WALTON, SAMUEL MOORE

born March 29, 1918, Kingfisher, Okla., U.S. died April 5, 1992, Little Rock, Ark. byname Sam Walton American retail magnate who founded Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the largest retail-sales chain in the United States. Walton graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in economics (1940) and entered a J.C. Penney Co. management-training program in Des Moines, Iowa. He opened his own Ben Franklin variety (five-and-dime) store in Newport, Ark., in 1945, and relocated the store to Bentonville, Ark., five years later. By the early 1960s he and his brother, James, operated a regional chain of Ben Franklin stores, and when that company's executives rejected his concept for a new discount-store chain to be based in small towns, Walton decided to set up such a chain on his own. He opened the first Wal-Mart store, Wal-Mart Discount City, in Rogers, Ark., in 1962, offering a wide variety of merchandise at discount prices in a no-frills setting. Large American discount-store chains typically situated their stores in or near large cities, but Walton was convinced that even small towns could generate enough business to make such stores profitable. To operate in out-of-the-way locations, he situated a regional cluster of stores within one day's truck route of a giant Wal-Mart warehouse that made large-volume purchases and distributed the goods to the stores using its own trucking services. Volume buying and a low-cost delivery system enabled Wal-Mart stores to offer name-brand goods at discount prices in locations where there was little competition from other retail chains. As a result, the Wal-Mart chain experienced tremendous and sustained growth, with 190 stores by 1977 and 800 stores by 1985. Walton founded Sam's Wholesale Club, a chain of deep-discount wholesale warehouse outlets, in 1983, and in 1987 he began a chain of Hypermarts and Supercenters, which dwarfed even the barnlike Wal-Mart stores in size. By 1991 Wal-Mart Stores had passed Sears, Roebuck and Company to become the largest retailer in the United States. Walton kept prices and salaries low but nevertheless inspired company loyalty in employees, who retired with comfortable pensions as a result of his profit-sharing plan. He stepped down as chief executive officer in 1988, but he remained company chairman. By the time of his death he had established 1,735 Wal-Marts, 212 Sam's Clubs, and 13 Supercenters and Hypermarts with a total of 380,000 employees and annual sales of almost $50 billion. Walton made his family the wealthiest in the United States, with a net worth of more than $20 billion by his death.