The Value Of A Dollar
In October of 1985, when Forbes magazine called Sam Walton the richest man in America, newspaper photographers flocked to take a picture of the man. They didn’t expect to see a man driving an old pickup truck wearing a Wal-Mart ball cap. The world had found Sam Walton, who changed the way America does business today.
At the age of seven, Sam Walton had his first job selling magazine subscriptions. He raised and sold rabbits and pigeons too. He learned the value of a dollar working hard at an early age-a value that will later become the culture of his company, Wal-Mart.
Bud Walton (Sam Walton’s Brother):
“People can’t understand why we’re still so conservative. They make a big deal about Sam being a billionaire and driving an old pickup truck or buying his clothes at Wal-Mart or refusing to fly first class. “It’s just the way we were brought up. “When a penny is lying out there on the street, how many people would go out there and pick it up? I’ll bet I would. And I know Sam would.”
But I think what led Sam Walton to create such a successful empire was his being a learning machine. He would go to all retailers with a tape recorder in his hand and record everything he observed. He would learn all the best practices of the retail industry and apply them to his company. On all of his vacations, he would make a point to visit retailers in the area. This constant compounding of knowledge resulted in Walmart, as we see today.
Sam’s enterprises were not all successes from the get-go. He made mistakes and learned from them. The first shop Sam Walton started was a Ben Franklin store for $25,000. Sam’s didn’t pay attention to the lease contract, which didn’t have an auto renew option after the lease term (5 years) — it finally cost him the shop. But while he had the store, he tested many ideas to source items at low cost-all of which led to the success of Walmart in later years.
Sam never cared about amassing wealth; it was more about creating an enterprise of large scale based on his values. He would talk about the cheap shoes he bought from WalMart or was seen asking for change from executives. During the great stock market crash of October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 508 points in a day and Wal-Mart shares took a dive of 23 percent compared to the previous week, Sam casually responded:
“It’s paper anyway, It was paper when we started and it’s paper afterward.”
In 1976, Wal-Mart reported $340.3 million in sales for the year, Walton promised that the company would triple its size within five years.
“Write it on the wall now if you want to. By January 31, 1981, we’ll be a billion-dollar company.”
Wal-Mart’s sales crossed a billion dollars sales a year ahead of his promised timeline.
Today (2023), Wal-Mart’s annual revenue is $611.3 billion.
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Reference:
Sam Walton, Made in America, My Story
Storyhttps://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/o/ortega-sam.html
Originally published at https://devvrat.substack.com.
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