This post All about the history of Walmart, the large international discount retail chain.
Early history
The history of Walmart can be traced back to the 1940s when Sam Walton began his career in retailing at J.C. Penny. In 1943 Walton met the Butler Brothers who owned the retail chain Ben Franklin Stores. On May 9, 1950, Walton purchased a store from Luther E. Harrison in Bentonville, Arkansas, and opened Walton's 5 & 10. Thus, the Ozark Mountain town of 2,900 residents would become the headquarters for the world's largest retailer.
In 1962 Walton invested 95% of the capital to open the first Walmart store.
1960s and 1970s
At some point Sam Walton made the decision to achieve higher sales volumes by keeping sales prices lower than his competitors by reducing his profit margin. Inspired by the successes of other discount department store chains, Walton opened the first store in his own discount chain in Rogers, Arkansas that year. Responsible for the purchase and maintenance of signage, Walton's assistant, Bob Bogle, came up with the name "Wal-Mart" for the new chain. By 1967, the company grew to 24 stores across the state of Arkansas, and had reached $12.6 million in sales, and by 1968, the company opened its first stores outside of Arkansas in Sikeston, Missouri and Claremore, Oklahoma.
The company's first stock split occurred in May 1972 at a market price of $47. By this time, Walmart was operating in five states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Oklahoma, and entered Tennessee in 1973, and Kentucky and Mississippi in 1974. As the company moved into Texas in 1975, there were 125 stores with 7,500 associates, and total sales of $340.3 million.
By 1977, Wal-Mart made its first corporate acquisition, assuming ownership and operation of the Mohr-Value stores in Michigan and Illinois. This was followed by the acquisition of the Hutcheson Shoe Company in 1978. In the same year Walmart also branched out into several new markets, launching its pharmacy, auto service center, and jewelry divisions.
By 1979, with 276 stores and 21,000 associates, Walmart reached $1.248 billion in sales.
1980s and 1990s
In 1981, Wal-Mart moved into the southeastern U.S. market, opening stores in Georgia and South Carolina, and acquiring 92 Kuhn's Big K stores. They moved into Florida and Nebraska in 1982.
In April 1983, the company opened its first Sam's Club store, a membership-based discount warehouse club, in Midwest City, Oklahoma. They also opened new Wal-Mart stores in Indiana, Iowa, New Mexico and North Carolina, and implemented "people greeters" in all of their stores. In 1984, they entered the Virginia market.
In 1985, with 882 stores with sales of $8.4 billion and 104,000 associates, the company entered Wisconsin and Colorado, and the first stores in Minnesota opened the following year, in 1986.
By the company's twenty-fifth anniversary in 1987, there were offices to track inventory, sales, and send instant communication to their stores. Continuing their technological upgrades, they had equipped 90% of their stores with barcode readers by 1988, to further assist in keeping track of their large inventory.
In February 1988, company founder Sam Walton stepped down as Chief Executive Officer, and David Glass was named to succeed him. Walton remained on as Chairman of the Corporate Board of Directors, and the company also restructured their senior management positions, elevating a cadre of executives to positions of greater responsibility.
Also in 1988, the first Wal-Mart Supercenter opened in Washington, Missouri. The supercenter concept features everything contained in a standard Walmart discount store, in addition to a tire and oil change shop, optical center, one-hour photo processing lab, portrait studio, and numerous alcove shops such as banks, cellular telephone stores, hair and nail salons, video rental stores, and other fast food outlets.
By 1989, Walmart was operating in 27 states with the addition of Michigan, West Virginia, New Jersey, and Wyoming. By 1990, they entered the markets of California, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Utah. The Walmart Visitor's Center also opened this year on the site of Sam Walton's original store.
The 1990s saw an era of furious growth on an unprecedented scale and the incorporation of several new ideas and technology into the business.
In 1990, US sales had quadrupled to $32 billion over the previous five years and Walmart acquired The McLane Company, a food service distributor, which was later sold to Berkshire Hathaway in 2003.
