time the first Wal-Mart came into being in Rogers, Arkansas at 719 West Walnut Street as an attempt to market products made in America. This was quite difficult, especially since the prices had to be low enough to compete with the foreign market.
Walton was always checking the competition and the Meijer chain store attracted his attention due to the one-stop-shopping center layout. He implemented the same pattern into his store and the careful planning led to a continued growth to 190 stores in 1977 and no less than 800 in 1985 exceeding everyone’s expectations!
In 1991 Wal-Mart surpassed Sears, Roebuck & Company becoming the largest retailer in the country and it was all due to the vision of Walton and his hard work. His program began every day at 4:30 in the morning and all day he would focus on improvements or expansion. The idea of a discount retail store in rural areas made the company successful even when recession threatened. Although an economic downturn loomed over the country in 1991, Wal-Mart had sales increased by over 40%.
He enjoyed the outdoors and hunting, made substantial contributions to the church and was a Ruling Elder and Sunday school teacher for the First Presbyterian Church in Bentonville. He and his wife were supporting various charitable causes and he was honored by the President George H. W. Bush in March 1992 by receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
During his last years he suffered from two types of cancer: bone marrow and hairy-cell leukemia and died on April 5th 1992 in Little Rock, Arkansas. When he was named the wealthiest man in US by Forbes in 1985 he appeared rather frustrated by the claim since he considered such a ranking pointless and he said that this made his life “a lot more complex and difficult”. Still Time magazine considered him one of the 100 most influential persons of the century.
