“Actually, during this whole early period, Wal-Mart was too small and insignificant for any of the big boys to notice, and most of the promoters weren’t out in our area so we weren’t competitive. That helped me get access to a lot of information about how they were doing things. I probably visited mo…”— Sam Walton, amazon.com
“As usual, some of our critics—mostly unions in this case—took a shot at me for this idea. They said I was wrapping myself in the flag and pulling a typical Sam Walton promotion to hide the fact that we sell a lot of import goods. These folks, I’m afraid, are really living in the past. They don’t bel…”— Sam Walton, amazon.com
“When you move like we did from town to town in these mostly rural areas, word of mouth gets your message out to customers pretty quickly without much advertising.”— Sam Walton, amazon.com
“Creating a huge personal fortune was never particularly a goal of mine, and the proof of that lies in the fact that even to this day most of my, and my family’s, wealth remains in the form of Wal-Mart stock. I think most people in our position would have hedged their bets a long time ago and diversi…”— Sam Walton, amazon.com
“The basic discounter’s idea was to attract customers into the store by pricing these items—toothpaste, mouthwash, headache remedies, soap, shampoo—right down at cost. Those were what the early discounters called your “image” items. That’s what you pushed in your newspaper advertising—like the twenty…”— Sam Walton, amazon.com
“We opened one, store number 8 in Morrilton, Arkansas, that was really a sight. We rented this old Coca-Cola bottling plant. It was all broken up into five rooms, and we bought some old fixtures from a failing Gibson’s store for $3,000. We hung them by baling wire from the ceiling. We had clothes han…”— Sam Walton, amazon.com
“The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign: “Satisfaction Guaranteed.” They’re still up there, and they have made all the difference.”— Sam Walton, amazon.com