The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969, and publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. It is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. Walmart is also the largest grocery retailer in the United States. In 2009, it generated 51 percent of its US$258 billion sales in the U.S. from grocery business. It also owns and operates the Sam's Club retail warehouses in North America. and by October 1989 it had become the largest in terms of revenue. Geographically limited to the South and Lower Midwest up to the mid 1980s, by the early 1990s Walmart's presence spanned coast to coast - Sam's Club opened in New Jersey in November 1989 and the first California outlet opened in Lancaster on July 28, 1990. A Walmart in York, Pennsylvania was opened in October 1990 bringing the main store into the Northeast.
Walmart has over 11,000 stores in 27 countries, under 55 different names. Sam's focus was on selling products at low prices to get higher-volume sales at a lower-profit margin. He portrayed it as a crusade for the consumer. He experienced setbacks, because the lease price and branch purchase were unusually high, but he was able to find lower-cost suppliers than the ones used by other stores. He passed on the savings in the product pricing. Sales increased 45 percent in his first year of ownership to $105,000 in annual revenue, which increased to $140,000 the next