Made in America: Sam Walton - The Wal-Mart Story

Just finished reading the book "Made in America: My Story - Sam Walton". Sam Walton is the founder of the most successful retail chains in the world: The Wal-Mart. I picked the book up as I was getting bored one day and I just wanted to kill some time. I thought it was just another autobiography where the blabbering would go on and on. But the book packed in a real punch. I wasn't able to put it down. It was not just about Sam's life. It was about a culture he and his family had created - A culture his associates followed - A culture where the customer was revered: The "Wal-Mart way". I have read about Wal-Mart a long time back as a coverstory in Eenadu's Sunday edition when it did 50 Billion in sales. At that point of time I wasn't able to comprehend how large a number that could be. Now after I have read the entire story I understood that the empire was not built overnight. It was a result of methodical planning and offering the best quality an service to the customers. There are some valuable lessons to be learnt out of the Wal-Mart story. They are not just for retailers. They can be applied to any field wherever customer satisfaction is paramount. The basic rule for Wal-Mart is: "If you got a good deal you got to pass the profits onto your customers". That is how they kept coming back. A truly "Isse sasthaa aur achchaan kahi bhi nahi" unlike Big Bazaar where the prices are cheaper but quality is not upto the mark. Every employee is not regarded just as an employee at Wal-Mart rather an "Associate" (Partner) of the firm. This make employees responsible and since it is their own stock that grows with every dime they save they work harder and contribute to the growth of the company which ultimately results in their own financial growth. In the book there were a number of examples of Wal-Mart associates who retired as millionaires. Two key aspects of retailing: The Customer and the Associates being covered the only thing left out is the Management. How did they streamline management? That is the most interesting part of the story. "Save a dime and you can pass it off to your customer - Spend a dime uselessly and the Customer may have to bear the brunt" seems to be the line of thinking of Sam. So whenever Wal-Mart's top management hold board meetings they don't rent the costliest of the resorts neither do they travel in the most luxurious of the available means of transport. They donot have bureaucracy. It is hard to believe that a retail chain with as many as 2000 stores (1992 figure) has an office operations overhead of just 2%. That's incredible! But it should also be noted that they are not misers either. Sam approved the state-of-the-art satellite communications system that tracks nearly every item sold at Wal-Mart and the information is available to every Associate of Wal-Mart at the click of a button. Sam believed in communicating everything to his associates he wanted to empower them with information. He believed that the advantages of sharing information with your associates far outweigh the risks of letting your competitors know the same. All in all it was good reading and I would hold it on par with "Made in Japan by Akio Morita" in terms of literary value.