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Chad Burhans
MKTG 2218 Retail Management
Final Project
12/08/14
Detroit Lakes Walmart
Company History
The history of Walmart is very interesting and arguably the greatest entrepreneur success
story in U.S history. Walmart was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 when he opened his first retail
store in Rogers, Arkansas. Through his innovative ideas and commitment to his customers and
employees he had grown the business from one retail store to a global powerhouse
(http://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/history.) Walmart’s mission statement is “We save
people money so they can live better.”
I could write a whole paper just on the history of the corporation, but instead I’ll focus
on one particular store. I chose the Detroit Lakes (DL) Walmart location as my retailer to write
about. The Detroit Lakes Walmart, also known as store #2957 at the corporate headquarters,
opened its doors on February 28th, 200l. The store was considered a test store and was built using
a different layout than the rest of the supercenters at the time, and over a course of a few short
years corporate abandoned that particular layout due to functional inefficiencies, mainly
involving the backroom portion of the store. The DL store has seen many changes in business,
but probably the most notable would be the store was originally built with the idea it would
produce $40 million in annual gross sales, but within eight years it had doubled its original sales
projections and now maintains yearly gross sales of $80 million. Other changes the DL store has
seen involve the community’s popularity in the summer, especially the 4th of July, as the town’s
popularity as a younger destination diminished sales actually steadily increased, managers
believe it’s due to an increase in families visiting the area, and they traditionally spend more
money. WeFest has also contributed significantly to the success of the DL store in previous years,
Chad Burhans
MKTG 2218 Retail Management
Final Project
12/08/14
but they are starting to see sales trending down, managers believe a major factor is the WeFest
grounds are becoming better organized and offer much improved amenities than previous years
therefore less concert goers need to make the trip to Walmart for supplies. Another big change
that the business faced was the introduction of a new Inventory Management System, known at
the store as IMS, this created lots of difficulties and struggles for associates to grasp and for
managers to implement, though today it’s followed fairly well they still face some struggles. As
for the future of this particular store there really isn’t any major changes coming up, with the
exception of the resurfacing of the parking lot. This location is landlocked so expansion is not an
option, and as for the store layout, they had received a major remodel in 2009, where several
