Sam Walton, every mention

Walmart · Acquired Jul 19, 2022 · 46 mentions

• ▶ 1:44:54 David Rosenthal He says without the computer, Sam Walton could not have done what he's done.
• ▶ 1:44:59 David Rosenthal He could not have built a retailing empire, the size of what he's built, the way he built it.
• ▶ 1:45:03 David Rosenthal He's done a lot of other things right too, but he could not have done it without the computer.
• ▶ 1:45:10 David Rosenthal And then Sam right after that says, much as I hate to admit to something like that, I expect Abe is probably right.
• ▶ 1:45:24 Ben Gilbert They were always interested in experimenting with the most cutting-edge stuff, but Sam didn't understand technology well, but he understood the benefits of technology.
• ▶ 1:45:34 Ben Gilbert And so the way that he made sure Walmart could sort of benefit from this is he always left the door open for smart, tech-savvy, younger people to come and have big jobs at Walmart.
• ▶ 1:45:47 Ben Gilbert And then he would push back aggressively on their plans and say, like, do you really think that we need to move our whole inventory system over to computers?
• ▶ 1:45:59 Ben Gilbert But the fact that he went to these conferences, enrolled in this stuff, created this headcount, meant that he was open to it.
• ▶ 1:46:15 Ben Gilbert Compromise for him to do this.
• ▶ 1:47:11 Ben Gilbert And, you know, we talked about how Sam is obsessed with getting the data as quickly as possible and learning from it and disseminating those learnings.
• ▶ 1:47:23 Ben Gilbert And then, because Sam had this philosophy, remember, he thought it couldn't scale past 15, 20 stores, of needing to sort of visit all of the stores themselves and have that personal communication.
• ▶ 1:47:35 Ben Gilbert The satellite network enabled Sam to sort of virtually visit these stores from the home office and broadcast satellite transmissions of himself.
• ▶ 1:47:44 Ben Gilbert And they eventually instituted this for the Saturday morning meeting, too, where he would broadcast over their proprietary satellite network in 1987.
• ▶ 1:48:06 David Rosenthal So as they start to invest in computers and they start to bring the talent in to the company to do this, including the first person who Sam brings in, who he meets at this conference guy named Ron Mayer.
• ▶ 1:48:19 David Rosenthal Who ill-fatedly Sam would briefly make CEO of Walmart.
• ▶ 1:56:00 David Rosenthal And Walmart nailed it, but it wasn't Sam.
• ▶ 1:56:03 David Rosenthal So Sam passed away in.
• ▶ 1:56:40 David Rosenthal So I actually tweeted this on the fourth of July when I was doing research, Sam, just like he had with self-service retailing.
• ▶ 2:00:39 David Rosenthal And barely existed when Sam died.
• ▶ 2:18:16 Ben Gilbert They do have a 24% gross margin, which is interestingly higher than in Sam's heyday what he sort of believed the discounting business model should bear.
• ▶ 2:22:02 Ben Gilbert That was totally Sam Walton's thing to variety stores and totally is Jim Senegal's thing to Sam Walton.
• ▶ 2:22:09 David Rosenthal While we're talking about things that Walmart has not executed on to, um, Sam's level of rigor, shall we say over the years, you know, international again, it's like Sam's club.
• ▶ 2:29:46 Ben Gilbert But Sam Walton, in about eight different ways in his book, tells you that the only thing that makes Walmart tick is listening to the customer.
• ▶ 2:30:29 David Rosenthal There's this DNA at Walmart, or at least there used to be under Sam of what you just said, the lowest price is the thing that matters the most.
• ▶ 2:31:53 David Rosenthal Walton enterprises and the structure of the family and the ownership of the stock, I think did go a long way to reinforcing this mentality even after Sam passed away.
• ▶ 2:37:34 David Rosenthal I realize that I had teased this quote hours ago in the beginning of the episode, and then I never actually said it, but this perfectly encapsulates so many wonderful, great playbook lessons to take from Sam Walton and the Walmart story,…
• ▶ 2:37:55 David Rosenthal Walmart store number one, where he says, he's talking about Sam saying, I remember Sam saying over and over again, go in and check our competition.
• ▶ 2:39:35 Ben Gilbert You're right, Sam woke up every day and thought, how can we go find something a competitor is doing right and steal it?
• ▶ 2:40:32 Ben Gilbert But Sam was in the right place at the right time with the right insight and then built the company to ride the discounting wave.
• ▶ 2:40:52 Ben Gilbert He both rode that wave, but also created that wave.
• ▶ 2:45:37 David Rosenthal And Sam says in the book, his name is Henry Cunningham.
• ▶ 2:45:46 David Rosenthal He says that Cunningham was like an amazing retailer, brilliant and great competition.
• ▶ 2:45:51 David Rosenthal And that Sam believes had Cunningham still been running Kmart as Kmart started to decline, the company would have made different choices.
• ▶ 2:46:32 Ben Gilbert And certainly, I don't think Sam Walton would say that they didn't.
• ▶ 2:48:30 David Rosenthal To my mind, like the biggest takeaway I had from it was if you just look at individual communities, I think you can make a pretty good argument, and this is Sam's argument, like you were saying, that Walmart is good on balance.
• ▶ 2:51:29 Ben Gilbert And quality was an afterthought.
• ▶ 2:53:44 David Rosenthal Sam himself obviously was an avid hunter, had used guns all the time.
• ▶ 2:54:52 David Rosenthal The Walton early days, the first several decades, the 40.1% annual compounding in the seventies, the 32 and a half in the eighties.
• ▶ 2:56:01 David Rosenthal I would do the Walton era, including the seventies and eighties.
• ▶ 2:56:32 David Rosenthal And that was not really Sam that led that and was also a big part of driving the nail in the coffin of Kmart and is now 55% of the business.
• ▶ 2:58:41 Ben Gilbert If Sam Walton cared about the acquired scoreboard, they should have been done in like 1995 or even 2002.
• ▶ 2:58:57 Ben Gilbert I'm willing to say it was an A-plus up through Sam Walton's death, and then since then, I'll go from like a D to a B, because they have actually continued to be the world's largest retailer through tremendous upheaval in the world.
• ▶ 2:59:36 David Rosenthal So, Sam's co-author, who we've mentioned, of Made in America, John Huey.
• ▶ 3:00:07 David Rosenthal You know, it was written as and because Sam was dying of cancer.
• ▶ 3:00:17 David Rosenthal And like, you know, reading it, like Sam knows the end is near.
• ▶ 3:00:20 David Rosenthal He's writing this as he's dying.