Sam Walton: Lost his first shop's lease, started again in a small town
A management trainee on $75 a month, he built up a variety store in Arkansas only for the landlord to refuse to renew the lease. He started over and opened the first Walmart at 44.
Trainee on $75 a month
Sam Walton was born in 1918 in Oklahoma and grew up during the Depression, milking the family cow and delivering newspapers. After college in 1940 he joined a department store chain in Des Moines, Iowa, as a management trainee on $75 a month.
A store taken away
After army service he took on a struggling variety store franchise in Newport, Arkansas, in 1945, and made it one of the best in its region. In 1950 the landlord refused to renew the lease, wanting the store for his own family, and Walton had to leave it.
Starting over
He moved to the small town of Bentonville, Arkansas, and opened a new five and dime there. Over the next decade he kept visiting other people's shops to copy their best ideas.
What came of it
He opened the first Walmart in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962, aged 44. He wrote his own account, Made in America, shortly before his death in 1992.
He lost the shop but kept what he had learned about running one. Your skills go with you when a job or a business ends.
Where the facts come from: Sam Walton with John Huey, Sam Walton: Made in America (1992); Company history, corporate.walmart.com.
