SAM WALMART- CEO & FOUNDER OF WAL-MART STORES USING- IMAGINATION| THE 5TH STEP TO RICHES OF ‘THINK & GROW RICH’
Written by Sid Shah on June 18, 2018
Wal-Mart is the news right now for taking over Flipkart. But do you know how was the journey started by Sam Walton using Success Principles of Think & Grow Rich?
Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962. Walton got into the retail business after the Second World War after his father-in-law loaned him the money to buy a franchised Butler Brothers stores in Bentonville, Arkansas. By 1962 Sam and his brother Bud owned 16 variety stores in Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas. It was in these stores that Sam Walton first started adding the magic ingredient of imagination. In addition to his flair of promotion, Sam tried new approaches to the way household goods and general merchandise could be sold at retail. He insisted on clean, well- lighted interiors and he introduced the concept of self-service, with aisles wide enough for shopping carts and checkout counters at the front of the store. He also started buying directly from manufacturers, and he created profit-sharing plans that kept his family of employees loyal, hardworking, and neighbourly.
In 1962, he incorporated those and other imaginative ideas when he opened the first store that he called Wal-Mart. The basic magic was that he sold brand-name merchandise at discount prices, but there was also magic in the way he kept a friendly hometown feel to his store even though it was what is now called a big-box store. As his stores were a runaway success, he kept on building and opening more of them. By 1992 when Sam Walton died, there were more than 1,700 Wal-Mart stores, it was the biggest retailer in the country, it employed more than 6,00,000 people, and Sam Walton was the richest man in America.
Today, Walmart is the world’s largest company by revenue – approximately US$480 billion according to Fortune Global 500 list in 2016 – as well as the largest private employer in the world with 2.3 million employees.
All this was possible by applying IMAGINATION The 5th Step to Riches of Think & Grow Rich.
