From humble, hard-working roots, Sam Walton built Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. into the largest, fastest-growing, and most profitable retailer in the world. A child of the Depression, Sam always worked hard. He would milk the cows, and by the age of eight, he started selling magazine subscriptions. When he turned 12, Sam took on a paper route that he continued well into his college days to support himself. Walton began his retail career at J.C. Penney in Des Moines, Iowa in 1940 making just $75 per month. In 1945, Sam borrowed $5,000 from his wife and $20,000 from his wife's family to open a Ben Franklin five and dime franchise in Newport, Arkansas.

In 1950, he relocated to Bentonville, Arkansas and opened a Walton 5&10. Over the next 12 years they built up and grew to 15 Be

4. Inc Magazine, Spies Like Us, Stemberg, Tom, with Gruner, Stephanie. August, 1998, p45-48

Wal-Mart's corporate community spirit began to exert an influence on public policy in the 1990s. After the record industry established a parental advisory system of "stickering" music albums containing potentially offensive material, Wal-Mart decided to ban the stickered albums altogether from their stores. The company subsequently has succeeded in influencing many record companies to release clean versions of stickered albums. Wal-Mart has considerable impact in the music industry, largely because about one-tenth of all compact disks sold in the United States are sold at Wal-Marts.

Walton also saw a large segment of the country, although widely dispersed in small towns, being totally inconvenienced by the big retailers. Yet the treatment by the people who owned the small-town stores who were neighbors, and sat in the same pew on Sundays was even worse in Sam's eyes, it was unconscionable. He could not understand how neighbors could treat one another in such a way over profitability. It was not right and he would make sure people were treated like friends and family when they came into a Wal-Mart.

Sam Walton from the very beginning would scope out his competitors. When he would go to a competitor's store, it was always tempting to see how dumpy it was, how small it was, or any other negative aspect that would make his stores seem better. He would never tolerate those types of thoughts. When he and whomever came back from visiting the competition, he would force them to focus on what the competition did better than their stores did. Once he went into a store in Tennessee and the place was awful. The produce smelled, and it was just a disaster. In addition, his associates were kidding each other wondering what Sam was going to say about this situation. Sam looked at the back of the store and saw a cigarette rack and said, "You know, that's the finest cigarette merchandising I've seen in a year." Sam's view of his visits to the competition was that you have to see what they do better than you and learn from them. You must never have the arrogance to take your competition for granted, because that can come back and hurt you.

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Approximate Word count = 2989
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)