In 1991, the company moved into the Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York markets. Walmart entered the international market in this year, with the opening of their first store in Mexico City. They also acquired Western Merchandisers, Inc. of Amarillo, Texas. 1991 also saw the launch of the Sam's American Choice brand of products.
On March 17, 1992 U.S. President George H. W. Bush presents Sam Walton with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Sam Walton passes away on April 5, 1992. His eldest son, S. Robson Walton, succeeds him as Chairman of the corporate board of directors, on April 7, 1992. This year, Walmart had a presence in 45 states with the addition of Idaho, Montana, and Oregon, as well as Puerto Rico.
In 1993, the Walmart International Division was formed with Bobby Martin as its president. The company also enters the U.S. markets of Alaska, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Washington. Their stores also achieve the billion-dollar sales mark in one week in December 1993.
In 1994, the National Advertising Review Board challenged the Walmart slogan, "Always the low price. Always," contending that it implied that Walmart's prices were always the lowest and could mislead some shoppers. In response, Walmart adopted a new slogan, "Always low prices. Always."
Also in 1994, the Code Adam program was instituted in Walmart stores. That same year, Walmart acquired 91 PACE Membership Warehouse clubs from Kmart and 122 Woolco stores in Canada in 1994. In addition, it opened 3 value clubs in Hong Kong, and had 96 stores in Mexico.
By 1995, Walmart had 1,995 discount stores, 239 Supercenters, 433 SAM'S CLUBS and 276 international stores with sales at $93.6 billion (including US sales of $78 billion) and 675,000 associates. Walmart entered its 50th state (Vermont), and enters the South American market, with three new units in Argentina and five in Brazil. The company enters the Chinese market in 1996 through a joint-venture agreement.
In 1997, Walmart replaced Woolworth on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company has its first $100 billion sales year, with sales totaling $118.1 billion. Also this year, they acquire 21 Wertkauf stores in Germany, and introduce their OneSource nutrition centers.
In 1998, Walmart introduced the Neighborhood Market concept at three stores in Arkansas. Neighborhood Market stores are predominantly grocery stores, and are meant to attract customers with easier parking, less crowded aisles and quicker checkout.
Also in 1998, Walmart launched its Wal-Mart Television Network, a vast, in-store advertising network showing commercials for products sold in the stores, concert clips and music videos for a recording artist's media, trailers for upcoming movie releases, and news.
The Asda chain in the United Kingdom became a subsidiary of the American retail giant Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer,in 1999, and is the second largest chain in the UK after Tesco.
21st century
In 2000, H. Lee Scott was named president and CEO and US sales had doubled to $156 billion since 1995.
Also in 2000, Walmart was ranked fifth by Fortune magazine on its Global Most Admired All-Stars list, and in 2003 and 2004, as the most admired company in America.
In 2005, Walmart had $312.4 billion in sales, more than 6,200 facilities around the world, including 3,800 stores in the United States and 3,800 international units, and employing more than 1.6 million associates worldwide. In fact, their U.S. presence had grown so rapidly that there were only small pockets of the country that remained further than 60 miles away from the nearest Walmart.[9] Approximately 138 million customers visited Walmart stores each week all over the world. Their corporate philanthropy efforts also assisted the U.S. hurricane relief efforts with $18 million in cash donations.
In 2006, on 26 July Walmart announced its complete pull-out of the German market. All existing 85 stores were sold to the Metro Group which in turn turns most of the stores of their own brand real,-.
On September 12, 2007, after 13 years, Walmart introduced new advertising with the slogan, "Save Money Live Better," instead of "Always Low Prices, Always." It commissioned Global Insight for the ads and the report stated that as of 2006, the retailer saves American families $2,500 yearly (up 7.3% from $2,329 , 2004). The new research found that the reduction in price levels due to Walmart resulted to savings for consumers of $287 billion in 2006, which is $957 per person or $2,500 per household.
