You may feel as though you're pretty familiar with Walmart.
The mega-retailer brand is a household name and one of the most recognizable brands in
the country, if not the world — but there's probably a lot you don't know.
This is the untold truth of the American giant, Walmart.
Sam Walton, Walmart's famous founder, was worth more than $8.6 billion when he died
in 1992, but like many American tycoons, he started off small.
After graduating from college, he worked for 18 months with J.C. Penney to become familiar
with the retail industry, and in his early years in the business he franchised a number
of Ben Franklin general stores.
In 1962, Walton opened his first retail location that bore his name.
It wasn't in the cavernous warehouse-type building where Walmart super centers are housed
today.
Instead, Walton's first five-and-dime was a modestly-sized general store on the town
square in Bentonville, Arkansas with a 1950s-style red and white facade and awning that has been
retained to this day.
Today the building houses the Walmart Museum, where Walmart souvenirs are for sale, and
elaborate displays recounting the history of the company are housed for visitors' perusal.
One artifact on display at the museum is the official Walmart articles of incorporation,
the paperwork which legally records the creation of a business — in this case, a pretty historic
one.
While much of Walmart's history has been marked by profits and business successes, the company
has also been through plenty of missteps.
In 2006, the company had its fair share of struggles, and made the decision to pull out
of both the German and Korean market.
Germany was Walmart's first attempt to enter the European market, and it did not go over
well.
The stores were often located on the outskirts of town and not easily accessible for those
without a car.
Before deciding to pull out of the German market, the company decided to stop requiring
its sales associates to smile at customers as some male shoppers apparently interpreted
it as flirting.
According to the secretary of a labor union which represented the company's employees,
"Germans just don't behave that way."
Although the company had lost hundreds of millions of dollars since 1998 as a result
of their expansion into Germany, a company spokeswoman called it a "good, important lesson"
for the company as a whole.
In South Korea, where the company operated just over a dozen stores, they decided to
sell out to their local competitor, and get out of the Korean market as well.
With only one store in the capital of Seoul, Walmart was unable to acquire the same name-brand
recognition they enjoy in the United States and couldn't compete with established Korean
brands.
Walmart operates some 4,600 stores outside of the United States, and uses 60 different
store names for its international locations.
While the company can change the names of the stores it acquires, the choice is often
made to keep the names of the international brands intact so that local shoppers have
a pre-existing name-brand association.
In Mexico, Walmart operates stores called Bodega Aurrera and Bodega Aurrera Express.
Walmart entered the Mexican market in 1991 and has more stores there — over 1,600 locations
— than any other country besides the United States.
Brazil is also one of the company's oldest international markets, with Walmart having
had a presence there since 1995.
Among the company's holdings in this country are stores such as Toda Dia, Maxxi Atacado,
Nacional, and Mercadorama.
Japanese Walmart locations operate under the Seiyu brand, and in the United Kingdom the
stores are known as Asda and Asda Supercentre.
While you can buy some offbeat items at Walmart, most people shop there to stock up on home
essentials at a cheap price.
This helps to explain why out of the hundreds of thousands of products on sale at every
store, the company's best selling product is bananas.
This has reportedly been the case for years.
A billion pounds of the fruit are sold every year in its locations globally, which can
be broken down to 32 pounds of bananas every second of every day of the year.
While this may seem like an insane number, author Dan Koeppel, who wrote an entire book
about bananas, reports that Americans eat more bananas every year than oranges and apples
put together.
Having a Walmart close by may help your wallet, but it reportedly won't help your waistline.
A study carried out in 2010 by researchers at the University of North Carolina and Samford
University found a correlation between Walmarts and body weight.
Specifically, the study found a correlation between the addition of Walmart stores and
an increase in the average body mass index of an area.
The researchers' theory was simple — given the store's business model which entails selling
cheap, bulk processed food, having a Walmart in your neighborhood can have a significant
impact on your eating habits and by extension, your body mass.
The study went further to suggest that even though customers were saving money by shopping
at Walmart, they eventually negated these savings with higher healthcare costs as a
result of their obesity.
According to the study:
"These results imply that the proliferation of Walmart Supercenters explains 10.5 percent
of the rise in obesity since the late 1980s, but the resulting increase in medical expenditures
offsets only a small portion of the consumers' savings from shopping at Supercenters."
They say that the direct correlation between the supersizing of Walmarts across the country
directly relates to the supersizing of our waistlines."
Even if you don't have a Walmart in your general vicinity, the study pointed out that because
other mega-stores follow a similar business model, your diet is likely still being impacted
— so if these findings are true, it might not be all Walmart's fault.
People tend to think of most retail locations as a generally safe environment.
Walmart suffers from petty crime, of course, as most retailers do.
Hundreds of thousands of police reports are filed annually for petty crimes committed
at Walmart.
