How & Why Sam Walton Invented Wal-Mart

We are committed not just to expanding the business to better serve our customers, but also to improving the communities we serve through our efforts to constantly improve what we do and how we do it, and through the impacts we're able to achieve through the Walmart Foundation. Through this daily dedication to our business and our customers, we honor Mr.

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Walmart's history is more than just the stores we've built, the partnerships we've made and the customers we've served. So much of our history is in the details. Walmart launched without a true logo. In fact, for the first two years, when the Walmart name appeared in print, the font and style were chosen at the whim of the printer.

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In , the company selected a font. It survived for nearly 20 years. Along with the first official logo, we developed a Discount City mark. This mark appeared in print advertising and in-store signage, as well as on employee uniforms and smocks. However, it was never used on exterior building signage or in annual reports.

After nearly 20 years, the company dropped the frontier feel of the logo and introduced a fresh new look for Walmart. In , we replaced the hyphen with a star. This logo can still be seen on many of our North American storefronts as we continue to transition hundreds of stores to the newest logo. In , Walmart underwent the most significant logo change to date, introducing a new font and the iconic spark.

Step through the store and into a collection of images, items and information on this history of Walmart and the Walton family from over the years. Visitors can look, touch and explore through a series of family-friendly, interactive displays. All the exhibits are designed as giant scrapbooks that tell the story of Walmart through words, images, artifacts and interactive displays like our virtual tour of Sam Walton's old office and our map featuring information on customers, stores, suppliers and associates from around the world.

We've even got Mr. Sam's trusty old Ford F parked in the gallery. The store boasts original floor tiles and an original tin ceiling, as well as toys, candy and books straight out of an earlier era. The music, movies and ice cream floats will take you back to a simpler, more carefree time. Our Story Our History Since the first Walmart store opened in in Rogers, Arkansas, we've been dedicated to making a difference in the lives of our customers.

Sam" begins to take Walmart national, providing his vision's widespread appeal. Walmart has stores and employs 21, associates. Walmart replaces cash registers with computerized point-of-sale systems, enabling fast and accurate checkout. David Glass is named chief executive officer.

As the Walmart Supercenter redefines convenience and one-stop shopping, Everyday Low Prices goes international. Rob Walton becomes chairman of the board. Walmart employs , associates in 1, stores and clubs. Walmart enters the United Kingdom with the acquisition of Asda. Walmart employs more than 1.

Walmart enters the Japanese market through its investment in Seiyu. Walmart makes a major commitment to environmental sustainability, announcing goals to create zero waste, use only renewable energy and sell products that sustain people and the environment. Walmart launches a global commitment to sustainable agriculture, aiming to strengthen local farmers and economies, while providing customers access to affordable, high-quality food. With the acquisition of Massmart in South Africa, Walmart surpasses 10, retail units around the world. Walmart projects hiring over , veterans in the next five years.

Walmart opens its first store in the District of Columbia. The company employs 2. He continues to serve as a director. And if the associates treat the customers well, the customers will return again and again , and that is where the real profit in this business lies , not in trying to drag strangers into your stores for one-time purchase based on splashy sales or expensive advertising. Satisfied, loyal, repeat customers are at the heart of Wal-Mart's spectacular profit margins, and those customers are loyal to us because our associates treat them better than salespeople in other stores do.

So in the whole Wal-Mart scheme of things, the most important contact ever made is between the associate in the store and the customer. In fact, the biggest single regret in my whole business career is that we didn't include our associates in the initial managers-only profit-sharing plan when we took the company public in These days, the real challenge for managers in a business like ours is to become what we call servant leaders. And when we do, the team - the manager and the associates - can accomplish anything. Over the years, we've also had a variety of incentive and bonus plans to keep every associate involved in the business as partners.

All of us like praise. So what we try to practice in our company is to look for things to praise. We want to let our folks know when they are doing something outstanding, and let them know they are important to us. Walmart was just another one of Sam's crazy ideas. It was totally unproven at the time, but it was really what we were doing all along; experimenting, trying to do something different , educating ourselves as to what was going on in the retail industry and trying to stay ahead of those trends.

