Sam Walton - Zitate und Weisheiten

She also said no partnerships; they were too risky. Her family had seen some partnerships go sour, and she was dead-set in the notion that the only way to go was to work for yourself.

you can learn from everybody. I didn’t just learn from reading every retail publication I could get my hands on, I probably learned the most from studying what John Dunham was doing across the street.

they had little ledger books called Beat Yesterday books, in which you could compare this year’s sales with last year’s on a day-by-day basis.

Here’s the simple lesson we learned—which others were learning at the same time and which eventually changed the way retailers sell and customers buy all across America: say I bought an item for 80 cents. I found that by pricing it at $1.00 I could sell three times more of it than by pricing it at $1.20. I might make only half the profit per item, but because I was selling three times as many, the overall profit was much greater. Simple enough. But this is really the essence of discounting: by cutting your price, you can boost your sales to a point where you earn far more at the cheaper retail price than you would have by selling the item at the higher price. In retailer language, you can lower your markup but earn more because of the increased volume.

I think my constant fiddling and meddling with the status quo may have been one of my biggest contributions to the later success of Wal-Mart.

but I figured I’d rather have a small profit than have my competitor over there in a big store.

I’ve never been one to dwell on reverses, and I didn’t do so then. It’s not just a corny saying that you can make a positive out of most any negative if you work at it hard enough. I’ve always thought of problems as challenges, and this one wasn’t any different. I don’t know if that experience changed me or not. I know I read my leases a lot more carefully after that, and maybe I became a little more wary of just how tough the world can be.

most everything I’ve done I’ve copied from somebody else—

First, he gets up every day bound and determined to improve something. Second, he is less afraid of being wrong than anyone I’ve ever known. And once he sees he’s wrong, he just shakes it off and heads in another direction.”

The principle behind all those ways is pretty basic: you have to focus on something the customer wants, and then deliver it.”

But if you simply think like a customer, you will do a better job of merchandise presentation and selection than any other way. It’s not always easy. To think like a customer, you have to think about details. Whoever said ‘retail is detail’ is absolutely 100 percent right. On the other hand it’s simple. If the customers are the bosses, all you have to do is please them.”

But we figured out a way to grow, and stay profitable, and there was no logical place to stop.

But we have a rule. We never leave an item hanging. We will make a decision in that meeting even if it’s wrong, and sometimes it is.