Bryan_Carey's Full Review: Sam Walton - Sam Walton: Made in America My Story
Many large companies exist in the United States and some of them have enjoyed a high ranking in the lists of large companies for many decades. Other companies have arrived on the scene more recently and have only been ranked among the top companies for a relatively short time. One company that started out in a small town in Arkansas has grown far larger than its founder or anyone else expected and now ranks as the largest corporation in the United States in terms of revenues. The company is Wal- Mart and in this book, Made in America: My Story, Wal- Mart founder Sam Walton talks about the Wal- Mart phenomenon, from the early days in Bentonville, Arkansas to the listing on the New York Stock exchange and beyond.
Basic Contents of This Book:
This 268- page book is divided into the following chapters:
Acknowledgments
Foreword 1. Learning to Value a Dollar
2. Starting on a Dime
3. Bouncing Back
4. Swimming Upstream
5. Raising a Family
6. Recruiting the Team
7. Taking the Company Public
8. Rolling Out the Formula
9. Building the Partnership
10. Stepping Back
11. Creating a Culture
12. Making the Customer Number One
13. Meeting the Competition
14. Expanding the Circles
15. Thinking Small
16. Giving Something Back
17. Running a Successful Company: Ten Rules that Worked for Me
18. Wanting to Leave a Legacy A Postscript
Index
Sam Walton was born near Kingfisher, Oklahoma on March 29, 1918. His early days were spent doing the things that most young people do, plus a little bit more. Ambitious to a larger degree than most, Sam Walton reached many levels of high achievement in his early years. His family moved to Missouri when he was five and it was here that Sam Walton become the youngest Eagle Scout in the state’s history; was elected president of his high school senior class; and attended the University of Missouri- Columbia where he studied economics.
After graduating from college, the young Sam Walton got his first taste of retail when he was hired as a management trainee at J.C. Penney. A short time later, Walton joined the military and once that was over, he purchased his first retail store: a Ben Franklin variety store. Sam Walton talks about these early stages of his career in the first few chapters of this book. They laid the foundation for what was soon to come: The opening of Walton’s Five and Dime- the forerunner of the first Wal- Mart, which debuted in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 1962.
In the remainder of the book, Walton talks about the early days of Wal- Mart from 1962 all the way to the early 1990’s and his acceptance of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He talks about the discount store concept, his striving for customer satisfaction and low prices, and the many challenges that Wal- Mart faced in its first 25 to 30 years in existence. He stresses over and over again the importance of customer service; the building of a successful team; the distribution network that enables Wal- Mart to price items so low; and the dedication to hard work that he, his managing partners, and all Wal- Mart associates nationwide have lived by since the company opened its doors for the first time.
Final Thoughts:
Made in America is the Sam Walton success story, published in 1993 just shortly after Walton’s death and told by the man who is responsible for founding and building one of the world’s largest corporations. Wal- Mart, as we know it today, was borne of humble beginnings, much like its founder. Through hard work, perseverance, and a good deal of stubbornness, Walton grew and expanded his retail network larger than anyone expected, achieving great heights in the retail business that stunned many of its competitors and Wall Street analysts alike.
Like many people, I visit Wal- Mart on a regular basis and the main reason I continue to shop here is the same reason often quoted by others: The low prices. Wal- Mart doesn’t always deliver the absolute lowest prices on all goods, but it beats the competition the majority of the time and has continued to attract my business as a customer because of this. My weekly visits to Wal- Mart and my ongoing relationship with this store is what persuaded me to read this book. I first heard about Made in America many years ago and planned to read it back then. But other books kept grabbing my attention and I kept placing Made in America on the back burner. Still, I was anxious to get hold of this book and read it, to find out exactly how Sam Walton built the Wal- Mart empire and also to get answers to some questions I have always had about this company.
