Welcome to watchmojo.com. I'm your host Tashkan and today we take a look at some icons of business. Today’s profile will be on none other than Wal-Mart and here are 10 things you need to know about the company.

Wal-Mart was founded on July 02, 1962 when Sam Waltz opened its first store in Bensenville, Arkansas. By 1968, it opened its first stores outside of the state, in Oklahoma and Missouri.

Within 5 years after its launch, Wal-Mart had 24 stores and sales of $12.6 million. On October 31, 1969 the company was incorporated and by 1972 its shares were trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer in the Unknown Speaker with over 20% sales in the category. Within the late 1990’s, it’s surpassed Toys “R” Us to become the largest toy seller in the States with over 40% of the market share.

Wal-Mart has had both a lot of praises and criticism throughout its history. Some of the praise includes the fact that Wal-Mart has been credited for single handedly keeping prices and inflation down, but on the flip side some of the criticism has to do with labor issues as well as sacks among its workforce.

By its 25th year anniversary in 1987, Wal-Mart had over 1198 store that had annual sales of $15.9 billion and it also employed a workforce of over 400,000 people making it the largest private employer around the world.

The next year, in 1988 Wal-Mart launched its first Super Center and that’s what helped it surpassed Toys “R” Us as the largest toy retailer shortly thereafter in the 1990’s.

Now, fast forward to the year 2000 when Lee Scott took over the CEO post at which point Wal-Mart sales had skyrocketed to over $165 billion per year.

On September 12, 2007 after 19 years, Wal-Mart change its slogan from “Always Will Prices Always” to “Save Money, Live Better”.

Wal-Mart launched San’s Club a few years ago which was its answer to Costco in other words a membership warehouse club but not that it is probably the only category that Wal-Mart has failed to gain dominance in the market place.

In 2006, international sales accounted for 20.1% of Wal-Mart’s total revenue but if you lived on the island in Manhattan, you wouldn’t find a single Wal-Mart around.