A legend remembered

Discount Store News, Oct, 1999

The American Heritage Dictionary records that words "legend" and "legendary" can be used to describe any person or achievement "who fame promises to be particularly enduring." Within the Wal-Mart culture, however, the late Sam Walton remains more than a mere character from bygone days. For the industry at large, Walton was arguably one of the most influential retailers of this century. For the company he founded, Walton's business principals and guidelines for personal conduct among associates and vendor partners continue to define the company, both for the associates who encountered him personally and for the literally hundreds of thousands who did not.

For those who met Walton, the impression was indelible. Former Wal-Mart senior vp, gmm John Lupo in the mid-90s recalled that after interviewing with Walton, "there wasn't any doubt in my mind where I wanted to work." Former Duckwall-Alco chairman Robert Soelter recalled after Walton's death that when the Arkansan invited him to tour Wal-Mart's warehouse in Bentonville, Walton suggested ways in which he would improve the design if he were building it over again--advice he offered knowing that Duckwall was planning to build its own warehouse at the time.

Now there are relatively few associates left in the Wal-Mart corporation who were recruited in by Walton. Tom Coughlin, executive vp and coo, Wal-Mart Stores division, is one of them.

Coughlin recalled recently his pivotal trip to Bentonville. He was about to turn 30 and had a good job with Macy's West Coast division when he became intrigued by the possibility of working for Wal-Mart.

"I had been down on a couple of occasions to visit with Ferold Arend, who was president, and Jack Shewmaker, who was head of merchandising and operations, on becoming vice president of security," Coughlin said. "They asked me to come back one more time because Sam and Helen had been in Europe. Sam wanted to be involved in the decision because I was an outsider and there weren't a lot of outsiders brought in back then.

"I took my wife who at the time was eight months pregnant with me to Arkansas, and we came to this little town of 4,000 people with one single road going through it. We happened to show up on a Friday night and they had a once a week newspaper and the headline in the paper was `Bentonville gets its first traffic light.' So my wife asked me, `Tell me one more time why is it that you are considering this move?'

"I told her there was something special about the people I had met in the organization and that everybody was aggressive about doing what was right to make the business successful."

Sam was a notoriously early riser, so Coughlin was told his appointment would either be at 5:30 a.m. or sometime after a 7 a.m. meeting concluded. Coughlin's wife again questioned her husband about the wisdom of taking a job with Wal-Mart as the two drove to the retailer's home office.

"As we pulled into the parking lot at 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning, I saw the maintenance man in his khaki uniform coming toward the building. There was a newspaper that was left out, and the wind had blown it all over the lot, so the maintenance man was picking it up and then he would run a ways and grab some more.

"I said to my wife, `The maintenance guy's not even punched in and on his way into work he's cleaning up the parking lot. People here just respond differently than what I'm used to.'"

Several hours would pass before Coughlin was called in for his meeting with Sam, whom he immediately recognized as the "maintenance man" he'd seen in the parking lot earlier that morning.

"If the chairman of the board of one of the fastest growing retail companies in America at that time and one of the wealthiest people believed it was his job to pick up newspapers in the parking lot, then I believed the company's priorities were on track. It impressed me very much and was a defining moment for me."

Even executives who observed Walton from afar found much to admire.

Tom Grimm, president and ceo of Sam's Clubs, was one of the founders of Salt Lake City-based Price Savers Wholesale Warehouse in the early days of the concept. Grimm was aware that Walton visited his clubs, although he never encountered him personally.

"One of the things I would love to have done if I had my choice in the business world would have been the opportunity to shadow Sam Walton for a week to understand what the man was all about and understand the legend," he said.

After Price Savers was sold to Kmart's Pace Membership Warehouse division, Grimm eventually became president and ceo of the organization. He remained there until Wal-Mart acquired the division in 1994. Four years later, he was tapped to head up the Wal-Mart division that had formerly been his business rival.

His challenge now, he said, "is to make sure that I don't do anything to tarnish those wonderful things, the philosophies and culture, that he instilled in this organization and that still exist. My challenge is to help build upon it."