The birth and life of Wal-Mart:

• Who started this living entity we call Wal-Mart? The name is Sam Walton. In 1962 he started a tiny chain of variety stores in Arkansas and Kansas. His little stores were facing competition from regional discount chains that were hurting his stores’ profits, so Sam traveled the country to study a new retailing concept and realized that people wanted a different type of general store. He and his wife gambled all their money on the opening of the first Wal-Mart store in Rogers Arkansas. That store has grown into a global company with more than 1.3 million associates worldwide and nearly 5,000 stores and wholesale clubs across over 10 countries. Sam Walton said, “The secret to successful retailing is to give your customers what they want, which is everything. A wide assortment of good quality merchandise; the lowest possible prices; guaranteed satisfaction with what you buy; friendly, knowledgeable service; convenient hours; free parking; a pleasant shopping experience. We all love it when we visit a store that somehow exceeds our expectations.” Sam was known to go into a store down the street and buy women’s panties and sell them at 10 pair for a buck. He called this the ‘price point’. This ‘price point’ is still being used today…
• Fifteen years after the first store opening in Rogers Arkansas, Wal-Mart had reached occupancy in ten states. In the 1980’s Wal-Mart then opened its first Sam’s Club store, where people paid an annual fee to take part in exclusive discounts on a huge variety of items. This was also the same decade Wal-Mart opened their first super-center in Washington Missouri, and at the same time, the company had grown to 276 stores. Then in 1991, Wal-Mart officially became an international company when they opened their first stores in Mexico City, and had grown overall to a whopping 1,500 stores! The company realized their potential to expand beyond borders were extraordinary and so two years later, Wal-Mart International was born. Sam Walton passed away the year before this colossal sister company was born. By 1994, they had 126 stores in Canada and 96 in Mexico. That only took them 3 years to grow that much since the first International store! The 1990’s also marks the decade many changes started to take place within the company. Some say that Sam’s son, the man who took over the company, changed the company too much.
• Shortly after Sam Walton died, Wal-Mart’s stock starting dropping badly. To remedy this, Wal-Mart started buying enormous amounts of products from overseas. The markup and profit margin for these products were so large that they couldn’t resist. The profits they were making from these foreign made products were 60-80%, where U.S. made products had only a profit of 18-22%. This important shift in where they bought their products showed immediate improvements in their company, including their stock. Once the importing started, it never stopped., and has continued to grow. In the mid to late 1990’s Wal-Mart has opened a plethora of single unit grocery stores, such as OneSource, and Neighborhood Markets. Since the beginning of this decade, Wal-Mart seems to be on a mission to donate billions of dollars to charitable causes, and was ranked #1 Corporate Citizen of America in the 2000 Cone/Roper Report. (An annual national survey on philanthropy and corporate citizenship.) In 2003 and 2004, Wal-Mart was ranked #1 as ‘America’s Most Admired Company’ by Fortune Magazine. Let’s not forget, that since 1991, they have been expanding to other countries as well...

Wal-Mart does seem to be in the lime light a lot regarding their take-over of small mom and pop stores; however, in our research we discovered that Wal-Mart is not the only store that small retailers are against. Check out this link. It lists all the areas in our country where communities have banded together to prevent other large retail chains from breaking ground in their towns.

Communities band together.
The negative publicity Wal-Mart gets is mainly due to their overwhelming size. Less than 1 % of the company's employees actually have a problem and do something about it. Find out why size DOES matter..