After reading this book, I finally have some answers to the many questions about Wal- Mart that have always left me wondering about the company, its philosophy, its business practices, and its direction. For one, I had always wondered if Wal- Mart borrowed part of its name from retail giant K-Mart. The truth is, there was no such borrowing of names on either side. Both businesses were founded in the same year- 1962- and neither had any knowledge of the others name. Also, it wasn’t Sam Walton who came up with the Wal- Mart name. It was actually one of his business associates and the funny part of the story is that Sam Walton only decided to keep the name because it was short and thus cost less money to build a store sign containing the name (uses only 7 letters- far fewer than “Walton’s Five and Dime”). Another thing I often wondered about was the growth and expansion of Wal- Mart and why I had never heard of the business until the 1980’s. I now have my answer: The Wal- Mart concept was originally intended only for small cities and all of the early stores were built in small towns- most all of them in the Southern United States. It wasn’t until the company had grown and matured that it started to expand into larger cities and into the Northern United States. This explains why I knew nothing about the Wal- Mart business and didn’t see any of its stores until the early 1980’s.
Besides answering my many questions about Wal- Mart, Made in America serves another important purpose: To educate the reader on the foundations of the Wal- Mart business and to demonstrate how the business principles that have helped Wal- Mart succeed can be used to help most any business grow and thrive. Made in America is primarily a business book, and it offers many useful tips on business growth, employee relations, community involvement, and the like. Many of the tips are obvious, but even those that were considered pioneering at the time are still useful for most companies, both new and old.
Sam Walton writes this book in a conversationalist style. It reads like a tape recording of a person speaking. Because of this, the writing skill demonstrated isn’t always at the level one would expect from an educated person. The book was co- written by John Huey, but it is still full of grammatical errors, wordiness, etc. I don’t know if Huey either 1. Doesn’t know how to write well or 2. Knows how to write, but wanted the book to sound as much like Sam Walton as possible. If I had to place a bet, I would put my money on the latter. The book is easy enough to understand, but English majors and others will have a field day with all of the grammatical errors and other mistakes.
To give additional input from his associates, Sam Walton includes many contributions from others who helped him grow the business. These additions appear every few pages, and they are usually one to three paragraphs in length. They often come out of nowhere, are proceeded by the name of the associate, and are interjected in the middle of one of Sam’s thoughts. These additions are useful for those readers who like to have confirmation of the book’s many claims. However, some will not like this added material because it often interrupts the book’s flow. The added content is included where it is most relevant, so it does contribute to the book’s message. But some will not like it regardless.
Because this book is intended as a business guide, there is little material that covers Sam Walton’s extended family. His wife Helen is mentioned more than anyone, but even she takes a back seat to the business associates that Sam Walton has worked with over the years. The same is true of Sam’s four children. He doesn’t talk much about them at all, making the reader wonder if the Walton children played any significant role in the Wal- Mart Company. Each of the four children helps run the business now, but there is little discussion of how they influenced the company in its formative years.
Overall, Made in America is a pretty good book about the Wal- Mart phenomenon and its tremendous growth and influence in the retail sector. It includes three separate sections of photos (2 black & white; 1 color) and its contents reflects the generally friendly yet decisive approach that Sam Walton took when it came to the running of his business. I would have liked more discussion on the external pressures pushing Wal- Mart (like the labor union issue) in different directions, but these are touched only briefly. I would also like the book better if it was written in a more professional manner. But this is still a good business book for all to read. It tells the story of how one man turned his love of the retail business into something far greater than he or anyone else imagined. Through hard work, and some smart business maneuvers, Sam Walton helped grow Wal- Mart into a mammoth business. And it all started in the small town of Bentonville, Arkansas- home to the world’s first Wal- Mart and now home to a Wal- Mart visitor’s center. It makes Made in America a good book for all to read.
In this title, the author tells his extraordinary story in inimitable words, sharing a revealing perspective on the elements of his success. Peppered ...More at Alibris
Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the homespun cloth of America's heartland: Sam Walton, who parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble c...More at HotBookSale
Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the homespun cloth of America s heartland: Sam Walton, who parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble c...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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