Sam Walton Opened His First Walmart in Rogers, Arkansas, on July 2, 1962

Sam Walton opened his first store in 1945 with a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law and a five-year franchise from Ben Franklin variety stores. The store was in Newport, Arkansas, on the courthouse square. He doubled the volume of the previous franchisee within three years by negotiating directly with manufacturers and undercutting the regional discount competitors. Then his landlord — having watched the store's growth — refused to renew the lease in 1950 so his own son could take over the operation. Walton lost everything he had built and started over in Bentonville, where he opened Walton's 5&10.

Walton wanted to expand into pure discount retailing on the model emerging in the Northeast — Korvette's, Mammoth Mart, the early Kmart format — but Ben Franklin's headquarters wouldn't approve a discount franchise. He decided to do it without them. The first Wal-Mart Discount City opened on July 2, 1962, at 719 West Walnut Street in Rogers, Arkansas. The pricing strategy was straightforward: locate stores in small Southern and Midwestern towns within a day's truck drive of a regional warehouse, run a small set of brands at margins competitors couldn't match, refuse to advertise sales the way discount stores conventionally did, and use the volume to negotiate wholesale prices ever lower. The company added its first computer in 1969, an early data warehouse in 1980, and satellite-linked store-by-store inventory control in 1983.

By the time Walton died on April 5, 1992, Wal-Mart had 1,928 stores and roughly 400,000 employees, with annual sales near $50 billion. He had been the richest American every year from 1982 to 1988. President George H.W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in March 1992, three weeks before his death.