Walmart Growth

From its humble beginnings, Sam Walton created and nurtured Walmart from its small town headquarters in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 to the mutli-national behemoth today--employing over 2 million people.


Walmart brought low prices to small cities, but its creator also changed the way Big Business is run.

Though it's hard to believe today, discount retailing was a controversial concept when it began to gain ground in the '50s.


Traditional retailers hated it, and so did manufacturers; it threatened their control of the marketplace. Most states had restrictions on the practice.

Once committed to discounting, Walton began a crusade that lasted the rest of his life: to drive costs out of the merchandising system wherever they lay — in the stores, in the manufacturers' profit margins and with the middleman — all in the service of driving prices down, down, down.

The formula was highly successful. Today we find Walmart's in nearly every corner of America.

Walmart has its many benefits:

• Lower costs--making it easier for lower income Americans to live
• Employment opportunities--today during this recession Walmart is actively hiring throughout America
• Much broader selection
• Fresher produce, meats and other grocery goods
  

I recently spent 2 weeks in my hometown in Nebraska. Things have changed remarkably in the last 40 years--and it seems to have passed rather quickly. The Walmarts of this world had a hand in this.


It started with the loss of our local K-12 school. Still this town of 440 people had two groceries, two cafes and two gasoline stations.

No more. The food in the groceries gets stale sitting on the shelf. It's costly to transport fuel to the filling stations. There is still one cafe trying to make a go of it.

Such is the pace of "progress" in our small village.

This is happening all across the US. Some people rue this "progress," still most consumers vote with their feet--and travel, for example, to the larger cities of Seward or York, NE to do most of their shopping.

I'd recommend a characterization of this in film; Watch the movie, What's Eating Gilbert Grape. It stars Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio and John C. Reilly. This takes place in Endora, IA.

Not only does this depict the demise of a local grocery--due to competition from the town's new supermarket, but it is a human interest tale, and a sad one indeed, about Gilbert, his mentally disabled brother and their 500 pound mother.

Sometimes about all that is left after "progress" sweeps in is some dilapidated buildings. Such is the scene in Tamora, NE. This is one of the better looking buildings that still remains standing today.