On June 30, 2008, Walmart unveiled the company's new logo, which stylized the name as "Walmart". A sunburst or flower-resembling symbol replaces the star.
On February 22, 2010, the company confirmed it acquiring the video streaming company Vudu, Inc. for an estimated $100 million.
New ventures
In late 2005, Walmart designed two experimental stores, one in McKinney, Texas and the other in Aurora, Colorado, which featured wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels, biofuel-capable boilers, water-cooled refrigerators, and xeriscape gardens. The buildings also included many other energy and cost saving technologies.
In March 2006, Walmart sought to appeal to a more affluent demographic, with the opening of a new supercenter in Plano, Texas which was intended to compete against stores that some viewed as more upscale and appealing. The new store features wooden floors, wider aisles, a sushi bar, a coffee/sandwich shop (with free Wi-Fi Internet access), a Subway, and higher-end items such as microbrew beer, expensive wines, and high-end electronics. The exterior sports the less-common hunter green background behind the Walmart letters instead of the trademark blue.
In response to the popularity of organic food supermarkets, such as Whole Foods and Wild Oats, Walmart announced plans in May 2006, to increase the amount of organic food available in its stores. They announced that both conventionally grown and organic versions of certain products would be available, and the price of organic versions would not be more than 10% over the price of conventionally-grown products. Since Walmart is one of the nation's largest grocery retailers, there was some concern expressed that their push to lower prices would not be sustainable for inexpensive organic food.
The 2010 remodelings of their smaller stores shifted their emphasis away from non-grocery products towards carrying grocery items carried by their supercenters. This has created a small backlash amongst some loyal customers. The smaller sizes and the larger sizes in the adult clothing were discontinued as well as available styles, forcing adult customers to look for clothing in the children's section, or go to the more expensive specialty Big and Tall stores for basic items like jeans. Their popular Wrangler and Faded Glory brands are not readily available through their on-line stores in the larger sizes, making many of their customers feel that Walmart has completely abandoned their needs now that they have driven Kmart out of most areas and is more interested in maximizing their profits and pursuing the affluent demographic than being the one-stop-store filling the needs for the entire family.
Legal trouble
Over the last decade or so Walmart has become involved in thousands of lawsuits for a variety of reasons. The majority of the suits are class action lawsuits in which employees are suing for unpaid wages. They have also run into many discrimination cases in which employees are suing for being profiled out of money or out of jobs. For instance, there were two separate cases, one in 2004 and one in 2005 in which African Americans were suing two different Walmarts for denying them jobs based on race. These became so popular that the reverend Jesse Jackson spoke during both of the proceedings. There are also many lawsuits in which women are suing Wal-Mart for discriminating against them. In one article written in 2004 USA today mentioned 32 different lawsuits that involved women suing Walmart. All of this has not affected Walmart financially however, according to Fortune 500, Walmart still had $351 billion in revenue ($11 billion in profit) in 2007, a new high for the corporation.
On December 3, 2008, the family of Walmart service worker Jdimytai Damour, who was killed by a stampede of shoppers frantically entering a Valley Stream, New York Walmart store on Black Friday (November 28) , filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the corporation; Damour's family alleged Walmart of encouraging a mass number of customers to come to the store simultaneously. In addition, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Walmart for "...inadequate crowd management following the Nov. 28, 2008, death of an employee at its Valley Stream, N.Y., store. The worker died of asphyxiation after he was knocked to the ground and trampled by a crowd of about 2,000 shoppers who surged into the store for its annual "Blitz Friday" pre-holiday sales event." The company went on to spend an estimated $2 million in legal fees fighting OSHA's $7,000 fine, because it apparently wished to prevent OSHA from establishing a precedent that would enable OSHA to micromanage Walmart's crowd control measures in the future.
Countries of operation
As of October 2009, Walmart stores operate in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, Pakistan,and the United States.
