Uncle Sam's army: Walmart in the American imagination
Walmart began as a small mom and pop store in Arkansas in the 1950s and has evolved into one of the largest retailers in the world today. The chain’s major hallmark: selling goods at prices lower than local mom-and-pop stores. (Sources: WEF Reports, Statista, Business Insider, Bloomberg)
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On July 2, 1962, Walton opened the first Walmart Discount City store in Rogers, Arkansas. He chose rural locations out of necessity, since it was cheaper to build there, but soon made it a part of his strategy. He flew his small plane over the South and Midwest, scouting for new sites for Walmarts. ‘From up in the air,’ Walton wrote in his autobiography, ‘we could check out traffic flows, see which way cities and towns were growing, and evaluate the location of competition—if there was any.’ Within its first five years, the company expanded to 24 stores across Arkansas and reached US$12.6 million in sales. The company went public by 1970
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Walton had made a promise to his employees (whom Walmart calls associates) that he would do the hula on Wall Street if the company reached a pre-tax profit of 8% for the fiscal year. Walmart achieved its goal in 1983, and Walton did the dance to celebrate the company’s success on March 15, 1984. He even wore leis and a grass skirt. Then-CFO David Glass hired a ‘truckload of real hula dancers and ukulele players’ and tipped off the media to the stunt
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In the 1980s, Walmart invested in a sophisticated inventory tracking system that uses their own satellite network. In addition to track inventory, the system allows technicians and executives to easily communicate to individual stores, access sales records, and troubleshoot and manage problems. Throughout the ’90s, Walmart pioneered the global logistics that underpin most retail operations today. In 2005, the company’s CEO decided to set the company on a path to becoming completely green. By 2015, it led corporate America in solar capacity and has forayed into energy storage systems
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Today, Walmart is the largest employer in the world, with the estimated number of employees being close to 2.3 million globally (as of Feb 2018), of which over 60% of the workforce are women. It operates over 11,700 retail units under 65 banners in 28 countries. About three-quarters of the company’s store managers began their careers at Walmart as hourly associates. If Walmart is treated as a separate nation, it would be the 24th largest economy in the world with revenue of around $500 billion in 2018
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Walmart has faced a torrent of lawsuits and issues involving workers’ low wages, poor working conditions, inadequate health care, and issues involving the company's strong anti-union policies. The company gives its managers a 53-page handbook called 'A Manager’s Toolbox to Remaining Union-Free' which provides helpful strategies and tips for union-busting. Last week, Walmart settled a long-running battle with labour activists over the punishment of workers who claimed they were mistreated by managers for supporting efforts to organise by wearing union insignia
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Walmart introduced a batch of new employees at 50 stores recently, but they're not there to flash you a smile. These 6 feet tall, autonomous robots (made by Bossa Nova) continuously go up and down the aisles, scanning for out-of-stock items, items put in the wrong place by customers, incorrect prices and wrong or missing labels. They alert human employees of errors it sees, thus automating a task employees say they don't like. A company spokesperson emphasised that the robots won’t replace people
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Walmart loses about $3 billion a year from shoplifting, and have a ‘restorative justice’ programme that avoids calling the police. People deemed low-risk, first-time offenders are given the choice of paying to take an anti-shoplifting course rather than facing arrest and prosecution. The effort - rolled out in 1500 stores - is in its early days, but the company has seen a 35% reduction in calls to law enforcement nationwide, according to The Motley Fool. The retailer does not disclose what the programme fee is
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Since Sam Walton's death in 1992, Walmart's charitable giving has increased and now approach US$1 billion each year. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Walmart spearheaded the relief effort, getting 100,000 meals, 100 truckloads of supplies, $20 million in cash donations and promise of jobs for every displaced worker with a speed that outmatched even the government. A logistical feat that earned appreciation from many quarters that had long maligned it as a junky department store
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Each week nearly one-third of the US population visits Walmart’s U.S. stores. The company tracks shoppers' purchases across Walmart.com and its more than 4,700 US stores. In a recent analysis, Walmart revealed 2017’s hottest-selling items in every state in the US. Here are a few: New York: Cheerios, New Hampshire: Cinnamon-flavored toothpaste, Connecticut: Ghost in the Shell DVD, Maryland: Glue sticks, Wisconsin: Green Bay Packers bath mat, Washington, D.C.: Great Value French Fried Onions
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The Black Friday shopping phenomenon - the day following Thanksgiving Day in the US which falls on the fourth thursday of November - sees shoppers turn into raging hordes, baffling social scientists. For many years, retailers opened early with mega promotions at 6am Friday, with mega promotions until they began pushing it back. It was taken to a new extreme when retailers began opening on the midnight of Thursday, or remaining open overnight on Thursday, a holiday. It’s common for shoppers to camp out in a line in front of stores before the opening hours, and the store openings have seen small stampedes and injuries but the shoppers can’t have enough of it, it seems
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The company’s retail experiment called Walmart Express failed miserably. Launched in 2011, Walmart Express were small-sized stores carrying general merchandise like toilet paper, toys, and a small food selection. Many shoppers felt that the merchandise selection wasn’t quite right (it stocked multiple brands of the same items, for example). Also, the fact that they were usually located within 10 miles of a Supercenter spelled doom for Walmart Express. All 102 locations were shut down in 2016
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In November 2006, Walmart launched its wholesale cash-and-carry business in India in a joint venture with Bharti Enterprises. As foreign corporations were not allowed to enter the retail sector directly, Walmart operated through franchises and handled the wholesale end of the business. The first store opened in Amritsar in 2009 under the name Best Price Modern Wholesale. In November 2012, Walmart admitted to spending $25 million lobbying which is conventionally considered bribery in India. In October 2013, Bharti and Walmart separated to pursue business independently. A day after announcing $16 billion investment in India's largest online retailer Flipkart, Walmart Inc said it will continue to grow its wholesale cash-and-carry business, adding 50 new stores to its existing 21 stores in the next four or five years
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With a 2018 net worth of $46 billion according to Forbes, the founder’s daughter Alice Walton is the wealthiest woman in the world. A Trinity grad, the heiress spends her fortune collecting art and breeding horses. In his 1992 autobiography ‘Made in America’, Sam Walton remarked that Alice was ‘the most like me - a maverick - but even more volatile than I am’. She spearheads the Walton Family Foundation's involvement in developing Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas. ‘One of the great responsibilities that I have is to manage my assets wisely, so that they create value,’ she told New Yorker in a 2011 interview. ‘I know the price of lettuce. You need to understand price and value. You buy the best lettuce you can at the best price you can’
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Walmart has built a Tinder for grocery shopping. It filed a patent in Jan 2018 for ‘Fresh Online Experience’, that allows an online shopper to view the actual 3D images of their groceries in real time, and accept or reject it before paying for it online. This service could solve one of customers' biggest gripes about online grocery shopping: that they don't get to select their produce and could therefore end up with bruised or discolored items that they wouldn't have chosen, had they visited the store
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Walmart has just filed a patent for autonomous, robot bees, according to a World Economic Forum report. The patent specifically covers 'pollination drones': tiny robots that act just like bees, pollinating crops autonomously, flying using sensors and cameras to help them navigate to crops. Going by alarming news recently that honeybee populations are dying, we can no longer take pollination for granted. These small creatures are the backbone of agriculture and the food that we eat. Grocery segment accounts for 56% of the Walmart's revenue in 2017. The company has seen the future and and the drone bees are here
