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The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign: "Satisfaction Guaranteed." They're still up there, and they have made all the difference."
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Sam Walton |
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We used to get in some terrific fights. You have to be just as tough as they are. You can't let them get by with anything because they are going to take care of themselves, and your job is to take care of the customer. I'd threaten Procter & Gamble with not carrying their merchandise, and they'd say, 'Oh, you can't get by without carrying our merchandise.' And I'd say, 'You watch me put it on a side counter, and I'll put Colgate on the endc..
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Sam Walton |
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The small stores were just destined to disappear, at least in the numbers they once existed, because the whole thing is driven by the customers, who are free to choose where to shop.
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Sam Walton |
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Two things about Sam Walton distinguish him from almost everyone else I know. First, he gets up every day bound and determined to improve something. Second, he is less afraid of being wrong than anyone I've ever known. And once he sees he's wrong, he just shakes it off and heads in another direction.
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Sam Walton |
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I guess his vindication had to be the day in 1989 when he walked into a Kmart in Illinois and found that they had installed people greeters at their front doors.
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Sam Walton |
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If American business is going to prevail, and be competitive, we're going to have to get accustomed to the idea that business conditions change, and that survivors have to adapt to those changing conditions. Business is a competitive endeavor, and job security lasts only as long as the customer is satisfied. Nobody owes anybody else a living.
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Sam Walton |
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I still can't believe it was news that I get my hair cut at the barbershop. Where else would I get it cut? Why do I drive a pickup truck? What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce? Nowadays,
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Sam Walton |
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Plus, as I've said, if you don't want to work weekends, you shouldn't be in retail. But
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Sam Walton |
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A little later on, Phil ran what became one of the most famous item promotions in our history. We sent him down to open store number 52 in Hot Springs, Arkansas--the first store we ever opened in a town that already had a Kmart. Phil got there and decided Kmart had been getting away with some pretty high prices in the absence of any discounting competition. So he worked up a detergent promotion that turned into the world's largest display e..
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Sam Walton |
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The first one is could a Wal-Mart-type story still occur in this day and age? My answer is of course it could happen again. Somewhere out there right now there's someone--probably hundreds of thousands of someones--with good enough ideas to go all the way. It will be done again, over and over, providing that someone wants it badly enough to do what it takes to get there. It's all a matter of attitude and the capacity to constantly study and..
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Sam Walton |
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I remember him saying over and over again: go in and check our competition. Check everyone who is our competition. And don't look for the bad. Look for the good. If you get one good idea, that's one more than you went into the store with, and we must try to incorporate it into our company. We're really not concerned with what they're doing wrong, we're concerned with what they're doing right, and everyone is doing something right.
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Sam Walton |
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I do admit to worrying sometimes about future generations of the Waltons. I know it's unrealistic of me to expect them all to get up and throw paper routes, and I know it's something I can't control. But I'd hate to see any descendants of mine fall into the category of what I'd call "idle rich"--a group I've never had much use for. I really hope that somehow the values both Helen and I, and our kids, have always embraced can be passed on do..
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Sam Walton |
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I learned early on that one of the secrets to campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you.
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Sam Walton |
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I don't subscribe much to any of these fancy investing theories, and most people seem surprised to learn that I've never done much investing in anything except Wal-Mart. I believe the folks who've done the best with Wal-Mart stock are those who have studied the company, who have understood our strengths and our management approach, and who, like me, have just decided to invest with us for the long run. We
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Sam Walton |
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As companies get larger, with a broader following of investors, it becomes awfully tempting to get into that jet and go up to Detroit or Chicago or New York and speak to the bankers and the people who own your stock. But since we got our stock jump-started in the beginning, I feel like our time is better spent with our own people in the stores, rather than off selling the company to outsiders. I don't think any amount of public relations ex..
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Sam Walton |
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Actually, during this whole early period, Wal-Mart was too small and insignificant for any of the big boys to notice, and most of the promoters weren't out in our area so we weren't competitive. That helped me get access to a lot of information about how they were doing things. I probably visited more headquarters offices of more discounters than anybody else--ever. I would just show up and say, "Hi, I'm Sam Walton from Bentonville, Arkansa..
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Sam Walton |
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I was executive vice president of the discounters' trade association, working in my New York office one day in 1967. My secretary said there was a man out front who wanted to join our group. I said I would give him ten minutes. So in comes this short, wiry man with a deep tan and a tennis racket under his arm. He introduced himself as Sam Walton from Arkansas. I didn't know what to think. When he meets you, he looks at you--head cocked to o..
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Sam Walton |
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Hello, friends, I'm Sam Walton, founder and chairman of Wal-Mart Stores. By now I hope you've shopped in one of our stores, or maybe bought some stock in our company.
