Walmart Inc.
CorpDigest
Walmart Inc.
Company History
Founded 1962 in Bentonville, Arkansas
Last reviewed: 2026-06-03 · By Swet Parvadiya
Sam Walton drove around rural Arkansas in 1945 studying what made five-and-dime stores work. He noticed that small-town customers would drive further to save money. He noticed that stores with high turnover and low margins beat stores with lower turnover and higher margins. He leased a variety store in Newport, Arkansas and tested the theory.
By 1962, having operated the Ben Franklin franchise model and hit its limits, Walton opened his own format in Rogers, Arkansas. The name was Wal-Mart. The concept was simple: sell everything slightly cheaper than anyone within driving distance. The supply chain innovation that made that possible came later — cross-docking warehouses that moved product from supplier truck to store truck without storage, reducing the inventory sitting in warehouses and the costs attached to it.
The company went public in 1970 at a split-adjusted price that made the Walton family extraordinarily wealthy over the following decades. The first Supercenter opened in 1988, combining a full grocery store with general merchandise under one roof. The first Sam's Club opened in 1983, borrowing the warehouse club format that Costco was developing simultaneously in different markets.
By 1988 Walmart had more than 1,000 stores. By 1992, when Sam Walton died, it was the largest retailer in America. The international expansion that followed — into Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, China, India — was uneven. Some markets worked; others required divestiture or restructuring. The consistent thread was the same supply chain discipline that worked in Arkansas, applied as broadly as local conditions allowed.
Sam Walton opened the first Walmart discount store in Rogers, Arkansas on July 2, 1962 after years running successful Ben Franklin franchise stores. His core insight was that discount retail could thrive in small towns and rural markets that large chains ignored as too small. His model relied on everyday low prices funded by aggressive supplier negotiations, high inventory turnover, and minimal overhead. Walton pioneered technology adoption in retail, installing early barcode systems and building a proprietary satellite network to link stores long before competitors matched it. He visited stores unannounced and listened to frontline employees throughout his leadership. He remained chairman until his death in 1992, having built Walmart into America largest retailer.
Walmart acquired e-commerce startup Jet.com to accelerate online competition with Amazon.
Walmart surpassed ExxonMobil to become the largest corporation by revenue globally.
Walmart combined grocery and general merchandise in a single store format.
Walmart launched the warehouse club concept competing with Costco.
Walmart held its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, raising capital for rapid expansion.
Sam Walton opened the first Walmart Discount City store in Rogers, Arkansas.
Walmart acquired Jet.com, an e-commerce startup founded by Marc Lore, for 3.3 billion dollars to acquire both an e-commerce platform and the talent and technology needed to compete with Amazon. Jet had a dynamic pricing algorithm that reduced prices as customers added more items to their cart, a genuine innovation in online retail economics.
Walmart acquired a 77% stake in Flipkart, India largest e-commerce platform, for 16 billion dollars to establish a dominant position in one of the world largest and fastest-growing consumer markets before Amazon could consolidate its Indian market position. The deal was the largest ever in Indian startup history.
Walmart acquired Bonobos, the digitally native menswear brand known for its well-fitting pants and strong customer service, to learn direct-to-consumer e-commerce practices from a brand that had pioneered the model. Bonobos represented Walmart attempt to understand how digital-first brands built customer relationships differently from traditional retail.
Walmart was founded on 2 July 1962 when Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart Discount City store at 719 West Walnut Street in Rogers, Arkansas. The 18,000-square-foot store was built on the discount retailing model that Walton had been refining since 1945, when he opened a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas after returning from World War II service. After losing the lease on the Newport store in 1950, Walton moved to Bentonville and opened Walton's 5 & 10 on the town square, then expanded into a chain of 15 Ben Franklin variety stores by 1962. The Rogers Walmart broke from the Ben Franklin franchise format with a fundamentally different premise: large-format discount retailing in small-town America, anchored by the principle of "everyday low prices" rather than promotional sales. The company was incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on 31 October 1969 and held its first board meeting in Bentonville, which has remained the corporate headquarters ever since. By 1969 the chain had grown to 18 stores generating $44 million in sales, and the modern Walmart was on its way.
