The Age of Wal-Mart

I saw the MSNBC special titled "The Age of Wal-Mart" the other night. It was an absolutely insightful look at how the company started and how it has changed so much after Sam Walton's death. Out of the two-hour special, they devoted a full 14.23 minutes to the negatives of Wal-Mart.

I was most amazed by the growth plans Wal-Mart has for China. There are about 4,000 Wal-Marts in the US, and the possibility exists to have that many in China as well.

Their computing systems are absolutely amazing. Their main computer system tracks every single item that is sold in every single Wal-Mart around the clock in near real-time. This helps them make random projections like "people buy more strawberry Pop Tarts in stormy weather." So there's a big storm coming your way, eh? You can bet that your local Wal-Mart just stocked the shelves with an extra supply of strawberry Pop Tarts. Their network of computers is the second largest in the world (the Pentagon has the biggest).

One interesting story about Sam Walton was once he was flying to a certain location, and they flew over a Wal-Mart. He noticed that the parking lot was empty, so he landed the plane and drove over to the store to ask why the parking lot was empty. The manager comforted him by telling him about an event going on at the local school. Sam replied, "I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't something wrong in the way we were doing things."

Say what you will about Wal-Mart, but that is one business plan that going to make hundreds of billions of dollars more before it starts slowing. (And that's just because they all hit a speed bump eventually).