Keep pulling the thread on Sam Walton.
Sam Walton adopted his father-in-law's estate planning strategy by giving away 80% of his Walmart holdings to his children in 1954, long before the stock had significant value.
Sam Walton stated that he learned more business ideas from Sol Price, founder of Price Club, than from any other individual.
After first visiting a Price Club in January 1983, Sam Walton launched the first Sam's Club just three months later in April 1983.
Within three years of its launch, Sam's Club grew to 23 stores and $776 million in annual sales.
The Walton family's net worth is estimated to be almost a quarter of a trillion dollars, or $250 billion.
The leadership of the Ben Franklin franchise company rejected Sam Walton's proposal to create a discount store chain.
Sam Walton lost his first successful store in Newport after five and a half years because he made the mistake of not including a renewal clause in the lease.
Sam Walton's company became the first independent variety chain in the U.S. to discover that large stores in small towns could be highly profitable, generating $1 million in sales from a 13,000 sq ft store in a town of 2,000 people.
When pitching his discount store idea to Ben Franklin executives, Sam Walton proposed they cut their wholesale profit margin from 20-25% down to 12.5%, which they rejected.
Within seven years of its launch, Sam's Club grew to 105 stores and was generating $5 billion a year in sales.
Jeff Bezos stated that the two most important lessons he learned from Sam Walton's autobiography and applied to the early days of Amazon were frugality and a bias for action.
Within a few years of the Forbes 400 list's debut, Sam Walton reached the number one spot and held it for multiple consecutive years.