Chapter 4: Swimming Upstream Summary and Analysis

Sam is enjoying his latest success with the creation of Wal-Mart. Although he considers himself a fairly conservative guy, he is a maverick in the world of business. Sam is always looking for new and different ways to do things and takes great pleasure in bucking the trends. When the men from Ben Franklin told him to not open any more discounting stores, it fired him up to open more stores and be even more successful.

It is 1962 and many of the successful discounters are driving fancy cars and living in large homes. However, Sam feels that few of these discounters have good operations. In 1962, four large companies started discount stores, including Kmart, Woolworth, Woolco, Target, and Wal-Mart. Sam admits that Wal-Mart's obsession with quality was nothing then what it is today. Back then, they were more...