Wal-Mart is as inescapably American as Ford trucks and apple pie. It's only fitting, then, that the company celebrated its anniversary just two days before our nation's own Independence Day, and that the company's eccentric founder drove a red F-150 long into his status as billionaire.
Love or hate the company, you can't help marveling at what it's accomplished. Since opening the doors to its first store on July 2, 1962, the company has become the world's largest retailer, collected nearly half a trillion dollars in revenue last year, and now operates more than 10,000 stores. Given all that it's accomplished in 50 short years, it only makes sense to wonder what the next 50 years will bring.
What was
Retail has gone through paradigm shifts every few decades or so. After benefiting from one such shift, Wal-Mart has become the rare survivor through the others. Modern retail got its start in the early 1900s with companies such as Sears and J.C. Penney (NYS: JCP) , whose catalogs could be found in most homes and created the notion of mail order. Then along came highways, baby boomers, and a corresponding migration toward suburbs. It's here that Wal-Mart thrived. Coupled with a 1962 repeal of fair-trade laws that prohibited discount pricing and a ramp-up in consumer spending, Wal-Mart couldn't be stopped.
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