The Bully of Bentonville is the largest retailer in the world – Wal-Mart and is from the book of the same name written by Anthony Bianco, Doubleday, NY, 2006. Wal-Mart has changed the face of retailing for good or bad, depending on your point of view. From an investment point of view, Wal-Mart has produced outstanding returns, continues to produce those returns and has made the Walton family billionaires many times over. Wal-Mart is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas and its retailing focus from the time it started was on smaller towns and cities where there is plenty of money to be made. Companies such as Sears made their focus on the suburbs of American cities and left the downtowns and smaller cities to other competitors. Retailing by its nature is a very competitive area to be in. People make stuff and it needs to be sold somewhere, and the economy of the US is very dependent on people wanting to buy stuff. Wal-Mart has developed some of the best information systems to go along with its ability to deliver everyday low prices on a base of goods needed by the average household. Once somebody gets into the store, they find other items which have higher mark ups. In the global economy, there is always someone willing to deliver goods at a lower cost to the retailer, which is why many of the goods come from China or elsewhere. That is good news if your income is not dependent of providing increasingly lower prices, which is why many manufacturers have left the US. If you income is not dependant, then Wal-Mart saves you money.

Similar to many companies, Wal-Mart which is one of the largest private sector employers has been the active user of municipal, state and federal dollars to build new stores, for training purposes, but starts its employees at minimum wages or slightly average. There maybe opportunities to move upwards, buy shares in the company and other features but given the high turnover of staff, in the book it was running at greater than 50%, most employees see benefits in leaving before the year is done. Perhaps it is because of the retailing work hours and environment, perhaps it is to other companies paying more, whatever it is, the number is expensive given the size of the company.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, since 2003 Wal-Mart has paid a dividend and has consistently raised the dividend and expectation is to do so for the future. As an investor, Wal-Mart is a company worth owning the shares. Wal-Mart has the best distribution network, analysis on consumer wants and needs, and stable market share in the retail world and is a very tough competitor in a very competitive landscape. As a leader in the retail environment besides everyday low-prices, Wal-Mart has the ability if wanted to change how retailing is done from production, packaging to point of sale, understanding in the consumer economy the greatest competition is to be found in the retail world.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions