I believe many people have heard of Wal-Mart, but do you know who its founder is? Next, I'd like to introduce the founder of Wal-Mart to you. Tell us something about the entrepreneurial experience of the founder of Wal-Mart.
The entrepreneurial experience of the founder of Wal-Mart 1 Founder of Wal-Mart: sam walton.
In people's eyes, the American Wal-Mart retail chain group is like a business myth. Fortune magazine didn't exist when 1955 began to select the top 500. It started from a small grocery store in Bentville, Arkansas at 1962, and its sales reached193.2 billion dollars last year. It has been rated as the second in the world's top 500 enterprises by Fortune magazine for many times. In 200 1 and 2002, the wealth of Wal-Mart Group leaders finally surpassed Bill Gates and topped the list.
As the father of the company's founder and current president, sam walton not only founded Wal-Mart, but also became its spiritual pillar. His Wal-Mart philosophy is the wealth of every enterprise. Even his biggest and oldest competitor, Harry Cunningham, commented on him like this: "Sam is the greatest entrepreneur of this century. The Wal-Mart corporate culture he established is the key to all success and unparalleled. "
19 18, sam walton was born in Jinfeishe Town, Oklahoma, USA. He is a countryman. My family was not very rich since I was a child. My father worked as a bank clerk, agricultural loan appraiser, insurance agent and broker. He is a good bargainer and always makes friends with his opponents.
Sam is more influenced by her mother. Although she is just an ordinary professional woman, she has developed many good living habits. She loves reading, is helpful, works hard and takes good care of her family. And because of her poor family, her mother has always been frugal. These qualities were later inherited by Sam, which laid the foundation for his future success.
At the age of seven, Sam began to do odd jobs. He earns pocket money by delivering milk and newspapers, and keeps rabbits and pigeons for sale. /kloc-at the age of 0/8, Sam entered the University of Missouri to study for a bachelor's degree in economics, and served as the president of the university student union. After graduation, World War II broke out, and Sam resolutely joined the army and served in the Army Intelligence Corps.
After World War II, Sam returned to his hometown. He borrowed $20,000 from his father-in-law, opened a small shop with his wife Helen, and learned how to purchase, price and sell. By chance, Sam learned about the benefits of chain and retail. He said: "If I buy something at a unit price of 80 cents and sell it at a price of $65,438 +0, its sales will be three times that of $65,438 +0.2! From the point of view of one commodity alone, I earned half less money, but sold three times as much goods, and the total profit was actually much larger. " Until today, this price philosophy is still well inherited.
At the beginning of Sam's business, there were a large number of large companies such as Kmart and Gibson in the retail market. These companies are aiming at big towns. They "look down" on small towns and think that the profits here are too small to be worth investing.
But Sam keenly seized this favorable business opportunity, and he believed that there were also many business opportunities in small towns in the United States. Especially with the development of the city, the urban area is increasingly crowded, and the population in the city center begins to shift to the suburbs, and this trend will continue, which brings good opportunities for the retail development of the town; At the same time, cars enter ordinary families, which increases the mobility of consumers and breaks through the restrictions of regional population. In Sam's words, "If they (consumers) want to buy something big, they will not hesitate to drive to a store 50 kilometers away as long as it is cheap 100 dollars".
In order to win customers in small towns, Sam takes "selling at low prices and ensuring satisfaction" as its business purpose, and writes this principle on both sides of Wal-Mart's signboard. He insisted that everything was cheaper than other stores. In order to achieve this goal, Sam began to advocate the business philosophy of low cost, low cost structure, low price and benefit to consumers.
In order to realize this management concept, Sam has made painstaking efforts. In the case of lack of funds at the beginning of his business, he led his employees to rebuild the rented old factory buildings themselves, studied ways to reduce inventory, and tried his best to reduce costs, laying a cost foundation for real discount sales. At the beginning, the company's profit target was set at 30%, but later it was reduced to 22%, while other competitors still maintained a profit of 45%. In this case, naturally attracted a large number of customers, as Sam expected, there are also many city people.
Of course, Sam's lowest price principle does not mean that there is any cutting corners in the quality of goods or services. He is extremely proud of the satisfactory service of his employees: "As long as the customer opens his mouth, he will do everything at once." Low price and high quality are the basic core of Sam's works.
Under such a business strategy, the store quickly expanded its scale, and cheap goods and high-quality services attracted customers from all directions. 1962, sam walton founded the company and opened the first Wal-Mart department store in Rogers City, Arkansas. 1969, 10, 3 1, Wal-Mart Stores Limited was established.