These include shoplifting, graffiti, and vandalism.
However, there are much larger crimes going on at Walmart locations as well.
The crimes documented as having been committed inside a Walmart range from attempted kidnappings,
to murders, to even the operation of a meth lab inside a 6-foot drainage pipe in a parking
lot outside the store.
Some local police departments say that their deputies are unable to respond to all of the
calls that come from their local Walmarts, because there are simply too many.
"Port Richey Police say nearly half of the city's crime is happening in one place: the
local Walmart."
So what makes Walmart a violent crime magnet?
It may have something to do with the company cutting staff in multiple departments.
As a cost-cutting measure, greeters who worked at the front door while also serving as a
loss-prevention team, were cut.
Over time, cashiers were also phased out and replaced with self-checkout systems.
One new employee is hired for every 524 square feet of store space, which is a 19 percent
increase from ten years prior.
In other words, there's a lot of empty space inside a Walmart where it seems no one is
looking.
When criminals think that there aren't enough employees around to catch them, they're more
liable to commit crimes.
The company's CEO, Doug McMillon, began working at Walmart unloading trucks during the summer
of 1984.
His summer job paid $6.50 per hour and he used the money to pay for college.
He reportedly chose Walmart because the pay was better than McDonald's.
He worked his way through the ranks of the company and became CEO in 2014.
He earned more than $22 million in 2017, a pretty far cry from the Walmart median wage
of $19,177.
Though the story sounds a bit like a fairy tale, McMillon's case isn't entirely out of
the ordinary, as the company claims that more than 75 percent of its management teams in
stores began working as hourly employees themselves.
With 2.1 million employees, Walmart trails only the United States Department of Defense
and the Chinese People's Liberation Army as the largest employer in the world.
Because first and second place are occupied by government/military jobs, that means Walmart
ranks as the world's largest private employer.
In the United States, it's the largest private employer in 21 of 50 states, most of which
are in the Midwest and southeast.
Texas, for example, where Walmart is the state's largest private employer, was home to over
168,000 Walmart employees in 2019.
In Florida, they employed over 107,000 during that same time period.
Many people have talked about the income of Walmart being larger than that of other countries
on earth, but it's often stated as more of a general conversation point rather than a
truly technical discussion of economics.
It turns out, that argument might actually hold some water.
A 2017 paper written by a student at Fayetteville State University examined this theory.
His research found that comparing annual sales from Walmart as laid out in the company's
annual report to the gross domestic product of countries across the world ranked by the
International Monetary Fund, The World Bank, and the United Nations, showed that Walmart
was ranked 24th in the world.
Walmart beat out, among other countries, Greece, Pakistan, South Africa, Singapore, Israel,
Hong Kong and Thailand, but was worth less than Turkey, Russia, Spain, Mexico, France,
Brazil, Argentina, and Taiwan.
It's a great example of the influence Walmart holds.
It's not just a store — it's a global superpower.
Though you might not expect it, Walmart has taken an interest in using solar power to
run its stores.
The reasoning behind this, according to the company, is to lower energy costs, cause less
damage to the environment, and keep prices low for the company's many customers.
In 2015, it was the biggest corporate installer of solar power, but has since given up that
title to its competitor company Target, and also fell well behind Ikea.
However, in 2018 Walmart announced a plan to bring solar power to a total of 500 of
its stores in 22 states and Puerto Rico.
This would bring solar power to around 10 percent of its U.S. stores compared to 90
percent at Ikea and 20 percent at Target stores.
But the company hasn't given up on its renewable energy aims, with a goal to have renewable
power in use at half of its locations by 2025.
Walmart has also announced that it plans to use power created from wind farms in the Midwest.
The move to solar power hasn't been an entirely smooth ride, though.
In 2019, the company sued Tesla for allegedly providing faulty solar panels which set fires
on the roofs of at least seven Walmart stores from 2012 to 2018.
Most companies as profitable as Walmart engage in some sort of charitable giving.
In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina struck and devastated large parts of the Gulf Coast,
the company donated enough food for 100,000 meals.
They've also stepped into help during similar disasters and donate large amounts of money
annually as part of their philanthropy program.
According to Kathleen Mclaughlin, president of the Walmart Foundation, the company's charitable
giving arm,
"Business exists to serve society... [and] philanthropy enables Walmart to go even further
in addressing some of the world's toughest social and environmental challenges."
To that end, Walmart donates around $1 billion annually.
The company says its charitable giving is concentrated into three main categories: creating
economic opportunity, enhancing sustainability in supply chains, and strengthening community.
Grant-making examples include $1.3 million given to enhance the livelihoods of lower-income
farmers in India; $25 million given over five years to advance food safety in China; and
$40 million given since 2011 to advance job training and education for veterans and military
families.
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