Walmart went public on 1 October 1970, listing its shares on the over-the-counter market with 300,000 shares sold at $16.50 per share, raising approximately $5 million net of fees. The company moved to the New York Stock Exchange on 25 August 1972 under the ticker WMT, where it continues to trade today. Sam Walton retained a controlling interest through Walton Enterprises, the family limited partnership he established to hold his children's stakes for estate planning purposes, ensuring multigenerational family control even as the public float grew. The IPO proceeds funded the next wave of store expansion: by 1979 Walmart had grown to 276 stores and $1.2 billion in annual sales, surpassing the threshold required for inclusion in the Fortune 500 in 1980. The original $16.50 IPO shares have split 11 times in Walmart's history (typically 2-for-1 splits in 1971, 1975, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1990, 1993, 1999, and a 3-for-1 split in February 2024). A single share purchased at the 1970 IPO would have grown to roughly 3,072 shares by 2024 before the most recent split, illustrating one of the great compounders in American retail history.
Walmart launched the Supercenter format on 11 March 1988, when it opened the first Wal-Mart Supercenter in Washington, Missouri, combining a full-line discount store with a full-service grocery supermarket under one 180,000-square-foot roof. The format was Sam Walton's response to the Hypermart USA experiment Walmart had piloted in 1987 with French hypermarket consultants and to the success of Meijer in Michigan. The Supercenter format eventually proved more profitable and easier to operate than Hypermart, allowing Walmart to leverage its general merchandise scale, fixed real estate cost, and customer traffic across the higher-velocity grocery category. By 2000 Walmart had built over 880 Supercenters and overtaken Kroger to become the largest US grocery retailer by revenue, a position it has held since. The grocery business now accounts for roughly 60% of US Walmart sales, anchoring the customer trip frequency that supports general merchandise sales. As of 2024 there are approximately 3,570 US Walmart Supercenters operating, alongside roughly 360 Walmart discount stores (general merchandise only, mostly older locations), 705 Neighborhood Markets (grocery-only smaller format), and 600 Sam's Club warehouse clubs.
Walmart began international expansion in 1991 with the opening of a Sam's Club joint venture with Mexican retailer Cifra in Mexico City, followed by full ownership of the Mexican subsidiary that became Walmart de Mexico (Walmex) and is now publicly listed in Mexico City as the largest Mexican retailer. International expansion accelerated through the 1990s and 2000s: Canada in November 1994 via the acquisition of 122 Woolco stores for an undisclosed sum; Brazil and Argentina in 1995; Germany in 1997 via the Wertkauf acquisition (a venture Walmart exited in 2006 with significant losses); the United Kingdom in June 1999 via the £6.7 billion ($10.8 billion) acquisition of ASDA from Associated British Foods; China in 1996 through the Walmart China entity; Japan in 2002 through Seiyu; Chile in 2009 via D&S; Massmart South Africa in 2011 for $2.4 billion (51% stake, full ownership 2022); and a partnership with Bharti Enterprises in India from 2007 to 2013. Walmart sold ASDA back to UK private investors in February 2021 for £6.8 billion ($8.8 billion), exited Japan by selling Seiyu in 2021, and continues to operate in Mexico, Canada, Central America, Chile, Africa, India (via Flipkart) and China.
Bentonville, Arkansas has been Walmart's corporate headquarters since Sam Walton moved there in 1950 to open Walton's 5 & 10 on the town square, and remains the corporate home today. The original Walton's 5 & 10 building at 105 North Main Street is preserved as the Walmart Museum, displaying Walton's office, original store fixtures, and the red-and-white 1979 Ford F-150 pickup truck Walton drove until his death. The Walmart Home Office, a sprawling campus on the south side of Bentonville, employs approximately 14,000 corporate associates as of 2024 and is being progressively consolidated into a new $1 billion campus on 350 acres east of Bentonville scheduled for full completion in 2025. The headquarters concentration has transformed Bentonville from a town of 4,500 in 1960 into a metropolitan area of more than 600,000 in Northwest Arkansas, with major employers including Walmart itself, its principal vendors (Procter & Gamble, Tyson Foods, J.B. Hunt, and hundreds of consumer goods companies maintain Bentonville offices), and the Walton-family-funded Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville's Sam M. Walton College of Business. Bentonville is also home to Walmart subsidiaries including Sam's Club, McLane Company, and Walmart Connect.