Sam Walton: Made In America

by Sam Walton

What makes me sad these days—and a little angry too—is that some of these stores are starting to shut down before we come to a town. They hear we’re coming, and they close up before we ever even get there. We get a bad rap for that, but to my mind somebody who’ll close his store just because he hears competition’s coming is somebody who must know he’s not doing much of a job, somebody who probably shouldn’t have been in the retail business to begin with. For all the press about Wal-Mart being at odds with small towns, I am positive that we are most welcome in almost every community where we do business. That’s partly because of our economic contribution. But it’s also because we go out of our way to instill a sense of community involvement in our store management and associates so that they’ll be even better citizens. We know that some of our store managers do a better job at this than others, and it’s a constant effort to make everyone work on community involvement. We already have community scholarship programs and matching charity grant programs, but we’re working hard every day to improve the ways in which we give back to the communities we’re in. If we ever let our sense of being hometown merchants slip too far, we run the risk of damaging what we think is a unique relationship with our customers.