Sam Walton

Samuel Moore Walton was born in 1918 in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and raised in a farming family. He attended the University of Missouri, where he studied economics and later served as student body president before graduating in 1940. After college, he began his retail career as a management trainee at J.C. Penney and later bought a Ben Franklin variety store franchise in Newport, Arkansas, in 1945. Frustrated when the franchisor would not accept his low-price approach, Walton opened the first Wal-Mart Discount City in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962. He focused on low prices, tight cost controls, and serving small-town and rural customers. Walton emphasized logistics, centralized buying, regional distribution centers, and an internal trucking system to keep costs down and stock plentiful. He launched Sam’s Club in 1983 and pioneered the Walmart Supercenter format in the late 1980s. Walton stepped down as CEO in 1988 but remained chairman and continued to set strategic direction. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 and died of complications from bone and multiple myeloma cancer on April 5, 1992.