BOC Week 7: Largest Retailers

The largest retailer in America is definitely Wal-Mart, with over 100 stores worldwide its no wonder why Wal-Mart will be number one.  http://www.stores.org/2012/Top-100-Retailers Wal-Mart's first store was opened in 1962 Rogers, Arkansas. The company has employed 2.2 million associates and serves over 200 million customers each week at more then 10 thousand stores in 27 countries. Wal-Mart has been on top because its a very convenient store that provides food, supplies, and clothing. Wal-Mart is the number one store where people find it easy to purchase everything they need.
When is comes to fashion, the largest retail store is Inditex known as Zara. Zara was created by the 3rd richess man in the world, Amancio Ortega Gaona. Inditex now makes 840 million garments a year and has around 5,900 stores in 85 countries, though that number is always changing because Inditex has in recent years opened more than a store a day, or about 500 stores a year. Right now there are around 4,400 stores in Europe, and almost 2,000 in Spain alone. Inditex’s main rivals are way behind. Arcadia Group, which owns Topshop, among others, has about 3,000 stores worldwide; H&M, based in Sweden, has 2,500 (when you include its smaller lines of stores); and Mango, based in Spain, 2,400. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/magazine/how-zara-grew-into-the-worlds-largest-fashion-retailer.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

As a grocery store, Kroger gets the spot. Kroger moved up one position to become the fifth largest retail chain in the world. While this may not seem like much of a significant improvement, it is no small feat to overtake Germany’s largest discount store chain and widen the lead with the Costco Wholesale chain, which also sells a significant amount of groceries and food. The grocery store has made more than $92 billion in sales, and the company operates entirely in the U.S. and saw a 6.6 percent increase in sales from 2011 to 2012. products.http://retailindustry.about.com/od/worldslargestretailers/a/us-2013-worlds-largest_biggest_best_retail_grocery-stores-supermarkets_chains_ranking.htm