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| Sam Walton's original Walton's Five and Dime, now the Walmart Visitor's Center Bentonville, Arkansas. |
Early history
The history of Walmart can be traced back to the 1940s when Sam Walton began his career in retailing at J.C. Penny. In 1943 Walton met the Butler Brothers who owned the retail chain Ben Franklin Stores. On May 9, 1950, Walton purchased a store from Luther E. Harrison in Bentonville, Arkansas, and opened Walton's 5 & 10. Thus, the Ozark Mountain town of 2,900 residents would become the headquarters for the world's largest retailer.
In 1962 Walton invested 95% of the capital to open the first Walmart store.
1960s and 1970s
At some point Sam Walton made the decision to achieve higher sales volumes by keeping sales prices lower than his competitors by reducing his profit margin. Inspired by the successes of other discount department store chains, Walton opened the first store in his own discount chain in Rogers, Arkansas that year. Responsible for the purchase and maintenance of signage, Walton's assistant, Bob Bogle, came up with the name "Wal-Mart" for the new chain. By 1967, the company grew to 24 stores across the state of Arkansas, and had reached $12.6 million in sales, and by 1968, the company opened its first stores outside of Arkansas in Sikeston, Missouri and Claremore, Oklahoma.
The company's first stock split occurred in May 1972 at a market price of $47. By this time, Walmart was operating in five states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Oklahoma, and entered Tennessee in 1973, and Kentucky and Mississippi in 1974. As the company moved into Texas in 1975, there were 125 stores with 7,500 associates, and total sales of $340.3 million.
By 1977, Wal-Mart made its first corporate acquisition, assuming ownership and operation of the Mohr-Value stores in Michigan and Illinois. This was followed by the acquisition of the Hutcheson Shoe Company in 1978. In the same year Walmart also branched out into several new markets, launching its pharmacy, auto service center, and jewelry divisions.
By 1979, with 276 stores and 21,000 associates, Walmart reached $1.248 billion in sales.
1980s and 1990s
In 1981, Wal-Mart moved into the southeastern U.S. market, opening stores in Georgia and South Carolina, and acquiring 92 Kuhn's Big K stores. They moved into Florida and Nebraska in 1982.
In April 1983, the company opened its first Sam's Club store, a membership-based discount warehouse club, in Midwest City, Oklahoma. They also opened new Wal-Mart stores in Indiana, Iowa, New Mexico and North Carolina, and implemented "people greeters" in all of their stores. In 1984, they entered the Virginia market.
In 1985, with 882 stores with sales of $8.4 billion and 104,000 associates, the company entered Wisconsin and Colorado, and the first stores in Minnesota opened the following year, in 1986.
By the company's twenty-fifth anniversary in 1987, there were offices to track inventory, sales, and send instant communication to their stores. Continuing their technological upgrades, they had equipped 90% of their stores with barcode readers by 1988, to further assist in keeping track of their large inventory.
In February 1988, company founder Sam Walton stepped down as Chief Executive Officer, and David Glass was named to succeed him. Walton remained on as Chairman of the Corporate Board of Directors, and the company also restructured their senior management positions, elevating a cadre of executives to positions of greater responsibility.
Also in 1988, the first Wal-Mart Supercenter opened in Washington, Missouri. The supercenter concept features everything contained in a standard Walmart discount store, in addition to a tire and oil change shop, optical center, one-hour photo processing lab, portrait studio, and numerous alcove shops such as banks, cellular telephone stores, hair and nail salons, video rental stores, and other fast food outlets.
By 1989, Walmart was operating in 27 states with the addition of Michigan, West Virginia, New Jersey, and Wyoming. By 1990, they entered the markets of California, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Utah. The Walmart Visitor's Center also opened this year on the site of Sam Walton's original store.
The 1990s saw an era of furious growth on an unprecedented scale and the incorporation of several new ideas and technology into the business.
