Wal-Mart has been a staple of America since July 2, 1962, when Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart Discount City store. Within a few years, Wal-Mart Discount City stores began to spread across the country. In 1968, it opened its first stores outside Arkansas, in Sikeston, Missouri and Claremore, Oklahoma. Sam Walton found success in offering consumers options and variety. Since that first store opened, Wal-Mart has now entered the grocery business and now the company controls about 20% of the retail grocery and consumables business. This says a lot about a man who began his retail career after working just 18 months at J.C Penny. Sam Walton found success early on with offering variety, and options when no one else was.
Walmart was created by a man named Sam Walton in 1962. Walmart was founded on the belief to offer reasonable prices and great service in one place. The employees are nicknamed “Walmartians” which makes them stands apart from any other company. This culture is accountable for a company of this magnitude to be able to endure an innovative spirit decade after decade. Walmart has been connected with the achievement of other companies over the years. They also have many lawsuits, overtime policies violations, and been held accountable for thrashing other companies.
The retail giant started operations in 1962 and was founded by Sam Walton. Current, Wal-Mart is the fastest growing and the biggest retailer with a total of 3,400 stores within the United States and 3,300 other stores in other parts of the major cities in the world. The retail stores have 1.5 million employees and annual revenues of more than $350 Billion.
Walmart serves about 14 million customers each day. When Sam Walton founded Walmart in 1962 I’m sure he didn’t expect it to become as big of a retail store as it is now. 42 years after being founded, Walmart now has 4,253 stores across the world, and brings in $405 billion dollars a year. This kind of success doesn’t just happen overnight.
Walmart first department stores opened in a small lower income town called Rogers, Arkansas on July 2, 1962. Sam Walton had a vision of providing inexpensive goods to small town markets. Walmart went public on October 1, 1970 to the trading public. It started at $16.50 a share which was a good start then. In 1991 Walmart expanded internationally, starting in Mexico City. Currently as of July 2004 Walmart have opened more than 1,409 discount stores in the US, 1,562 super centers, 539 Same clubs, and more than 1,506 international Walmarts in various countries.
"Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the world's largest retailer, with $285.2 billion in sales in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2005. The company employs 1.6 million associates worldwide through more than 3,700 facilities in the United States and more than 2,400 units in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. More than 138 million customers per week visit Wal-Mart stores worldwide." (Walmartfacts.com)
Wal-Mart, a "Big-Box Retailer" employs more than 2.1 million associates worldwide and has two-thousand seven-hundred stores in the United States with many more in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Central America, Chile, China, Germany, Japan, Korea, India, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom, making Wal-Mart the largest retailer in the world. "Wal-Mart accounts for upward of 30 percent of U.S. sales, and plans to more than double its sales within the next five years" (Lynn 29-36). Why is Wal-Mart so successful, and is Wal-Mart actually bad for America?
Wal-Mart has grown above and beyond the Arkansas store that opened thirty-nine years ago. It serves more than 100 million customers weekly in all of the 50 states, plus Puerto Rico, Canada, China, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, United Kingdom, Argentina, and South Korea. Wal-Mart’s current operating numbers are:
The name Walmart has become a brand name that is synonymous with the American culture since it opened its first store in Rogers Arkansas in 1962. Walmart since then, has remained competitive in the global market and has managed to sustain its competitive edge globally even in times of recession. Walmart over the years has had to compete with new emerging retailers such as Target, Kmart, Home Depot, Dollar General and Costco to name a few, in addition to online giants such as Amazon and Alibaba Express. It however has managed to sustain itself as a marketable and highly competitive brand in the global market.
Walmart is a global retail store, since March 2016 there have been a reported 11,539 Walmart stores, this number does include the 654 Sam’s Club stores. Sam’s Club is owned by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc, which is the retail corporation that does business as Walmart. Walmart is one of the strongest brands in the world. It is the world’s largest company by revenue.
Wal-Mart has taken their mind and cash over the last 20 years to become the world’s largest retailer. Wal-Mart had a base of 2,200 stores in the 80’s, closing out of the 90’s with a bang of 3,600 stores and $4.4 billion in net income. Spurred by NAFTA, Wal-Mart took advantage foreseeing potential growth in the foreign markets. Currently they have stories in the following countries: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada...
Walmart was started by Sam Walton in 1962, after experiencing franchising in Newport. He realized that he could pass to his consumers the discounts that he earned by purchasing in wholesale and subsequently managing to acquire profits through the sale by volume. Sam Walton was obsessed with cost cutting and he managed to foster this culture in the business that he started (Frank, n. d). He managed to keep the overheads of the company by controlling his payroll. He did this by framing his frugal nature as a crusade for the low consumers as well as a quest for a favorable lifestyle for Americans. The practices that are found in many Walmart are attributed to Sam Walton who infused them in his employees through charisma and charm.
Today Wal-mart has a higher GDP than the entire country of Switzerland, but don’t worry they’re pretty neutral about it. But there has also been news about how they treat there employees. In 2004 an article was released entitled Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart, and soon after Washington got involved. The bad publicity took a toll on Wal-mart and in fact is still today, Maryland passed a law in January, 2006, that said larger employers, such as Wal-mart, must spend at least 8% of their payroll on health benefits for their employees, and now many other states have followed suit. The bad publicity also made it so 8% of customers shop elsewhere because of what they’ve heard, this has caused lower expected sales around the holidays during 2004, and 2005. Some things they’ve done is in 2006 they paid employees on average 9.36 dollars, while other major retailers like Target and Sears pay on average 11.08 dollars. While this can be easily denied by Wal-mart, another way they have gained bad publicity is from something called off-the-clock work. If they had not finished their job they had to clock out and then still finish their job, meaning they wouldn’t get paid for
In 2009 the annual meeting for all the Walmart managers took place, they then announced that because things were going so well, 50 billion square feet were going to be added to Walmart’s around the world. Their prediction of sales that year, 300 billion. And at the current time they had 1,200,000 workers.