Sam Walton was a genius mogul and was the founder of Wal-Mart. His retail visionary skills took a small-town variety store in Alabama, and transformed it into the largest retail company in the world. Even after his death, 20 years ago, he influence is still witness today in the retail industry.
Be an Innovator
Sam Walton’s main philosophy was to keep cost low, which kept prices low. It is a simple premise but is very problematical in practical use. This brings me to the first lesson that I have learned from Sam Walton, innovation. Mr. Walton did not create the retail commercial he modernized and change the business model to fit his quixotic. “Walton also looked outside of his company when it came to developing technologies, and as a result Wal-Mart grew into one of the first retailers to connect its stores in a network to headquarters, resulting in still greater efficiency” (Springer, 2010, 154). In the beginning, Walton did not know anything about the retail business, but he could generate theories from other retailers. “Walton in a recorded interview admitted he knew so little about the retail business at that time that he, "Started doing strange things" that were not a part of the Ben Franklin playbook, including selling ice cream and popcorn outside the stores – ‘anything I could hawk’ (Springer, 2010).
His achievement of innovation was to pioneer the now famous everyday-low-price strategy that has focus on efficiency with better profit margins. With innovation comes the willingness to gamble on different ideas. Since Wal-Mart is a merchandising company, he was able to cut operation cost and was able to control direct labor. American workers demand high labor cost, which can drive operational overhead costs skyrocke...
... middle of paper ...
... upper hand over his competitors. These strategies his helped Wal-Mart to become the biggest retailer in the world. ”Wal-Mart is the biggest retailer in the world and the second-largest corporation after Exxon Mobil. With annual sales of $351 billion, 6,000 or so retail establishments, subsidiary operations in Argentina, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Great Britain, and Japan” (Brown, 2008, 38). Today, Sam has built an empire that no other store can compete and other retailers trying to adopt his strategies.
Works Cited
Brown, S. (2008). Fail Better. The Market, 14(11), 36-40.
Garrison, R., Noreen, E., Brewer, P. (2010). Managerial Accounting, 13th ed.
Jay, E. (2008). Wal-Marts fascinating-accounting. Retrieved from http://eric.wasaba.com/blog/2008/02/wal-marts-fascinating-accounting.html
Springer, J. (2010). Sam Walton. Supermarket News, 58(49), 222.
Wal-Mart was not always the superstore that it is today. In the late 1940’s, Sam Walton took up the ownership of a Ben Franklin’s store in Newport, Arkansas. Even during the time before Wal-Mart, Walton was all about keeping prices low. It is every business’s objective to find the right balance between the prices of an item to meet the demands of the consumer in order to maximize revenue. How could Walton still make a profit while keeping the prices low for the consumer? Even while still operating the Ben Franklin’s store, he would purchase products from wholesalers and minimally markup the price. Where most retailers would rely on markup prices to gain profit, Walton would rely on pure volume in order to make up for the low prices (Frank, 2006). This was a smart decision on his part because it makes sense that if a consumer can get the same product for a lower price then they will purchase the cheaper product. It was not until 1962 that Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart store, also in Arkan...
He was also considered charismatic. He communicated directly with his employees (associates) and he expected customers to be treated as guests when they entered his store. “Mr. Walton always worked hard at shaping his work force, using cheers, rap songs and payment policies to urge employees to be frugal in their jobs and friendly toward customers. Bonuses were paid to all employees in stores where stealing and other inventory losses were kept below 2 percent of sales. Scholarships were established at colleges in names of employees who crafted better ways to handle merchandise.” (nytimes.com, 1992). Today this is not the case. Since the death of Sam Walton in 1992, the company’s reputation has been on a continual downslide. Wal-mart is no longer an ethical company; it has negatively impacted the communities in which it exists. It mistreats its employees and is negatively impacting the nation’s over-all economy. Ethical business practices are not the way of life for today’s Wal-mart.
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.
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.
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?