From up in the air we could check out traffic flows, see which way cities and towns were growing, and evaluate the location of the competition - if there was any. If everybody else is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find a niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.

It makes people feel responsible and involved, and as we've gotten bigger we've really had to accept sharing a lot of our numbers with the rest of the world as a consequence of sticking by our philosophy. In a system like that, there's absolutely no room for creativity , no place for the maverick merchant that I was in the early days of the Ben Franklin [store], no place for the entrepreneur or the promoter.

I've always thought of problems as challenges. I like to hear what our weakness are , where we aren't doing as well as we should and why. I like to see problems come up and hear suggestions as to how it can be corrected.

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And figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines - the ones who actually talk to the customer - are the ones who really know what's going on out there. You'd better find out what they know. You never know who is going to have great ideas. Working weekends ; it's just something you have to do if you want to be successful in the retail business.

I think that misunderstanding worked to our advantage for a long time , and enabled Wal-Mart to fly under everybody's radar until we were too far along to catch.

It always confounded them. They held on to their old variety concept stores too long. With our low costs, our low expense structures, and our low prices, we were ending an era in the heartland. We shut the door on variety store thinking. Check everyone who is our competition.

And don't look for the bad. Look for the good. I don't want our competitors getting too comfortable with feeling they can predict what we're going to do next. And I don't want our own executives feeling that way either. It's part of my strong feeling for the need for constant change , for keeping people a little off balance. There is always a challenger coming along.. To stay ahead of those challengers, we have to keep changing and looking back over our shoulder and planning ahead.

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They haven't been able to get their expense structure as low as ours, and they haven't been able to get their associates to do all those extra things for their customers that our do routinely; greeting them, smiling at them, helping them, thanking them. In other words, a computer can tell you down to the dime what you've sold. But it can never tell you how much you could have sold.

Our best ideas usually do come from the folks in the stores. The drivers see more stores every week than anybody else in this company. And I think what Sam likes about them is that they're not like a lot of managers. They don't care who you are. They'll tell you what they really think. It may be different, and it may take some folks a while to adjust to it at first. But it's straight and honest and basically pretty simple to figure out if you want to. And whether or not the folks want to accomodate us, we pretty much stick to what we believe in because it's proven to be very, very successful.

Because that's how we have become a huge corporation. But I feel like it's up to me as a leader to set an example. It's not fair for me to ride one way and ask everybody else to ride another way.

Sam Walton: The Man Who Invented Walmart | Scholastic Library Publishing

The minute you do that, you start building resentment , and your whole team idea begins to strain at the seams. He could not have built a retailing empire the size of what he's built, the way he built it. He's done a lot of other things right, too, but he could not have done it without the computer. It would have been impossible. To succeed, you have to stay out in front of that change. I've forced change - sometimes for change's sake alone - at every turn in our company's development. In fact, I think one of the greatest strengths of Wal-Mart's ingrained culture is its ability to drop everything and turn on a dime.

Business is a competitive endeavour, and job security lasts only as long as the customer is satisfied. Nobody owes anybody else a living. We've changed our minds about some significant things along the way and adopted some new principles. But most of the values and the rules and the techniques we've relied on have stayed the same the whole way. Some folks have a tendency to build big staffs around them to emphasise their own importance, and we don't need any of that at Wal-Mart.

If you're not seeing the customer, or supporting the folks who do, we don't need you. If I were a stockholder of Wal-Mart , or considering becoming one, I'd go into ten Wal-Mart stores and ask the folks working there, "How do you feel? How's the company treating you? But since we got our stock jump-started in the beginning, I feel like our time is better spent with people in the stores, rather than off selling the company to outsiders.

I don't think any amount of public relations experts or speeches in New York or Boston means a darn thing to the value of the stock over the long haul. I think you get what you're worth. If we do that, we take our eye off the ball. It may knock our stock back a little, but we're in it for the long run.