In less than a week I will be officially retired for 16 years after spending more than three decades covering the retail field, from restaurants to physical retail stores to online commerce. As befitting its size, no retailer has captured my attention more than Walmart. I began covering the world’s largest company of any industry before it recorded its first billion dollar sales year. By the time I retired in 2009, sales had topped $401 billion. Today, sales exceed $643 billion.
Bentonville was a backwater northwest Arkansas community when Sam Walton planted his retail empire there. He began with variety stores franchised from the Ben Franklin company. He became their largest franchisee. But in 1962 the variety store format came under assault. Kresge opened its first Kmart. Woolworth countered with Woolco. The first Target opened. Lots of smaller, regional discount stores, retailers with names like Jamesway, Zayre, Caldor, Fisher’s Big Wheel, Kuhn’s Big K, populated the landscape.
Ever a student of retailing, Sam Walton appealed to his bosses at Ben Franklin to open a discount store format. They refused, so he opted to do it himself. The rest, as they say, is history.
This historical reverie was prompted by a New York Times article profiling Walmart’s new home office complex and its merchandising strategy to appeal to more shoppers and, equally important, its human resources strategy to attract the tech savvy workers needed to sustain its position and propel its growth (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/
Walmart can boast 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of one of its stores. I do not, though I do shop there when visiting family in Omaha and Tucson and when on vacation to stock up on essentials. (Full disclosure: Walmart did have a store in downtown White Plains that I frequented until it closed seven years ago.) The stores are nicer than they appeared decades ago, but still lack the look of a Target, both in visual and merchandising appeal.
Because many Walmarts have an extensive food section, average sales per store of more than $122 million are roughly double those of Target.
Retailing today is a complex mixture of logistics and merchandising fine tuned by savvy techno-experts. Recruiting talent ranks high on Walmart’s sustainability challenges list.
The new headquarters in Bentonville has some of the same trademarks and perks found in Silicon Valley corporate offices. The company also has technology hubs in California and the New York metro. Still, to get recruits to move to Bentonville, Walmart must overcome a major employment differentiator.
The natural beauty of Arkansas aside, in a more polarized America, Arkansas has become a state many highly educated workers would not move to. As Peter from California noted in a comment on The Times article, Arkansas:
“1.) ranks 44th for high school graduation rates;
2.) ranks at or near the bottom nationwide for healthcare outcomes, infrastructure and essential public services;
3.) has (this is documented) one of the most homogenous and virulently conservative populations in the country, one that actively ridicules and suppresses centrist and liberal people and ideas;
4.) wrote laws specifically to FACILITATE discrimination against LGBTQ people, and prohibit local governments from protecting them;
5.) where nearly 60% of the population owns a gun, and has more guns per capita than 42 of the 50 states. No background checks, no gun owner licensing, no waiting periods and all the assault weapons you want to buy.”
The last time I visited Bentonville was in 2016 on a trip with Gilda to see Crystal Bridges, the American folk art museum built by Sam’s daughter Alice. The museum lived up to its glorious reviews.
Bentonville had grown since my visits decades earlier. Population had soared above 40,000, about a tenfold uptick. Bentonville very much has been a corporate town.
I wonder if Sam Walton ever envisaged his company would ever have, or need, such a corporate edifice? If Bentonville would ever have restaurants that rival those of any big city (and they do because representatives from major suppliers do not like to eat their dinners in a Waffle House)? I wonder if Sam would be comfortable believing his company retains values that were important to him—having the right merchandise at the right price at the right time?
Sam also was a stickler for keeping payroll costs at a minimum. Given the environment in Arkansas, what will it take to lure the right and sufficient number of recruits to Bentonville?
