SAM WALTON

WAL * MART
DISCOUNTS AND GRANT OF AMERICA

Samuel Moore Walton is a small town kind of guy. He lived in the same neighborhood in Bentonville, Arkansas, for forty years. He woke up every morning, breakfast with many of the same group of people at a local hotel, and then, except on Sundays, she went to the office. Only one thing is tempting to skip, and it is an opportunity to hunt pheasant. Walton is the kind of person who prefers to borrow the newspaper rather than spend money on a quarter to get it. But he also likes to invite a poor family to dine with him.

Sam Walton lived in small towns, approximately 1800, through a discount department store Wal-Mart property. In this era of franchise restaurants, shopping centers that exist everywhere, and formula retail sales, Wal-Mart was built in honor of individuals. It is the quality that emanated directly from the founders.

With control of approximately 20% of Wal-Mart, Sam Walton appear at the top of the Forbes 400 list, with a net worth of 2.8 billion in 1985 (ownership is now nearly ten times its value). Of all the innovations that helped him become a billionaire, the biggest innovation as a CEO is probably the fact that he himself does not change. "The secret is work, work, work. I teach the kids how to do it, "said Thomas Walton of two sons, Sam and James (" Bud "). Walton is a price adjuster farm as collateral for loans, work that is not how the results during the twenties in Oklahoma, where Sam was born in 1918. Thomas worked in the hours long, but he and his wife, Nan, finally moving his family to the next small town in Missouri. The father was changing his career to selling real estate and insurance, and the mother started the business of small-scale dairy products, while the children help their parents provide for the family, to sell membership subscriptions, milking cows and delivering newspapers.

Sam Walton Universita demanded lessons in Missouri at Columbia, and received a bachelor's degree in business there in 1940. He was thinking of graduate level courses in the East, but he accepted a position as an apprentice in the store manager of JC Penney in Des Moines, Iowa. The young man known as "Hustler" Walton when this course at first eager to plunge into the retail business. But he was impressed by Penney stores, especially the philosophy of customer service. "I did not start his career as a banker or investor, or do anything other than serving the customer," Walton wrote in the magazine company's employees, Wal-Mart World. "Many people who run large companies that have never menderingkan calculating machines, and they also have not been serving customers, so I always appreciate what it means to be a clerk and salesman for what a customer can affect the business relationship."

Three years before the first Wal-Mart opened, and Helm Sam Walton bought the land area of ​​twenty acres outside of Bentonville, and assign tasks to one of the leading architects to build a modern house on the creek. This house cost $ 100,000 in 1959-a huge amount, but it is the last house that was once purchased by the couple.

Walton family never used the money to stand out. May be appropriate for a retailer with a discount to be a bit stingy. At the peak of tremendous wealth, S.S. Kresge plain cardboard insert into the shoe to cover the hole. He even stopped playing golf in the first round after losing a ball. Sam Walton did not sepelit it, but he has a record of the simple life, for people who are rich. He flew in first class only once in his life (in a long flight from South America to Africa); on a business trip with other employees, he was ready to follow the policy of both firms stay in the hotel roommate. Car instead of a limousine company. Bernard Marcus, chairman and founder of Home Depot's aide, recalled going out to lunch together after meeting in Bentonvolle Walton: "I got into the car pick-up Sam in red. No AC, The seats trace of coffee. And when I get to the restaurant, my clothes soaked. Sam Walton, and that's not ostentatious, not arrogant. "

In 1970, Wal-Mart to offer shares to the public. The money raised approximately $ 5 million to assist more stores and six distribution centers the company completed the first. With this money and the stock offering after that, ultimately increasing momentum and according to plan Walton: After building a thirty-nine stores in the first decade, Wal-Mart to build 452 stores in the seventies and 1237 stores in the eighties. From 1970 to 1990, shares of Wal-Mart is not just beat all the other stocks in the market, but also beat the craziest dreams of those who buy it. Hundred shares of stock, purchased in 1970 for $ 1,650, the value to $ 2.6 million in 1992.

In 1973, Arab oil embargo caused energy prices to soar. For Wal-Mart, this is a setback that is not the right time. Like most people in the business of distribution, Walton felt as if he was a hostage to irrational price inflation. This event changed the way of doing business. After the oil crisis, the stores Wal-Mart will only be constructed within a twelve hour drive from the nearest distribution center. Because of its location as a group, then the stores can be supplied efficiently, reducing the overall effect of rising gasoline prices. "More Retailers building a warehouse to serve the existing channels," Forbes reported later, in 1982, "but Walton took the opposite direction. He started with a giant warehouse, and then bring up the stores around it. "And so, Wal-Mart is not" national "once; the plan is to keep making progress, a distribution center at one time, into new territory.

Wal-Mart methods are most preferred are involved in the whole process of Fabricating. In 1984, Bill Clinton, who was then serving as governor of Arkansas, contact Wal-Mart asked for help with clothing factories in the state that will lose customers because of the largest taken by competitors from abroad. "We'll see if we can do something never done before," Walton said to Clinton, after talking the matter circuitry of the Executive. Wal-Mart is getting ready to submit to the local mill with all the requirements to create a flannel shirt, an order that previously purchased from the Far East.

Wal-Mart distribution center becomes more prominent factor in Wal-Mart system. Warehouse itself is the service behind the boring part of the retail sales business. But Wal-Mart distribution center is engineered to do more than just feeding the products to stores; warehouse is designed to reduce costs.

In 1991, Wal-Mart gave a gift to Walton, the success you never thought about before the occurrence of: Wal-Mart beat Sears as the largest retailer in the country. Ten years earlier, Wal-Mart to collect money that is not how the sale of $ 2.6 billion, compared with sales of Sears for $ 20 billion. However, in 1991 Wal-Mart sales of $ 32.6 billion, the company surpassed sales of Sears for $ 32 billion.