I couldn't resist

The following just flew out of my head onto the keyboard as I was browsing the internet this evening.  I figured I would share it with you guys:

I begin today with a question.

What is the world’s largest business by revenue?

No, it’s not an oil and gas company like Shell or ExxonMobil (2nd and 3rd, respectively).  It’s not a conglomerate like General Electric (8th).  It doesn’t deal with money like Bank of America (9th) or telecommunications like AT&T (10th).  The world’s largest organization in terms of sheer sales power is Wal-Mart.

It’s the largest private employer in the United States; the largest, in fact, in 25 individual states.  Nearly a third of the entire US population visits a Wal-Mart every week.

Say what you will, but I love Wal-Mart.  I buy almost everything there.  If the Wal-Mart by my place had a gas station, I would never drive anywhere else except to go to work.  I would buy gas at Wal-Mart just so I could keep driving to Wal-Mart to shop there.  I buy all my groceries there.  I go to Tim Horton’s and McDonald’s inside Wal-Mart.  If I had an RV, I could live there (the majority of Wal-Marts allow overnight parking).  If I had an RV, I could live and work there.  I could live my entire existence in a paved lot without moving beyond the path from the trailer door to the store entrance.

The reasons for this are many.  Wal-Marts are so plentiful that they are always close.  I don’t have to plan my schedule to go on a certain day to get a specific discount (Save-On), or waste valuable time browsing flyers, or clipping coupons (Superstore).  I don’t even need a loyalty card to get a deal (Safeway), although they have a new MasterCard rewards card that I might have to look into.  It’s always open.  I went grocery shopping on a Sunday night at 10:30pm and was still able to bask in the presence of my fellow Wal-Mart brothers.  The main reason I shop at Wal-Mart, though, is that I like keeping my money, and by shopping at Wal-Mart, I keep more of it than when I shop anywhere else.

In its fiscal year ending January 31, 2010, Wal-Mart made a net income of $14.335 billion dollars on $405.046 billion in revenue, a net margin of only 3.5%.  They have grown their revenue 17.5% since 2007 while maintaining essentially the same margin.  They have done all of this while continuing to provide me with continually higher quality goods at continually lower prices.

Wal-Mart is one of the greatest businesses of our time.  I need an RV…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wal-Mart