In 1990, US sales had quadrupled to $32 billion over the previous five years and Walmart acquired The McLane Company, a food service distributor, which was later sold to Berkshire Hathaway in 2003.
In 1991, the company moved into the Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York markets. Walmart entered the international market in this year, with the opening of their first store in Mexico City. They also acquired Western Merchandisers, Inc. of Amarillo, Texas. 1991 also saw the launch of the Sam's American Choice brand of products.
On March 17, 1992 U.S. President George H. W. Bush presents Sam Walton with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Sam Walton passes away on April 5, 1992. His eldest son, S. Robson Walton, succeeds him as Chairman of the corporate board of directors, on April 7, 1992. This year, Walmart had a presence in 45 states with the addition of Idaho, Montana, and Oregon, as well as Puerto Rico.
In 1993, the Walmart International Division was formed with Bobby Martin as its president. The company also enters the U.S. markets of Alaska, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Washington. Their stores also achieve the billion-dollar sales mark in one week in December 1993.
In 1994, the National Advertising Review Board challenged the Walmart slogan, "Always the low price. Always," contending that it implied that Walmart's prices were always the lowest and could mislead some shoppers. In response, Walmart adopted a new slogan, "Always low prices. Always."
Also in 1994, the Code Adam program was instituted in Walmart stores. That same year, Walmart acquired 91 PACE Membership Warehouse clubs from Kmart and 122 Woolco stores in Canada in 1994. In addition, it opened 3 value clubs in Hong Kong, and had 96 stores in Mexico.
By 1995, Walmart had 1,995 discount stores, 239 Supercenters, 433 SAM'S CLUBS and 276 international stores with sales at $93.6 billion (including US sales of $78 billion) and 675,000 associates. Walmart entered its 50th state (Vermont), and enters the South American market, with three new units in Argentina and five in Brazil. The company enters the Chinese market in 1996 through a joint-venture agreement.
In 1997, Walmart replaced Woolworth on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company has its first $100 billion sales year, with sales totaling $118.1 billion. Also this year, they acquire 21 Wertkauf stores in Germany, and introduce their OneSource nutrition centers.
In 1998, Walmart introduced the Neighborhood Market concept at three stores in Arkansas. Neighborhood Market stores are predominantly grocery stores, and are meant to attract customers with easier parking, less crowded aisles and quicker checkout.
Also in 1998, Walmart launched its Wal-Mart Television Network, a vast, in-store advertising network showing commercials for products sold in the stores, concert clips and music videos for a recording artist's media, trailers for upcoming movie releases, and news.
The Asda chain in the United Kingdom became a subsidiary of the American retail giant Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer,in 1999, and is the second largest chain in the UK after Tesco.
21st century
In 2000, H. Lee Scott was named president and CEO and US sales had doubled to $156 billion since 1995.
Also in 2000, Walmart was ranked fifth by Fortune magazine on its Global Most Admired All-Stars list, and in 2003 and 2004, as the most admired company in America.
In 2005, Walmart had $312.4 billion in sales, more than 6,200 facilities around the world, including 3,800 stores in the United States and 3,800 international units, and employing more than 1.6 million associates worldwide. In fact, their U.S. presence had grown so rapidly that there were only small pockets of the country that remained further than 60 miles away from the nearest Walmart.[9] Approximately 138 million customers visited Walmart stores each week all over the world. Their corporate philanthropy efforts also assisted the U.S. hurricane relief efforts with $18 million in cash donations.
In 2006, on 26 July Walmart announced its complete pull-out of the German market. All existing 85 stores were sold to the Metro Group which in turn turns most of the stores of their own brand real,-.
On September 12, 2007, after 13 years, Walmart introduced new advertising with the slogan, "Save Money Live Better," instead of "Always Low Prices, Always." It commissioned Global Insight for the ads and the report stated that as of 2006, the retailer saves American families $2,500 yearly (up 7.3% from $2,329 , 2004). The new research found that the reduction in price levels due to Walmart resulted to savings for consumers of $287 billion in 2006, which is $957 per person or $2,500 per household.
