Sam Walton: Made In America

by Sam Walton

After the meeting he came back to see me and moved right on to the subject of computers. He wanted to know all about how we were using them, and how we were planning to use them. And he took everything I said down on this yellow legal pad. “The next day was Saturday, and I went shopping—dressed in a pair of mangy cutoff jeans—at the Kmart near my house. I walked over into the apparel section and saw this guy talking to one of the clerks. I thought, ‘Jeez, that looks like that guy I met yesterday. What the heck is he doing way out here?’ I strolled up behind him, and I could hear him asking this clerk, ‘Well, how frequently do you order?… Uh-huh…. How much do you order?… And if you order on a Tuesday, when does the merchandise come in?’ He’s writing everything she says down in a little blue spiral notebook. Then Sam gets down on his hands and knees and he’s looking under this stack table, and he opens the sliding doors and says, ‘How do you know how much you’ve got under here when you’re placing that order?’ “Finally, I said, ‘Sam Walton, is that you?’ And he looked up from the floor and said, ‘Oh, Don! Hi! What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I’m shopping. What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘Oh, this is just part of the educational process. That’s all.’ Of course, he’s still doing the same thing today, except he uses his little tape recorder.”