July
29, 1950
First Walmart Store Opens
In Bentonville, Arkansas, entrepreneur Sam Walton
opened his first "self service" department store, "Walton's
5¢-10¢", after seeing the new concept in Minnesota, with customers picking
their purchases off of open shelves rather than having them brought by a
department clerk. From Bentonville, Walton would
build a chain of 15 stores and then would create the Walmart chain on
July 2,
1962. His company would have 1,960 stores at the time of his death in 1992,
and more than 10,000 stores worldwide by 2013
Walmart is the world's largest company by revenue,
according to the Fortune Global 500 list in 2014, as well as the biggest private employer in the world
with 2.2 million employees. Walmart is a family-owned
business, as the company is controlled by the Walton
family. Sam Walton's heirs own over 50 percent of Walmart through their
holding company, Walton Enterprises, and through their individual holdings. It
is also one of the world's most valuable
companies by market value, and is also the largest grocery
retailer in the U.S. In 2009, it generated 51 percent of its
US$258 billion (equivalent to $284 billion in 2015) sales in the U.S.
from its grocery business.
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