On June 30, 2008, Walmart unveiled the company's new logo, which stylized the name as "Walmart". A sunburst or flower-resembling symbol replaces the star.
On February 22, 2010, the company confirmed it acquiring the video streaming company Vudu, Inc. for an estimated $100 million.
New ventures
In late 2005, Walmart designed two experimental stores, one in McKinney, Texas and the other in Aurora, Colorado, which featured wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels, biofuel-capable boilers, water-cooled refrigerators, and xeriscape gardens. The buildings also included many other energy and cost saving technologies.
In March 2006, Walmart sought to appeal to a more affluent demographic, with the opening of a new supercenter in Plano, Texas which was intended to compete against stores that some viewed as more upscale and appealing. The new store features wooden floors, wider aisles, a sushi bar, a coffee/sandwich shop (with free Wi-Fi Internet access), a Subway, and higher-end items such as microbrew beer, expensive wines, and high-end electronics. The exterior sports the less-common hunter green background behind the Walmart letters instead of the trademark blue.
In response to the popularity of organic food supermarkets, such as Whole Foods and Wild Oats, Walmart announced plans in May 2006, to increase the amount of organic food available in its stores. They announced that both conventionally grown and organic versions of certain products would be available, and the price of organic versions would not be more than 10% over the price of conventionally-grown products. Since Walmart is one of the nation's largest grocery retailers, there was some concern expressed that their push to lower prices would not be sustainable for inexpensive organic food.
The 2010 remodelings of their smaller stores shifted their emphasis away from non-grocery products towards carrying grocery items carried by their supercenters. This has created a small backlash amongst some loyal customers. The smaller sizes and the larger sizes in the adult clothing were discontinued as well as available styles, forcing adult customers to look for clothing in the children's section, or go to the more expensive specialty Big and Tall stores for basic items like jeans. Their popular Wrangler and Faded Glory brands are not readily available through their on-line stores in the larger sizes, making many of their customers feel that Walmart has completely abandoned their needs now that they have driven Kmart out of most areas and is more interested in maximizing their profits and pursuing the affluent demographic than being the one-stop-store filling the needs for the entire family.
Legal trouble
Over the last decade or so Walmart has become involved in thousands of lawsuits for a variety of reasons. The majority of the suits are class action lawsuits in which employees are suing for unpaid wages. They have also run into many discrimination cases in which employees are suing for being profiled out of money or out of jobs. For instance, there were two separate cases, one in 2004 and one in 2005 in which African Americans were suing two different Walmarts for denying them jobs based on race. These became so popular that the reverend Jesse Jackson spoke during both of the proceedings. There are also many lawsuits in which women are suing Wal-Mart for discriminating against them. In one article written in 2004 USA today mentioned 32 different lawsuits that involved women suing Walmart. All of this has not affected Walmart financially however, according to Fortune 500, Walmart still had $351 billion in revenue ($11 billion in profit) in 2007, a new high for the corporation.
On December 3, 2008, the family of Walmart service worker Jdimytai Damour, who was killed by a stampede of shoppers frantically entering a Valley Stream, New York Walmart store on Black Friday (November 28) , filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the corporation; Damour's family alleged Walmart of encouraging a mass number of customers to come to the store simultaneously. In addition, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Walmart for "...inadequate crowd management following the Nov. 28, 2008, death of an employee at its Valley Stream, N.Y., store. The worker died of asphyxiation after he was knocked to the ground and trampled by a crowd of about 2,000 shoppers who surged into the store for its annual "Blitz Friday" pre-holiday sales event." The company went on to spend an estimated $2 million in legal fees fighting OSHA's $7,000 fine, because it apparently wished to prevent OSHA from establishing a precedent that would enable OSHA to micromanage Walmart's crowd control measures in the future.
Countries of operation
As of October 2009, Walmart stores operate in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, Pakistan,and the United States.
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