What began almost 60 years ago as Walton's, a single five and dime store, has morphed into the world's largest retailer. Walmart is now valued at $417.8 billion (£300bn) and has more than 10,500 stores in 24 countries worldwide. Read on as we take a look back at how the father of Walmart Inc., Sam Walton, started the Walmart empire and how his family continues his incredible legacy today. All dollar values in US dollars.

Sam Walton was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma on 29 March 1918. His father Thomas Walton was a farm appraiser and mortgage agent and to further his career, he moved his wife Nancy and their sons to Missouri. Sam and his younger brother James, more commonly known as Bud, spent their formative years there. A conscientious pupil and keen sportsman, Sam graduated from Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri, where he was a quarterback for the football team.

Walton began his retail career straight from college. He started off as a sales trainee at JCPenney, which was then a relatively small retailer. It was here that he found he had a knack for sales, regularly supplementing his basic salary with impressive commission.

When Sam left the military in 1945 the couple moved to Iowa and then on to the cotton town of Newport, Arkansas. Keen to stay in retail, Walton began looking out for a suitable opportunity in the area.

Although Newport was a small town, the brothers managed to boost sales at the Ben Franklin franchise from $72,000 – the equivalent of $1.1 million (£790k) in today's money – to $250,000, the equivalent of $2.8 million (£2m). They did this in just five years, making it the top-performing Ben Franklin store in the region. 

Walton's philosophy of 'lowest prices anytime, anywhere' proved a big hit. By 1967, there were 24 Wal-Mart stores in America and they were taking around $12.7 million (£4.5m) in sales. The company's first official logo was this Frontier font logo, which stayed until 1981.

The IPO enabled Wal-Mart to expand rapidly, necessitating a new head office and the refining of its product distribution process. In 1971 a site in Bentonville, Arkansas became Wal-Mart's first distribution centre and headquarters. By 1972 the chain had 51 stores and was recording sales of $78 million (£29.9m).

As Wal-Mart became a landmark in towns and cities across America, the company established the Walmart Foundation to give back to communities. Launched in 1979, the Walmart Foundation have gone on to donate enormous sums throughout the last four-and-a-bit decades. In 2021 alone, Walmart.org has donated more than $1.4 billion (£1bn) in cash and goods across the world. Walmart employees, or associates as they're known, are also encouraged to give generously. Over 12,000 employees spent more than 278,000 hours volunteering in 2020.  

In 1980 Walmart recorded its first $1 billion (£753m) in annual sales. The business reached this milestone faster than any other company at the time. By this point Walmart had 276 stores throughout America and employed 21,000 associates.

Sam and Helen Walton (pictured) established the Walton Family Foundation in 1980 to enable the family to give back some of their own wealth to worthwhile causes. It works in three areas: improving school years education; protecting rivers and oceans and the communities they support, and investing in their home region of northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta. The Foundation is now run by Helen and Sam's children and grandchildren.

In 1987 Walmart announced that it had implemented a satellite communication system across its business. Reported to have cost $24 million (£15.5m), it was the largest private satellite communication system in America (and possibly the world) at the time. It linked the company's operations through voice, data and video communication, improving training facilities, enhancing stock control, and making it much faster for stores to liaise with each other. 

The hula hoop was a craze with American kids in the 1950s and to ensure that none of his customers' children missed out, Sam had a stack made for his five-and-dime store. Move on a few decades and Sam promised that if Walmart ever made what he saw then as an unattainable 8% pre-tax annual profit he would do a hula on Wall Street. Well, Walmart made that profit – and on 15 March 1984, Sam made good on his promise, as shown here. The hoop he used is now in the Walmart Museum in Bentonville. 

In 1988 the first Walmart Supercenter opened in Washington, Missouri. This hypermarket offered a range of other goods alongside a full-scale supermarket to provide a one-stop shopping experience. Shown here is one such store in Ontario, Canada.

In 1992 Sam was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a moment that's said to be the highlight of his career. As Sam was in poor health, President George HW Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush flew into Arkansas to bestow it on him personally. President Bush said: “We come here to honour a man who shows that through hard work and vision and treating people right, many good things can happen.” 

Soon after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992, Sam died from cancer in Little Rock, Arkansas. At this point the company had 1,928 stores, 371,000 associates and annual sales of almost $50 billion (£28.4bn).

Sam's eldest son Rob had joined the company in 1969. He held several positions within Walmart, including senior vice president, corporate secretary, general counsel and vice chairman. Before joining Walmart, he was a partner with the law firm Conner & Winters in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He joined the Walmart board in 1978 and, following his father's death in 1992, took over as chairman of the board of directors.

In 1993, 31 years after the first Wal-Mart store was inaugurated in Rogers, Arkansas, the company celebrated its first $1 billion (£753m) sales week. It was a phenomenal growth story.

Following the acquisition of 122 Woolco stores, Walmart expanded north of the border into Canada in 1994. Walmart Canada now operates over 400 stores and serves more than 1.2 million Canadian customers daily. It carries nearly 120,000 products including fresh groceries, clothing, home decor and electronics. It also offers specialty services such as pharmacies, photo centres and garden centres. 

