Walmart, the Sam Walton, Arkansas-based company, has evolved from a chain of small-town stores in the 1960s to a multi-national, Fortune 500 retail behemoth. And though Walmart is in the news fairly often, there are probably a few little things you didn’t know about the company, right?
12 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Walmart:
- Sam Walton opened his first store, Ben Franklin, in Newport, Arkansas in 1945. Walton opened the first Walmart (actually it was Walmart Discount City) in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962.
- The first Walmart outside of Arkansas opened in Missouri in 1968. A store also opened in Oklahoma in the same year.
- Walton’s company incorporated in 1969 and changed its name to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. in 1970.
- People greeters made their first appearance at the front of Walmart stores in 1983.
- Most Americans, roughly 90-percent, live within 15 minutes of a Walmart store.
- Walmart marked its first $1 billion sales week in 1993.
- Walmart launched the Neighborhood Market concept in 1998.
- In 2007, Walmart replaced its “Always Low Prices, Always” slogan with “Save money. Live better.”
- In 2008, the company officially dropped the hyphen from its name and became Walmart.
- In 2017 Walmart acquired Moosejaw and Bonobos.
- Today, Walmart has 11,389 stores.
- As of 2019, Walmart employs 2.2 million people.