Sam Walton

Sam Walton, in full Samuel Moore Walton (born March 29, 1918, Kingfisher, Oklahoma, U.S.—died April 5, 1992, Little Rock, Arkansas), American retail magnate who founded Walmart in 1962 and developed it, by 1990, into the largest retail sales chain in the United States.

Walton graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in economics (1940) and entered a J.C. Penney Company management training program in Des Moines, Iowa. He opened his own Ben Franklin variety (five-and-dime) store in Newport, Arkansas, in 1945 and relocated the store to Bentonville, Arkansas, five years later. By the early 1960s, he and his brother, James, operated a regional chain of Ben Franklin stores. When that company’s executives rejected his concept for a new discount store chain to be based in small towns, Walton decided to set up such a chain on his own. He opened the first Walmart store, Wal-Mart Discount City, in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962, offering a wide variety of merchandise at discount prices in a no-frills setting. (In 2018, the company’s name was changed to Walmart.)