In 1996, Walmart launched in China, opening a supercenter and Sam’s Club in Shenzhen. In China, Walmart now has a global sourcing office, a global e-commerce headquarters and stores under a number of formats and banners. The average Walmart Supercenter store in China is nearly 164,000 square feet. Sam's Club has proved particularly popular in the country. The Chinese additions helped Walmart record its first $100 billion (£75bn) sales year in 1997.

Following Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita in 2005, Walmart came to the aid of the victims of the devastation by contributing $18 million (£13.5m) and 2,450 truckloads of supplies to the relief effort. In the same year, as part of its giving back programme, Walmart also announced that it was committing to environmental sustainability. It introduced goals to create zero waste, use only renewable energy and sell products that sustain people and the environment.

Sam's wife Helen passed away in 2007. She was instrumental in shaping the Walmart business and had introduced the profit-sharing model that meant that staff felt they were a part of the company. She devoted much of her time to philanthropy and ran the Walton Family Foundation. At the time of her death she was said to be worth $16.4 billion (£12.3bn).

In 2009, Walmart bought a majority stake in one of Chile's largest food retailers, Distribución y Servicio D&S S.A. Analysts have valued the deal at around $1.5 billion (£1.1bn). Walmart Chile now runs hypermarkets, supermarkets and discount stores in the country under the Lider, SuperBodega aCuenta, Ekono and Central Mayorista brands. In the same year, Walmart also announced that it had exceeded $400 billion (£283bn) in annual sales for the first time.

In 2018 the company officially changed its legal name from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. to Walmart Inc. It also restructured its US operations, consolidating its six divisions into four. It's thought Walmart made this move to streamline its online and offline services, helping the company to compete with online giants such as Amazon. It's certainly paid off over the last 18 months…

Walmart has witnessed an unparalleled boom during the coronavirus pandemic. In the fiscal year 2020 the company made an incredible $559 billion (£401bn) profit as Americans rushed to stock up on groceries. That's even more than e-commerce behemoth Amazon, which raked in $386 billion (£277bn). Walmart has always thrived during times of crisis, and its heavy investments in technology that improve customer experience and provide online grocery shopping options have sent revenue through the roof.

Walmart hasn’t just been supplying Americans with groceries during the COVID-19 outbreak – stores have also played a crucial part in the country’s vaccine rollout scheme. In December 2020 Walmart announced that it was preparing to administer vaccines once they had been approved and it started administering the first doses to healthcare workers in New Mexico before the end of that month. By April 2021 Walmart was offering jabs at more than 3,800 stores and clubs across 48 states.

Having offered the vaccine to its customers, Walmart announced in July that its corporate staff and management-level employees must all be vaccinated by 4 October if they wish to continue their employment at the company, unless they have an approved reason for exemption.

Eldest son of founder Sam Walton, Rob retired as chairman of the board in 2015 but remains a director of the company. Thanks to shares in the family company, Rob currently has a net worth of $67.9 billion (£48.8bn), according to Forbes. The effects of the pandemic boom are traceable in Rob’s fortune, which has increased by $13.8 billion (£9.9bn), or 25.5%, since 18 March 2020.

Jim Walton is the youngest and richest of the three Walton siblings, with a staggering net worth of $69.1 billion (£49.6bn). Jim spent more than a decade on the Walmart board before he handed his seat to his son, attorney and businessman Steuart, in 2016. Jim remains chairman of the family’s Arvest Bank, which has assets totalling more than $20 billion (£14.4bn). Jim’s fortune has increased by a whopping $14.5 billion (£10.9bn), almost 21%, over the course of the pandemic.

Alice Walton has an estimated net worth of $68.2 billion (£49bn), according to Forbes, making her the second richest woman in the world. Like her brothers’ fortunes, Alice’s wealth has shot up in the last 18 months and she’s now worth $13.8 billion (£9.9bn) more than she was on 18 March 2020. She isn’t as involved in the family business as her siblings – instead, she is one of the world's most prominent art collectors. In 2011 she opened the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Walmart's home town of Bentonville, Arkansas. It's hung with Warhols, Rothkos, Pollocks and works by other less famous American artists. It's funded by the Walton Family Foundation and Alice is the chair of the museum's board of directors. 

As well as her art endeavours, Alice Walton is passionate about fixing the American healthcare system, which she described as “piecemeal at best and still not affordable for many”. Last year Alice unveiled plans to open an independent, non-profit medical school as part of her Whole Health Institute, which is a new venture seeking to improve the healthcare system in Arkansas and eventually across the States. There will be capacity for 40-50 students and the first cohort will start classes in 2024.

Regularly updating its shopping technology has been at the forefront of Walmart’s success, and the Waltons' wealth. But it hasn’t always gone to plan. In November 2020 the company announced it would be abandoning plans to install robot staff working in supermarket aisles. Trials of the automated employees rolled out across 500 stores, but Walmart ended up with a surplus of human staff, who could do the same tasks much quicker. It swiftly ended the partnership with Nova Robotics, which had been making the new additions to the staff rota.

Following a period of huge financial gains, Walmart anticipates sales will slow down as shopping habits stabilise. The company now plans to “invest more aggressively in capacity and automation”, according to Chief Executive Doug McMillon, as Walmart looks to continue its decades-long reign as America’s favourite supermarket and one of the most valuable companies on the planet.

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