Word: marts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...risk of oversimplifying a rather complex business phenomenon, it can be said that the easiest way to grasp the essence of what Sam Walton meant to America is to read his ad slogan emblazoned on all those Wal-Mart trucks you see barreling down highways around the country: WE SELL FOR LESS, ALWAYS. Walton did not invent discount retailing, just as Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile. But just as Ford and his cars revolutionized America and its industrial model, Walton's extraordinary pursuit of discounting revolutionized the country and its service economy. Walton didn't merely alter...
...retailing--all family vacations included store visits--so by the time a barber named Herb Gibson from Berryville, Ark., began opening discount stores outside towns where Sam ran variety stores, Walton saw what was coming. On July 2, 1962, at the age of 44, he opened his first Wal-Mart store, in Rogers, Ark. That same year, S.S. Kresge launched K Mart, F.W. Woolworth started Woolco and Dayton Hudson began its Target chain. Discounting had hit America in a big way. At that time, Walton was too far off the beaten path to attract the attention of competitors or suppliers...
Using that formula, which cut his margins to the bone, it was imperative that Wal-Mart grow sales at a relentless pace. It did, of course, and Walton hit the road to open stores wherever he saw opportunity. He would buzz towns in his low-flying airplane studying the lay of the land. When he had triangulated the proper intersection between a few small towns, he would touch down, buy a piece of farmland at that intersection and order up another Wal-Mart store, which his troops could roll out like...
...school in upstate New York. His goal: to hire the smartest guy in the class to come down to Bentonville, Ark., and computerize his operations. He realized that he could not grow at the pace he desired without computerizing merchandise controls. He was right, of course, and Wal-Mart went on to become the icon of just-in-time inventory control and sophisticated logistics--the ultimate user of information as a competitive advantage. Today Wal-Mart's computer database is second only to the Pentagon's in capacity, and though he is rarely remembered that way, Walton may have been...
...great delight, Walton spent much of his career largely unnoticed by the public or the press. In fact, hardly anyone had ever heard of him when, in 1985, Forbes magazine determined that his 39% ownership of Wal-Mart's stock made him the richest man in America. After that, the first wave of attention focused on Walton as populist retailer: his preference for pickup trucks over limos and for the company of bird dogs over that of investment bankers. His extraordinary charisma had motivated hundreds of thousands of employees to believe in what Wal-Mart could accomplish, and many...