The Clever Construction of the World's Largest Retailer

I worked at a Walmart superstore a few years ago, and if you think those are massive, the back area is almost as big. Rows after rows of items to stock, grocery pickup work areas, offices, storerooms. It's huge. Another trick I see is Walmart charging prices ending in 93, 94 or 97, and other numbers. People pick up something for $4.93 at Walmart that's $4.99 somewhere else and think they're getting a deal.

I remember when Walmart didn't sell tobacco products, alcohol or fireworks and paid time and a half on Sundays.

Cool story bro time - It was probably 1989 and I lived in an apt with my dad. The stoners across the hall (married couple) kept asking me if I had ever heard of Sam Walton or Walmart. At the time, there were none in our area (central PA) so I had not. He kept telling me how he and his wife were buying as much stock as they could afford with whatever was left after bills. He encouraged me to participate. I declined. i wonder where they are today?

Back in the early 1990's I had a cleaning supply business. My customers kept saying that they could get the same thing at Sam' s club cheaper. So, I took a little side trip to Sam's club to check it out. I compared prices for comparable products and sizes. What I found was yes, 1/3 of the products were cheaper at Sam's. But what I also found out was 1/3 of the products were equally priced AND 1/3 of the products were actually more expensive at Sam's Club! The point is that Wal-Mart carefully prices it's products to appear cheap. You buy some commonly used products and they are but everything else isn't.

In the 1950s there were lots of small competitors doing similar marketing moves and using retail physical changes to improve. Walmart gets way more credit than it deserves. Walmart does use end caps and islands to a huge advantage. Their merchandising selection of products at the checkout area needs much improvement.

A quick comment on the notion that Walmart was only the third retailer to introduce the self service model. This isn’t the case. Piggly Wiggly is the innovator in this respect, introducing its first self service store way back in 1916. It then franchised and grew to hundreds of locations in the 1920s. By the 1950s, this supermarket approach was prevalent. Most independent stores had already copied Piggly Wiggly by the 1930s, decades before Walmart came in.

My favourite story of Walmart is when they tried to open in Germany. It failed horribly straight away. One of the reasons the Germans rejected Walmart was because they found the smiling and the greeting from the employees very off-putting. Somehow, the Walmart executives had forgotten that foreign countries had different cultures and wouldn't respond well to such an American approach.

Before this video "All I know about walmarts is that they're a cheap box with stuff in it" After this video "Walmarts are a cheap box with stuff in it"

I live 40 miles from the nearest Walmart, and still shop there at least once a month. When somebody lives 40 miles from the nearest Walmart, you can bet the closest store is a dollar general - across from the local post office! You can also bet that most people can’t afford to shop anywhere but Walmart and Dollar General.

I found the “Self Service” vs. “Full Service” explanation very interesting, thanks.

I used to work in a Walmart Distribution Center. You were pushed hard for production, but the pay was great, as were the hours. Production wasn't hard to maintain. If you were in "Receiving", you would open the trailer door and pull freight off. You'd then scan said freight, find out whether or not it needed to be rearranged. In our DC, we were to "downstack" any pallets exceeding 6' in height for safety, also to accommodate the facility. If you were ever injured for any reason, in or out of work, I believe it was their policy to see to it that you were effectively furnished light duty assignments until you were able to get back to your post. I enjoyed my time there, however I would never go back to that work.

Minor correction: Ben Franklin was an exisitng early chain of true 5 and dimes. Sam bought a franchise Ben Franklin before opening his first true store that would become the Walmart we know today.

Worst thing about big box stores and the most ironic: poor selection. Before, if you went to a specialized mom & pop tool store, you would have a big variety of tools. If you went to a mom & pop lamp store, there would be countless varieties of lamps. But the Walmarts and Targets of the world want to have EVERY KIND OF THING, so within each TYPE of thing, there is usually only 1 or 2 varieties and that's it.

It's really interesting to see how unique Walmart's building design is, and it explains why, when Walmart abandons a location, virtually nobody can reuse the space. My home town made an unfavorable decision that caused Walmart to close their location (I believe they wanted to raise their business tax from 0% lol) and the building was abandoned in less than a month. It sat for sale for a very, very long time before finally being demolished. It was simply too huge, empty, cheaply made, and thin-skinned to easily turn into anything else in an economically viable way.

My grandson's first job is a cashier position at our smallish grocery store. He can't comprehend when grown men took being a bagger seriously. My how things have changed in my lifetime!

With 29,000 Gigawatts, Walmart could also send nearly 24,000 Deloreans back to 1955.

In 1990, I was employed at Walmart, where an interesting practice took place. Periodically, three of us employees were assigned a unique task. We were sent to a nearby Kmart store in the same town with the purpose of recording prices for a specific list of items sold at Walmart. The management at Walmart would utilize our gathered price information to strategically lower their own prices below those of Kmart. This practice occurred every week, specifically during slow days and before noon when the majority of shoppers were occupied with work commitments. Interestingly, throughout this entire process, we never faced any inquiries or suspicions from the Kmart employees.

Excellent video! Very interesting, I used to work at Walmart back in the 90s and some of the points you hit are spot on. When I worked there everything was drop ceiling and tile floors. Now it's open ceilings and polished cement floors and the removal of carpets. The floor plans very which is strange because most of the stores vary in cubic feet.

The self service model is also a huge factor in why we have so much single use plastic. When the product doesn't have to sell itself you can get away with alot more. So much of packaging is over done just so the consumer can see it or prevent theft. - a packaging engineer

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