Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton was an American businessman and entrepreneur born in Kingfisher,
Oklahoma, best known for founding the retailers Walmart and Sam's Club.
Early life Sam Walton was born to Thomas Gibson Walton
and Nancy Lee, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. There, he lived with his parents on their farm until
1923. Sam's father decided farming did not generate enough income on which to raise a
family and decided to go back to a previous profession of farm mortgaging, working for
his brother's Walton Mortgage Company, which served as an agent for Metropolitan Life Insurance
where he repossessed farms during the Great Depression.
He and his family moved from Oklahoma to Orlando, Florida. There they moved from one small town
to another for several years. While attending eighth grade in Shelbina, Missouri, Sam became
the youngest Eagle Scout in the state's history. In adult life, Walton became a recipient of
the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America.
Eventually the family moved to Columbia, Missouri. Growing up during the Great Depression, Walton
had numerous chores to help make financial ends meet for his family as was common at
the time. He milked the family cow, bottled the surplus, and drove it to customers. Afterwards,
he would deliver Columbia Daily Tribune newspapers on a paper route. In addition, he also sold
magazine subscriptions. Upon graduating from David H. Hickman High School in Columbia,
he was voted "Most Versatile Boy". After high school, Walton decided to attend
college, hoping to find a better way to help support his family. He attended the University
of Missouri as an ROTC cadet. During this time, he worked various odd jobs, including
waiting tables in exchange for meals. Also during his time in college, Walton joined
the Zeta Phi chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He was also tapped by QEBH, the well-known
secret society on campus honoring the top senior men, and the national military honor
society Scabbard and Blade. Additionally, Walton served as President of Burall Bible
Class, a large class of students from the University of Missouri and Stephens College.
Upon graduating in 1940 with a Bachelor's of Economics, he was voted "permanent president"
of the class. Walton joined J.C. Penney as a management
trainee in Des Moines, Iowa three days after graduating from college. This position paid
him $75 a month. Walton spent approximately eighteen months with J.C. Penney. He resigned
in 1942 in anticipation of being inducted into the military for service in World War
II. In the meantime, he worked at a DuPont munitions plant near Tulsa, Oklahoma. Soon
afterwards, Walton joined the military in the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps, supervising
security at aircraft plants and prisoner of war camps. In this position he served at Fort
Douglas in Salt Lake City, Utah. He eventually reached the rank of Captain.
The first stores In 1945, after leaving the military, Walton
took over management of his first variety store at the age of 26. With the help of a
$20,000 loan from his father-in-law, plus $5,000 he had saved from his time in the Army,
Walton purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas. The store was a franchise
of the Butler Brothers chain. Walton pioneered many concepts that became
crucial to his success. Walton made sure the shelves were consistently stocked with a wide
range of goods. His second store, the tiny "Eagle" department store, was down the street
from his first Ben Franklin and next door to its main competitor in Newport.
With the sales volume growing from $80,000 to $225,000 in three years, Walton drew the
attention of the landlord, P.K. Holmes, whose family had a history in retail. Admiring Sam's
great success, and desiring to reclaim the store for his son, he refused to renew the
lease. The lack of a renewal option, together with the prohibitively high rent of 5% of
sales, were early business lessons to Walton. Despite forcing Walton out, Holmes bought
the store's inventory and fixtures for $50,000, which Walton called "a fair price".
With a year left on the lease, but the store effectively sold, he, his wife Helen and his
father managed to negotiate the purchase of a new location on the downtown square of Bentonville,
Arkansas. Walton negotiated the purchase of a small store, and the title to the building,
on the condition that he get a 99-year lease to expand into the shop next door. The owner
of the shop next door refused 6 times, and Walton gave up on Bentonville when his father-in-law,
without Sam's knowledge, paid the shop owner a final visit and $20,000 to secure the lease.
He had just enough left from the sale of the first store to close the deal, and reimburse
Helen's father. They opened for business with a one-day remodeling sale on May 9, 1950.
Before he bought the Bentonville store, it was doing $72,000 in sales and it increased
to $105,000 in the first year and then $140,000 and $175,000.
A chain of Ben Franklin stores With the new Bentonville "Five and Dime" opening
for business, and 220 miles away, a year left on the lease in Newport, the cash-strapped
young Walton had to learn to delegate responsibility. After succeeding with two stores at such a
distance, Sam became enthusiastic about scouting more locations and opening more Ben Franklin
franchises. In 1954, he opened a store with his brother
Bud in a shopping center in Ruskin Heights, a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. With the
help of his brother, father-in-law, and brother-in-law, Sam went on to open many new variety stores.