This result can't satisfy Sam. His future strategy is: first enter the small town, occupy the market of the small town, and then gradually advance to the whole country, forming the trend that a single spark can start a prairie fire. In this process, Sam insisted that even small towns with less than 5,000 people would open, which provided more opportunities for Wal-Mart's future expansion, and these opportunities were given to competitors by large cheap stores like Kmart.
From 1970s to 1980s, Wal-Mart began to expand on a large scale. At that time, chain stores began to sweep the world. How to keep the advantage among many chain groups, Sam has formulated a reasonable and moderate expansion strategy.
In product and price decision-making, Wal-Mart sells national famous brands at low prices, thus winning customers' favor. In logistics management, we adopt the strategy that the expansion of distribution center precedes the expansion of branches, and choose the most suitable location in the business area to carefully establish the distribution center. In terms of quantity, Wal-Mart has always maintained extremely rational control. Wal-Mart has fewer stores than Kmart, but it does not hinder its sales advantage and recognized leadership position in the industry.
In the 1980s, Wal-Mart adopted another policy, requiring that the manufacturer's sales agent be excluded from the transaction and the purchase price be reduced by 2-6%. After the uniformly ordered goods are sent to the distribution center, the distribution center will screen and repackage the goods on the spot according to the needs of each branch. This "zero inventory" approach, similar to online retailers, has saved Wal-Mart millions of dollars in storage costs every year.
In the early 1980s, when other retailers were still digging the corner of the "informatization" problem, Wal-Mart cooperated with Hughes Company to build an artificial satellite at a cost of $24 million, which was launched and put into use on 1983. Wal-Mart has spent more than 600 million dollars to build the current computer and satellite system. With the help of this high-tech information network, the communication and business processes of various departments of Wal-Mart can run quickly, accurately and smoothly. As Walton said: "The power we gain from computer systems has become a major advantage in the competition."
In addition, Sam opened the Sam Club in 1983, which is a membership shop. Each customer only needs to pay $25 to have membership and get a large number of high-quality goods at wholesale price. It can be said that the profit of merchandise sales in Sam member stores is very small, only 5% ~ 7%, but the implementation of this ultra-low price has brought about a substantial increase in sales. At present, the sales of member stores in Sam have reached 654.38+0 billion US dollars, with 2,654.38+07 branches, which has great development potential.
Innovation and optimization of enterprise productivity is the magic weapon of success. Sam has brought numerous reforms to the chain industry. He invented bar code, wireless scanning gun and computer tracking inventory, which has now become the industry standard. He changed the traditional way of buying goods. He has the largest private satellite network. When people follow in his footsteps, Sam has already started the next step of innovation.
At present, Wal-Mart has 65,438+0,702 traditional chain stores, 952 supermarkets, 479 "Sam member stores" and 20 "block market" grocery stores in the United States. In addition, there are 1088 chain stores in other countries, forming a powerful "Wal-Mart Empire". Wal-Mart stores sell all kinds of goods, from household groceries, men's and women's clothes and children's toys, to food and furniture. It is already a super chain empire! Now, these numbers are still rising.
It is well known that sam walton is the soul of Wal-Mart. He not only personally founded Wal-Mart, but also personally led its daily business for nearly 30 years, determined its development direction, and profoundly influenced it with his own style, personality and concept, making Wal-Mart not only create the greatest miracle of American retail industry after World War II, but also become the most personalized company among American retail giants.
Sam worked hard all his life. When he was over 60 years old, he still started to work at 4: 30 every morning until evening, and occasionally went to a distribution center at 4: 00 a.m. to have breakfast and coffee with the staff. He often flies his own plane from one branch to another, and spends at least four days a week on such visits, sometimes even six days. Before the manager has a meeting on weekend morning, he usually goes to the office at three o'clock to prepare relevant documents. In the 1970s, Sam went to every branch at least twice a year. He is familiar with the managers and many employees of these branches. Later, the company was too big to go to every branch, but he still ran as much as possible.
No matter which Wal-Mart chain store people go to, they will find its strong cultural characteristics, and excellent customer service is the biggest feature of Wal-Mart. Sam said: "Customers can fire everyone in our company. They just need to spend money elsewhere to do this." In Wal-Mart, only the customer is the boss, and the customer is always right. "To provide customers with more satisfactory services than satisfaction", Wal-Mart has really done this.