Walton opened a small business called “Walton’s 5&10” in a small town of Bentonville, Arkansas. This small business followed a motto of selling a variety of products at low prices. Hence the name of “Walton’s 5&10” or “5” meaning Nickel and “10” meaning dime putting it all together as Walton’s nickel and dime store. With the early success of his business he looked to expanding. Walton opened the first store under the name of Walmart in 1962 in Rodgers, Arkansas. The formula of Sam Walton was to offer low prices and great services to the consumers, almost too good to be true. His competitors believed exactly that, doubting that this would never work. Sure enough the business thrived and grew rapidly exceeding the expectations of Walton’s dream. This changed forever the way of retail. One of Sam Walton’s speeches stated “If we work together, we’ll lower the cost of living for everyone…we’ll give the world an opportunity to see what it’s like to save and have a better life.” With all the success building, Walmart was steadily on its way to becoming a
"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 is the world's largest retailer and second largest corporation. It is the largest private employer in the United States and Mexico. Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States, with an estimated 20% of the retail grocery and consumables business, and the largest toy seller in the United States, with an estimated 45% of the retail toy business, having surpassed Toys"R" Us in the late 1990s. Wal-Mart has 1,929 stores which as of 2005 sales figures totaled about $155,477,000,000 in sales. Wal-Marts revenue as of 2006 was an estimated $315,654 billion USD, net income $11.231billion USD, and employs more than 1.8 million employees.1
Born on March 29, 1918 in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, Sam Walton was said to have excelled at anything he set his mind to (Walton & Huey, 14). President of the student body in high school as well as college at the University of Missouri, where he majored in business, Walton and his natural ambition gained him success in virtually all of his ventures; during the Great Depression, Walton had managed a small newspaper business, making an impressive four to five thousand dollars per year. It leaves little to wonder about how exactly Wal-Mart became such a financially successful industry.
The first Walmart was opened in Rogers, Arkansas in the year 1962 by a 44-year-old man by the name of Sam Walton. When he first envisioned Walmart, Walton believed that a successful business could be built around offering lower prices and great service. Despite his retail rivals laughing at his supposedly unsustainable business model, the company became hugely successful, and its success exceeded even Walton's expectations. The company went public in 1970, and the proceeds financed a steady expansion of the business. Today, Walmart is the largest retailer in the world, as it has 8,500 stores spread across 15 countries and annual revenues of $400 billion dollars. Moreover, Walmart is the
The Wal-mart is the largest retail chain in United States and in the world. The wal-mart was founded in the year 1962 by Mr Sam Walton. It was originally named as Wal-Mart discount city in Rogers, Arkansas. At the time when the Wal-Mart stores started in the year 1962 it was focused only in small rural cites and town which had a population of 5000 to 25000. It was soon increased to 18 stores in 1969. In the next 30 years it had more than 4750 stores across 50 states in USA and 9 countries with $245 billion sales. It started its international operations in Mexico in the year 1991 and then it expanded it to different countries across Europe and Asia.
Wal-Mart as we know it today evolved from Sam Walton’s goals for great value and great customer service. Mr. Walton’s competitors thought his idea that a successful business could be built around offering lower prices and great service would never work. Mr. Walton also credited the rapid growth of Wal-Mart not just to the low costs that attracted his customers, but also to his associates. He relied on them to give customers the great shopping experience that would keep them coming back. Sam shared his vision for the company with associates in a way that was nearly unheard of in the industry. He made them partners in the success of the company, and firmly believed that this partnership was what made Walmart great.
The first Wal-Mart store opened in July of 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas by Sam Walton who believed that the future of retailing was in discounting and to avoid competing with established giants like Sears and Woolworth, Wal-Mart’s stated out of the large cities in the beginning and this strategy help avoid competition, while in rural areas Wal-Mart began growing their customer base by offering ways to save money and shorter travel distance, Sam Walton felt the best way to make customers happy was to provide the low prices every day (Farhoomand, 2006). The company needed to continually find ways to control the operating costs so the savings would then be passed on to Wal-Mart customers in the form of lower prices than the competitors. Walton was opposed to having any kind of employee unions for its company and saw them as a disruption and an inconvenience (Farhoomand, 2006). The continued search for lower prices made him aware of business related travel cost, Wal-Mart executives stayed in low cost hotels when they traveled and the cost related to the services provided by suppliers, Wal-Mart helped suppliers improve operations and efficiency to produce lower cost. Walton wanted the suppliers to correct any nonessential or insufficiencies existing in their business structures as a way of gaining lower prices and higher value products for its Wal-Mart stores. To further push savings Wal-Mart forced cost down by eliminating the middleman and buying directly from the manufacturers. This cost saving also applied to executive salaries Walton felt providing employees with stock options, training opportunities, and allow employees to grow and develop would be a better way to engage and involve them in his vision (Farhoomand, 2006).
Wal-mart has a reputation for caring for its customers, of course their employees, and for the prospective public. So Wal-Mart can be an industrial leader for the world of shoppers with an eye for lower affordable prices, company decision makers would continue it's systematic strategies that it's founder and president established years ago. Sam Walton believed in three guiding principles in his strategy planning they were to provide the customer with good value and service, to have a good relationship with its associates, and to be involved with the community.
Wal-Mart's vision statement is, "To become the worldwide leader in retailing". Sam Walton followed this statement to become the largest retailer in the United States. He accomplished this feat by understanding what the most important aspect in selling is, the customer.