He encouraged his managers to invest and take an equity stake in the business, often as
much as $1000 in their store, or the next outlet to open. By 1962, along with his brother
Bud, he owned 16 stores in Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas.
The first Wal-Mart
The first true Wal-Mart opened on July 2, 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. Called the Wal-Mart
Discount City store, it was located at 719 West Walnut Street. Soon after, the Walton
brothers teamed up with Stefan Dasbach, leading to the first of many stores to come. He launched
a determined effort to market American-made products. Included in the effort was a willingness
to find American manufacturers who could supply merchandise for the entire Wal-Mart chain
at a price low enough to meet the foreign competition.
As another chain store grew, Meijer, it caught the attention of Walton. He acknowledges that
his one-stop-shopping center format was based on Meijer’s innovative concept. Contrary
to the prevailing practice of American discount store chains, Walton located stores in smaller
towns, not larger cities. To make his model work, he emphasized logistics, particularly
locating stores within a day's drive proximity to Wal-Mart's regional warehouses, and distributed
through its own trucking service. Buying in volume and efficient delivery permitted sale
of discounted name brand merchandise. Thus, sustained growth— from 1977's 190 stores
to 1985's 800— was achieved. Personal life
Walton married Helen Robson on February 14, 1943. They had four children: Samuel Robson
born in 1944, John Thomas, James Carr born in 1948, and Alice Louise born in 1949. Walton
supported various charitable causes. He and Helen were active in the First Presbyterian
Church in Bentonville; Sam served as a Ruling Elder and a Sunday School teacher, teaching
high school age students. The family made substantial contributions to the church.
Death Walton died on Sunday, April 5, 1992, of multiple
myeloma, a type of blood cancer, in Little Rock, Arkansas. The news of his death was
relayed by satellite to all 1,960 Wal-Mart stores. At the time, his company employed
380,000 people. Annual sales of nearly $50 billion flowed from 1,735 Wal-Marts, 212 Sam’s
Clubs, and 13 Supercenters. His remains are interred at the Bentonville
Cemetery. He left his ownership in Wal-Mart to his wife
and their children: Rob Walton succeeded his father as the Chairman of the Board of Wal-Mart,
and John Walton was a director until his death in a 2005 plane crash. The others are not
directly involved in the company, however his son Jim is chairman of Arvest Bank. The
Walton family held five spots in the top ten richest people in the United States until
2005. Two daughters of Sam's brother Bud Walton, Ann Kroenke and Nancy Laurie, hold smaller
shares in the company. Legacy
In 1998, Walton was included in Time's list of 100 most influential people of the 20th
Century. Walton was honored for all his pioneering efforts in retail in March 1992, when he received
the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George H. W. Bush.
Forbes ranked Sam Walton as the richest person in the United States from 1982 to 1988, ceding
the top spot to John Kluge in 1989 when the editors began to credit Walton's fortune jointly
to him and his four children.. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. also runs Sam's Club warehouse stores.
Walmart operates in the U.S. and in 15 international markets, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada,
Chile, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua
and the United Kingdom. At the University of Arkansas, the Business
College is named in his honor. Walton was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S.
Business Hall of Fame in 1992. See also
Walton family Bibliography
References
Sources Trimble, Vance H.. Sam Walton: the Inside
Story of America's Richest Man. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-451-17161-6. ISBN 978-0-451-17161-0
Walton, Sam; John Huey. Made in America: My Story. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-42615-1.
Further reading Bianco, Anthony. The Bully of Bentonville:
how the high cost of Wal-Mart's everyday low prices is hurting America. New York: Currency/Doubleday.
ISBN 0-385-51356-9. Scott, Roy Vernon; Vance, Sandra Stringer.
Wal-Mart: A History of Sam Walton's Retail Phenomenon. ISBN 0-8057-9833-1.
External links "Time 100 Builders & Titans: Sam Walton".
Time Magazine. December 7, 1998. Retrieved March 31, 2012. at Wayback Machine
Business Week Sam Walton: The King of the Discounters August 9, 2004
Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas
Sam Walton at Find A Grave. Sam's Rules for Building a Business