Wal-Mart not only takes "customer first" as the slogan, but also takes it as a consistent business philosophy, making it an important part of corporate culture. Whenever you walk into any Wal-Mart chain store, you will find a surprise.
Although Wal-Mart's chain stores are doing well and the clerks are very busy, one standard that every clerk must meet is that the work of the day must be completed before sunset. Whether it is a chain store in rural areas or a chain store in downtown areas, as long as customers make demands, the clerk must meet them on the same day. This is Wal-Mart's famous sunset rule.
Wal-Mart also has a famous "three-meter principle", that is, whenever employees appear within three meters, they should look customers in the eyes with a smile and take the initiative to say hello, encouraging them to seek advice and help from you. At the same time, there is a quantitative standard for smiling at customers, and that is to show your "eight teeth" to customers. Wal-Mart's "exceeding expectations" service not only won enthusiastic praise from customers and rolling financial resources, but also won a "word of mouth" with unlimited value for the enterprise, laying a solid foundation for its long-term development.
When Wal-Mart had more than $50 billion in assets, the purchasing team led by Sam was still very frugal, sometimes eight people lived in one room. So someone asked him, why is the company so careful? Sam said: "The answer is simple: because we cherish the value of each 1 dollar. Our existence is to provide customers with value, which means that in addition to providing quality services, we must also save money for customers. ..... Every time we save customers $65,438+0, let us stay one step ahead of the competition-this is what we always intend to do. "
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The entrepreneurial experience of the founder of Wal-Mart Part 2 There are many rich and powerful families in the United States, but compared with the Trump and Hilton families who are over-marketed on the Internet, Walton is simply a typical example of making a fortune silently. Apart from Wal-Mart, people know almost nothing about this family.
In fact, starting from 1985, this family is a frequent visitor to the top ten of the global rich list; In the past ten years, Wal-Mart has never fallen out of the top three in Fortune magazine's list of the world's top 500 companies. Their wealth exceeds the sum of Buffett, Bill and Gates, and even exceeds Singapore's GDP in 2006. It is no exaggeration to say that this family is rich.
19 18, sam walton was born in a rural family in Oklahoma in the south-central United States. His family was not rich since childhood: forced to make a living, his father worked as a bank clerk, farm loan evaluator, insurance agent and broker, struggling in bargaining; And Sam is 7 years old, that is, ordinary children start to do odd jobs as soon as they enter primary school, milking cows, delivering newspapers, raising rabbits … anything can make money to support their families.
However, even if the whole family mobilizes to make money, life is not getting better and better. After 1923, because their parents' farm could not support their family expenses, they had to move to Missouri to find a new source of income. Soon after, the United States fell into the Great Depression, and the Waltons' life became more difficult.
Later, the war ended. After returning to China, Sam and his wife * * * opened a small shop called "5 10", which specializes in groceries with 5- 10 cents, similar to the 10 yuan store that can be seen everywhere in China. Because of its good quality and low price, it is very popular with people in the town. After tasting the sweetness, he decided to work hard. At that time, Kmart, Gibson and other supermarkets had taken the lead in occupying the retail market of big cities, adhering to the concept of "countryside surrounding cities". He set his base camp in Bentonville, a town that others didn't like, and opened the first Wal-Mart store at 1962.
In order to stimulate residents' desire for shopping, he racked his brains to plan activities. Once, in order to attract customers, the shop assistants hid a TV set in the store and advertised to invite residents to collect it: whoever found the TV set could buy it for 22 cents. In addition, he also summed up the famous "pants theory": a pair of pants with a purchase price of 80 cents, the starting price is 1.2 dollars; If the price is reduced to 1 USD in the future, the sales volume will triple and the total profit will be higher than before.
In this way, with Sam's diligence and sales strategy, Wal-Mart has expanded rapidly in just a few decades, opening 1702 chain stores in the United States and 1088 overseas. In 2000, the global sales reached191300 million US dollars, surpassing General Motors of the United States, ranking second in the world, second only to ExxonMobil Oil Company.
In economics, Matthew effect is often used to reflect the phenomenon that the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. This is the best way to describe the Walton family.
Although the Walton family has only flourished for more than 50 years, it has become so rich that most people don't know it, and it is getting richer and richer. In order to avoid "three generations are not rich", the Walton family has its own unique heirloom method:
0 1. Adhere to the tradition of family business.
02. Family conference system
03. Dare to try new things
04. Family members have wealth and connections.
05. Structural change from "absolute" to "relative"
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