Walmart Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation that has a chain of hypermarkets, department stores, and grocery stores. Everyone who lives in the U.S. knows about Walmart, but also everyone in the world has heard about it too.
Walmart also owns Sam’s Club retail warehouse and it has 11,389 stores and clubs in 27 countries. They don’t only have stores in the U.S. but all over the world.
This corporation is the world’s largest company by revenue and it’s the largest private employer in the world.
If you want to know more about this company, how was it established and what’s the net worth of it, keep reading this article.
Early History of Walmart
Sam Walton was a businessman who bought a branch of the Ben Franklin stores from the Butler Brothers in 1945. He first started selling products that are low priced so that he can get higher-volume sales at a lower profit margin.
He made a whole movement around it and he portrayed it as a crusade for the customer. He had some struggle at first but within five years of his business, he managed to increase the revenue to $250,000.
After his first lease expired he opened a store on a new location in Bentonville and he named the store “Walton’s Five and Dime”. This store is still at that location and it is turned into the Walmart Museum. The address of the first store and the museum is 105 N. Main Street in Bentonville.
The second store that he opened was in Rogers, Arkansas and it was the first Walmart Discount City store.
That was in 1962, and in five years the company managed to expand to 24 stores in Arkansas and they’ve reached an astonishing $12.6 million in sales. The first stores outside Arkansas were opened in 1968 in Sikeston, Missouri and Claremore, Oklahoma.
Just one year after that in 1969 the company was incorporated as Wal-Mart, Inc. and in 1970 they’ve changed its name to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. The first distribution center and the home office was opened that same year in Bentonville, Arkansas. Also, that was the year when they’ve started trading stock as a publicly held company.
In the 80s the company was the biggest private satellite network and Sam Walton started to source around 40% of the company’s products from China. In 1988, Walton was replaced as the CEO by David Glass, but he was still a Chairman of the Board.
In 1990 Walmart managed to become more profitable than its rivals and it became the largest U.S. retailer by revenue.
In 2002 was the first time Walmart has been listed as America’s largest corporation on the Fortune 500 list, with revenues of $219.8 billion and profits of $6.7 billion. The only years that Walmart wasn’t first on this list were 2006, 2009, and 2012.
Walmart Today
Walmart is still the biggest retail company, but they are thinking of pursuing the business of subscription-video like Netflix and Amazon. They’ve even asked for help from former Epix CEO, Mark Greenberg, to develop a low-cost subscription video-streaming service for them.
Walmart Internationally
In Canada, Walmart is operating under the same name as in the U.S. In Mexico and Central America its called Walmart de México y Centroamérica. In the United Kingdom it operates under the name of Asda, in Japan as the Seiyu Group, and in India as Best Price. It also has wholly-owned operations in Argentina, Chile, Canada, and South Africa.
Walmart’s Net Worth
In 1988, Walmart was the most profitable retailer in the U.S. and today it’s the world’s largest company by revenue.
Walmart has a market cap or net worth of $488.64 billionas of March 18, 2024. They are going to continue growing as a company and it will be difficult to push them off their throne.
