Wal Mart

(branded as Walmart) is an American public corporation that runs a chain of large, discount department stores. It is the world's largest public corporation by revenue, according to the 2008 Fortune Global 500. The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972.

Wal-Mart is the largest private employer and the largest grocery retailer in the United States. It also owns and operates the Sam's Club retail warehouses in North America.
Walmart operates in Mexico as Walmex, in the United Kingdom as Asda, in Japan as Seiyu, and in India as Best Price.

In 1945, he met Butler Brothers, a regional retailer that owned a chain of variety stores called Ben Franklin and that offered him one in Newport, Arkansas.
Walton was extremely successful in running the store in Newport, far exceeding expectations. However, when the lease came up for renewal, Walton could neither come to agreement on the existing store's lease renewal nor find a new location in Newport. Instead, he opened a new Ben Franklin franchise in Bentonville, Arkansas, but called it "Walton's Five and Dime." There, he achieved higher sales volume by marking up slightly less than most competitors.
On July 2, 1962, Walton opened the first Wal-Mart Discount City store located at 719 Walnut Ave.

The building is now occupied by a hardware store and a pawn shop. Within five years, the company expanded to 24 stores across Arkansas and reached $12.6 million in sales. In 1968, it opened its first stores outside Arkansas, in Sikeston, Missouri and Claremore, Oklahoma.
Incorporation and growth
The company was incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

In 1970, it opened its home office and first distribution center in Bentonville, Arkansas. It began trading stock as a publicly held company on October 1, 1970, and was soon listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

The first stock split occurred in May 1971 at a market price of $47. By this time, Wal-Mart was operating in five states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma; it entered Tennessee in 1973 and Kentucky and Mississippi in 1974.A similar concept, Hypermart USA, opened in Garland, Texas a year earlier. As of December 2009, there were 151 of them in the United States.
Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market now has the same logo as Wal-Mart does.

Sam's Club stores are "membership" stores and most customers buy annual memberships. However, non-members can make purchases either by buying a one-day membership or paying a surcharge based on the price of the purchase. Some locations also sell gasoline. The first Sam's Club opened in 1983 in Midwest City, Oklahoma under the name "Sam's Wholesale Club".
Sam's has found a niche market in recent years as a supplier to small businesses.

All Sam's Club stores are open early hours exclusively for business members and their slogan is "We're in Business for Small Business." In March 2009, the company announced that it plans to enter the electronic medical records business by offering a software package to physicians in small practices for $25,000. Wal-Mart also operates more than 100 international Sam’s Clubs in Brazil, China, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.
Wal-Mart International


Wal-Mart's UK subsidiary, Asda



Asda's headqaurters, Asda House in Leeds



Bompreço in Natal, Brazil.



A Wal-Mart/Walmex store in Playa del Carmen, Mexico



A typical Wal-Mart store in Moncton, New Brunswick

Wal-Mart's international operations currently comprise 2,980 stores in 14 countries outside the United States. According to Wal-Mart's 2006 Annual Report, the International division accounted for about 20.1% of sales. There are wholly owned operations in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Puerto Rico (although PR is part of the US, the company's operations there are managed through its international division), and the UK.

With 1.8 million employees worldwide, the company is the largest private employer in the US and Mexico, and one of the largest in Canada.
Wal-Mart has operated in Canada since its acquisition of 122 stores comprising the Woolco division of Woolworth Canada, Inc in 1994. As of October 31, 2008, it operates 310 locations, employing 77,500 Canadians, with a local home office in Mississauga, Ontario. Wal-Mart Canada's first three Supercentres (spelled as in Canadian English) opened on November 8, 2006, in Hamilton, London, and Aurora, Ontario. It also runs 19 Wal-Mart Supercenters, 13 Sam's Club stores, and two Todo Dia stores.

With the acquisition of Bompreço and Sonae, Wal-Mart is currently the third largest supermarket chain in Brazil, behind Carrefour and Pão de Açúcar.
In June 2006, Wal-Mart was excluded from the investment portfolio of The Government Pension Fund of Norway, which held stock values of about US$ 430 million in the company, due to a social audit into alleged labor rights violations in the company's operations in the US and worldwide. Although Wal-Mart did not respond to questions from the fund's auditors, the company later claimed the decision "don't appear to be based on complete information".
In July 2006, Wal-Mart announced its withdrawal from Germany due to sustained losses in a highly competitive market. The stores were sold to the German company Metro during Wal-Mart's fiscal third quarter.
In November 2006, Wal-Mart announced a joint venture with Bharti Enterprises to open retail stores in India.

Wal-mart kept the losses that were made in the German market confident but they were estimated around 3 bil €. Wal-Mart announced it was retiring the blue vest its 1.5 million associates wear, and replacing it with khakis and polos.