Sam Walton: Made in America

Sam Walton: Made in America is an autobiography about the man behind the multibillion-dollar Walmart empire. Walton was an entrepreneur and businessman born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. He died of cancer in 1992 and wrote his autobiography in the year before his death. Published posthumously on June 1, 1993, the book is a first-person reflection on Walton’s personal life and business philosophy. Walton’s writing is supplemented by quotes from friends, family, and colleagues that illuminate his work ethic and core values. The book’s nine chapters delve into lessons learned throughout Walton’s life and how he applied those lessons to business.

In the first chapter, “Learning to Value a Dollar,” Walton recalls that he and his siblings were expected to work from an early age. He learned the power of hard work as well as the value of a dollar. These early business lessons ultimately taught Walton that job security depends on customer satisfaction. Though money itself never motivated Walton, saving his customers money did, and providing value to his customers was of the upmost importance.

The Walmart empire was founded on these ideas, and they are further explored in Chapter 2, which discusses cutting prices as a sales-boosting strategy. Walton knew he could buy an item for $0.80, price it at $1.00, and sell three times as much product than if it were priced at $1.20. Such discounting became Walmart’s defining sales tactic.



Chapter 4 talks about adding a bit of anarchy to business. Shaking up the status quo and ignoring conventional wisdom is a big theme in Walton’s book; he understood that innovation is crucial to finding a profitable niche. Larger-format stores and a generous return policy were two inspired ideas that proved especially lucrative for Walmart.

Walton recounts carefully studying his competitors, looking for the pros and cons in their business practices and then improving upon winning tactics, such as consistently keeping prices as low as possible, minimizing infrastructure costs, and ensuring customer satisfaction. Walton also believed in sharing profits with associates through salaries, bonuses, and other incentives. In fact, his mission to create a certain kind of work culture is one of the book’s main topics. Walton believed the customer must be taken care of, first and foremost. In his view, treating associates well translated into treating customers well. He believed true profit lay in the repeat business of loyal customers, and so the customer became his number one priority. A humble and earnest man, Walton considered material possessions like fancy cars, big houses, and other excesses to be distractions from serving the customer well.

In Chapter 7, “Meeting the Competition,” Walton offers suggestions to Walmart’s competitors, such as getting out on the floor, greeting every customer, and training sales associates well. He states that in order to compete in retail, businesses must understand that the market is in constant flux; surviving requires adapting to these changes. For example, many retailers failed to use technology to manage time and inventory more efficiently; Walton viewed this failure to adapt as a critical pitfall, one that resulted in many store closures.



Efficiency is further explored in Chapter 15, in which Walton describes the business philosophy he used to guide Walmart’s growth. By controlling his expenses better than his competitors, thus creating a more efficient operation, he was able to establish and maintain an edge on his competition.

Walton’s business values and principles are succinctly described in Chapter 17, where he shares his 10 rules to build a successful business. These rules form the core of Walton’s business philosophy, and they are reflected in many of the book’s earlier chapters. The rules are:

• Commit to your business


• Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners


• Motivate your partners


• Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners


• Appreciate everything your associates do for the business


• Celebrate your success


• Listen to everyone in your company


• Exceed your customers’ expectations


• Control your expenses better than your competition


• Swim upstream

The final chapter focuses on legacy. If free enterprise runs our society, then businesses that are not customer-centric will not survive. People vote with their dollars. Of course, Walton’s shrewd strategies garnered plenty of criticism, and he was repeatedly accused of driving local stores out of business, a sentiment that’s still commonly expressed today. Walton saw it differently. He believed the market decides the nature of business. If a customer chooses Walmart over several local stores, it’s because Walmart served them better, and that is always defined by the customer. And if Walmart cannot meet a customer’s needs, employees have no problem recommending a competitor’s store.

Walton was a lifelong learner who applied everything he learned to his advantage. He was also an experimenter unafraid to try new ideas and discard them if they didn’t work. Ultimately, he had a single driving goal for all his stores: to make every single customer as happy as possible. His biography is as much an overview of the retail industry’s development as it a memoir recounting one man’s chase after the American dream. Sam Walton: Made in America has become a classic of business nonfiction, one with an enduring influence on undergraduate students and entrepreneurs.