Sublime

More than anything else, Walton believed in people. He believed that if he looked after people, people would look after him. The more Wal-Mart could give to employees, customers and the community, the more that employees, customers and the community would give back to Wal-Mart.

Look after people and people will look after you was his belief, and everything Walton and Wal-Mart did proved it. In the early days, for example, Walton insisted on showing up for work on Saturdays out of fairness to his store employees who had to work weekends. He remembered birthdays and anniversaries and even that a cashier’s mother had just un

The problem was that his cause was not clearly handed down after he died. In the post-Sam era, Wal-Mart slowly started to confuse WHY it existed—to serve people—with HOW it did business—to offer low prices. They traded the inspiring cause of serving people for a manipulation. They forgot Walton’s WHY and their driving motivation became all about “c

Trader Joe’s buying objective was to get just one, dead-net price, delivered to our distribution centers. This was quite similar to the policy that Sam Walton was developing at about the same time, a practice called “contract pricing.”

It isn’t the store; it is the network of 150 stores. And the data flows and the management flows and a distribution hub. The network replaced the store. A regional network of 150 stores serves a population of millions! Walton didn’t break the conventional wisdom; he broke the old definition of a store.