185Dimension of Variations
enjoy what was rapidly becoming the national pastime of shopping, catalog shopping lost its luster.
Sam Walton saw the opportunities, and it is this small-town beginning that is most often mentioned
in accounts of the creation of Wal-Mart. Walton opened his rst Wal-Mart in 1962 and within 8 years
had 30 discount stores in small and medium-sized towns in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.
In 1970, lacking distributors in these towns, Walton started building his own distribution centers
that could buy in volumes at attractive prices and store the merchandise for onward distribution; in
the same year, he took the company public in order to nance the heavy investment involved. While
most discount retailers relied heavily ...