Wal-Mart hits the 100-store level

Discount Store News, Oct, 1999

BENTONVILLE, ARK., AUG. 12, 1974

After 12 years of expansion, Wal-Mart will break the 100-store barrier this year and plans to open approximately 25 new stores next year in its Southwestern market.

The chain has grown to net earnings of $6.1 million on sales of $167.5 for the year ended last Jan. 31 from its $1.2 million income on $30.9 million in sales for fiscal 1970.

Wal-Mart currently operates 88 stores in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Louisiana, Tennessee with expansion planned for Western Kentucky in addition to the acquisition of one store in Mississippi. The company's plans call for saturating the present marketing area as well as extending its marketing perimeter.

This April store-for-store sales were up 23.5%. In the first calendar quarter of this year, Wal-Mar's income rose 49%, overall sales jumped 42% and store-for-store volume rose 13.5% These gains came as same-store inventory levels fell below the same period last year, while turnover increased by one full turn.

Beginning with a base of 15 Ben Franklin variety stores, the regional chain has had phenomenal growth since opening its first Wal-Mart discount store in Rogers, Ark, in 1962. With a projected 102 stores to be operating by year's end, Wal-Mart management is concentrating on continuing the company's profitability, and as a part of its total program this year it has:

- Instituted a chain-wide modular planogram ...

Wal-Mart's phenomenal same store sales increases and overall sales results had already made it the talk of the industry by 1974, the year in which it was prepared to reach the 100-store level. The steps supporting that growth were a harbinger of similar moves it made during the subsequent two decades that successfully spurred its development into the nation's leading retailer.