the story of wal-mart As Sam Walton prepared to open a new store in Rogers Arkansas in the summer of 1962 he ran a series of ads in the local news paper promoting the deals shoppers would find at the new retail outlet a Sunbeam cof feemaker usually priced at 19 95 for just 13 47 a 100 Polaroid camera for 74 37 and a lawnmower discounted from 59 95 to 37 77 The ads worked When the store cele brated its grand opening on July 2 1962 thou sands of people showed up They crowded into the 18,000-square-foot 1,672 sq m store and found the entire space filled with tables laden with merchandise clothing toys sporting goods shampoos small appliances shoes housewares and more Then they lined up at the three checkout stands and made the first Wal-Mart purchases in history built for success
b u i l t f o r s u c c e s s 6 p a g e the story of wal-mart chapter one When 22-year-old Sam Walton graduated from the University of Missouri in 1940 he be gan working as a management trainee at a J C Penney store in Des Moines Iowa He loved waiting on customers and his personable nature made it easy for him to sell them clothing and other household items By the time he left that store in 1942 he had decided that he would be a retailer for the rest of his life although he had to spend a few years in the United States Army first When his time was up he told his new bride Helen that he wanted to run his own retail store Helen Walton’s only request was that they set up shop in a small town one whose population did not exceed 10,000 So Walton’s first operation which opened in 1945 was a Ben Franklin franchise in the town of Newport Arkansas which had a population of 7,000 Walton’s store sold everything from clothing to ice cream cones and became the best-selling Ben Franklin in the state Then in 1950 he moved Helen and their four children to the even smaller town of Bentonville Arkansas population 3,000 and purchased an established variety store there He renamed it Walton’s Five and Dime By 1960 he had opened 15 Walton’s Five and Dimes in Arkansas Missouri and Kansas A Store Is Born
Sam Walton became an Eagle Scout as a teenager and a captain in the U S Army during World War II wal-mart
