Introduction
Samuel Moore Walton was an American entrepreneur and founder of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club retail stores and at a time was the richest man in United States. Sam Walton was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma in 1918. He opened the first Wal-Mart in 1962. The discount chain expanded internationally over the next 30 years, growing into the world’s largest company by 2010. Walton stepped down as CEO in 1988 (Forbes 1997), at the age of 70 (Biography 2015), but remained active in the company until his death in 1992 (Huey 1993). In 1985, Forbes magazine determined that his 39% ownership of Wal-Mart's stock made him the richest man in America (Huey 1998).
Rent
In 1945, Walton at the age of 26 with the help of a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law, and $5,000 of his savings purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas (Forbes 1997). Walton managed to sales volume growing from $80,000 to $225,000 in three years and drew the attention of the landlord, P. K. Holmes, whose family had a experience in retail. Holmes eventually refused to renew the lease because of desiring to regain the store and franchise privileges for his son. The lack of a rent contract renewal option, together with the excessively high rent of 5% of sales, was early …show more content…
Almost from the beginning, Sam Walton acknowledged that the way to keeping costs down and profits up was tight inventory control and ordering just the right items in just the right quantities. Too much inventory meant unnecessary cost and too little meant missing sales (Ortega 1998). Finding a method to keep track of what was selling, what was in the inventory, what was on the way to the inventory and what was on backorder, turn out to be one of Walton's obsessions. As a result, Wal-Mart was one of the first major merchandising chains to install electronic scanners at cash registers linked to a central inventory (Ortega
Samuel Moore Walton was an American entrepreneur and founder of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club retail stores and at a time was the richest man in United States. Sam Walton was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma in 1918. He opened the first Wal-Mart in 1962. The discount chain expanded internationally over the next 30 years, growing into the world’s largest company by 2010. Walton stepped down as CEO in 1988 (Forbes 1997), at the age of 70 (Biography 2015), but remained active in the company until his death in 1992 (Huey 1993). In 1985, Forbes magazine determined that his 39% ownership of Wal-Mart's stock made him the richest man in America (Huey 1998).
Rent
In 1945, Walton at the age of 26 with the help of a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law, and $5,000 of his savings purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas (Forbes 1997). Walton managed to sales volume growing from $80,000 to $225,000 in three years and drew the attention of the landlord, P. K. Holmes, whose family had a experience in retail. Holmes eventually refused to renew the lease because of desiring to regain the store and franchise privileges for his son. The lack of a rent contract renewal option, together with the excessively high rent of 5% of sales, was early …show more content…
Almost from the beginning, Sam Walton acknowledged that the way to keeping costs down and profits up was tight inventory control and ordering just the right items in just the right quantities. Too much inventory meant unnecessary cost and too little meant missing sales (Ortega 1998). Finding a method to keep track of what was selling, what was in the inventory, what was on the way to the inventory and what was on backorder, turn out to be one of Walton's obsessions. As a result, Wal-Mart was one of the first major merchandising chains to install electronic scanners at cash registers linked to a central inventory (Ortega