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Sam Walton |
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How did Wal-Mart do it?" I've usually been flip about answering them. "Friend, we just got after it and stayed after it," I'd say."
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Sam Walton |
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INEZ THREET, CLERK, WALTON'S FIVE AND DIME, BENTONVILLE: "I guess Mr. Walton just had a personality that drew people in. He would yell at you from a block away, you know. He would just yell at everybody he saw, and that's the reason so many liked him and did business in the store. It was like he brought in business by his being so friendly. "He was always thinking up new things to try in the store. I remember one time he made a trip to New ..
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Sam Walton |
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Here's the thing: money never has meant that much to me, not even in the sense of keeping score. If we had enough groceries, and a nice place to live, plenty of room to keep and feed my bird dogs, a place to hunt, a place to play tennis, and the means to get the lads good educations--that's rich.
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Sam Walton |
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I made up my mind I was going to learn something about IBM computers. So I enrolled in an IBM school for retailers in Poughkeepsie, New York. One of the speakers was a guy from the National Mass Retailers' Institute (NMRI), the discounters' trade association, a guy named Abe Marks. ABE MARKS, HEAD OF HARTFIELD ZODY'S, AND FIRST PRESIDENT, NMRI: "I was sitting there at the conference reading the paper, and I had a feeling somebody was standi..
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Sam Walton |
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The point I'm trying to make is that we as a family have bent over backward not to take advantage of Wal-Mart, not to press our ownership position unfairly, and everybody in the company knows it. Alice
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Sam Walton |
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As we moved along in the seventies, we had very definitely become an effective retail entity, and we had set the stage for the even more phenomenal growth that was going to follow. It's amazing that our competitors didn't catch on to us quicker and try harder to stop us. Whenever we put a Wal-Mart store into a town, customers would just flock to us from the variety stores. It didn't take those stores long to figure out that if they were goi..
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Sam Walton |
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The larger truth that I failed to see turned out to be another of those paradoxes--like the discounters' principle of the less you charge, the more you'll earn. And here it is: the more you share profits with your associates--whether it's in salaries or incentives or bonuses or stock discounts--the more profit will accrue to the company. Why? Because the way management treats the associates is exactly how the associates will then treat the ..
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Sam Walton |
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We opened one, store number 8 in Morrilton, Arkansas, that was really a sight. We rented this old Coca-Cola bottling plant. It was all broken up into five rooms, and we bought some old fixtures from a failing Gibson's store for $3,000. We hung them by baling wire from the ceiling. We had clothes hanging in layers on conduit pipe all the way to the ceiling, and shelves wired into the walls. But this was really a small, small town, so number ..
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Sam Walton |
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Rogers had been open about a year, and everything was just piled up on tables, with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. Sam asked me to kind of group the stuff by category or department, and that's when we began our department system. The thing I remember most, though, was the way we priced goods. Merchandise would come in and we would just lay it down on the floor and get out the invoice. Sam wouldn't let us hedge on a price at all. Say the lis..
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Sam Walton |
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The basic discounter's idea was to attract customers into the store by pricing these items--toothpaste, mouthwash, headache remedies, soap, shampoo--right down at cost. Those were what the early discounters called your "image" items. That's what you pushed in your newspaper advertising--like the twenty-seven-cent Crest at Springdale--and you stacked it high in the stores to call attention to what a great deal it was. Word would get around t..
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Sam Walton |
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When you move like we did from town to town in these mostly rural areas, word of mouth gets your message out to customers pretty quickly without much advertising.
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Sam Walton |
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our main real estate effort should be directed at getting out in front of expansion and letting the population build out to us. Just like in the beginning, we start around these small towns, people drive past our stores, get to know us, and become customers.
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Sam Walton |
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I've known Sam since his first store in Newport, Arkansas, and I believe that money is, in some respects, almost immaterial to him. What motivates the man is the desire to absolutely be on top of the heap. It is not money. Money drives him crazy now. His question to me at 6 A.M. not long ago was 'How do you inspire a grandchild to go to work if they know they'll never have a poor day in their life?' " DAVID"
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Sam Walton |
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WAL-MART: "In those days, we would go on these buying trips with Sam, and we'd all stay, as much as we could, in one room or two. I remember one time in Chicago when we stayed eight of us to a room. And the room wasn't very big to begin with. You might say we were on a pretty restricted budget." But sometimes I'm asked why today, when Wal-Mart has been so successful, when we're a $50 billion-plus company, should we stay so cheap? That's sim..
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Sam Walton |
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09e70aa
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A little later on, Phil ran what became one of the most famous item promotions in our history. We sent him down to open store number 52 in Hot Springs, Arkansas--the first store we ever opened in a town that already had a Kmart. Phil got there and decided Kmart had been getting away with some pretty high prices in the absence of any discounting competition. So he worked up a detergent promotion that turned into the world's largest display e..
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Sam Walton |