1. SAM WALTON – THE REVOLUTION OF RETAIL 1
Sam Walton – The Revolution of Retail
Kody King
Chattanooga College

2. SAM WALTON – THE REVOLUTION OF RETAIL 2
Sam Walton – The Revolution of Retail
Mr. Sam Walton was at one time, the richest man in the world. He had reporter’s
photographers, the common man and con-artist flocking at him and his money like birds
scheming ideas about him, questions like who he was, where he came from and what he did with
all of his wealth. Did he live the life of a movie star or a celebrity? No, but what they didn’t
dream up there was a few things the people new about him, like how he drove an old red pickup
truck, with a couple of cages in the bed of it for his bird dogs. Sam Walton commented, “What
am I supposed to do haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?” There was other information that
was common knowledge about Walton, that he wore a Wal-Mart baseball cap and the fact that
instead of going to an expert cosmetologist he got his hair cut at his favorite barbershop in his
small hometown.
Sam Moore Walton, the future retail businessman was born in the small town of
Kingfisher, Oklahoma in 1918 in the midst of the first great world war, and was only at the
young age of eleven when the infamous crash of the New York Stock Exchange took place; and
as history is not forgotten or altered, The Great Depression was brought into The United States
thereafter and with that famine, fear, and poverty was brought in abundance in the great nation.
Though how bad it was living as a middle or lower class citizen the Walton’s always had a job,
even if it was not a high paying one in the struggling economy. Thomas Walton was his father,
but not in the retail business. Unlike his son Thomas Walton helped his brother operate a
successful mortgage company to provide for his family, but throughout his life Mr. Sam Walton
was always looking for a way to make an extra dollar, and always the entrepreneur the retail
market knows today.

3. SAM WALTON – THE REVOLUTION OF RETAIL 3
The Great Depression brought many things to The USA, mostly grim but for Sam, it
granted him the experience of seeing America struggle to survive and where he seen Discount
Stores fail to meet the customer with a warm and welcoming atmosphere in the dark times, Sam
Walton, even this early in life saw a vision to shape the retail market. Luckily, Sam was very
close to his father in law and the man saw something unconventional in his son in law’s retail
vision, and Sam as hungry as a young entrepreneur could want to be, and he wouldn’t take no for
an answer, he wanted to be the boss. Though not yet being the fully realized retailer he is today
but heading soon in that direction he wanted to get his feet wet in the retail market, so he joined a
relatively small retailer, J.C Penney Company.
To show the extent of his father in law’s admiration of Walton he let Sam borrow
$20,000 dollars on top of the money Sam had already saved from previous business ventures as a
retail worker and having no interest in becoming the owner of J.C Penney’s that still exists to this
day. With the money that he borrowed plus his own amount he bought a “Ben Franklin” Retail
Store. The difference between his store and others with the “Ben Franklin” name he didn’t buy
his goods from “Ben Franklin”, the company; instead he bought most goods directly from the
manufacturer and the distributers that make the product Sam wants to sell and Wal-Mart still
operates to this day with that philosophy. Although Sam turned over more profit than any Ben
Franklin stores in the area the retailer refused to renew his business lease and was forced to seek
other opportunities. Sam was a simple man but also a genius, after the success of his previous
business ventures he decided to go back to his hometown in Bentonville, Arkansas. He named it
‘Walton’s Five and Dime’, and it still operates to this day as a museum to honor the man.
Walton’s first vision was to build his second store and the first actual store presented
under the name, ‘Wal-Mart’ introduced by his main assistant Bob Bogle, to also be placed in

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Bentonville, Arkansas but decided to build the store west of Bentonville in another small rural
town called Harrison, Arkansas, and that was the start of something great. The man with a vision
and a dream became a retail empire, five and dime at a time.