How the Walmart shareholders meeting went from a few guys in a coffee shop to a 14,000-person, star-studded celebration (WMT)

Sure, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger throw down every year with more than twice as many people at the annual Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting, but that event doesn't come close to matching the energy at Walmart's, and Buffett didn't invite pop stars Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton to host this year's meeting, as Walmart did on Friday.

And though the Walmart Shareholders Meeting is always held on a Friday, it is a much bigger party for the employees, who arrive on Tuesday, for four days of events.

But before Walmart was the world's biggest retailer, it was an Arkansas company struggling to earn respect on Wall Street and compete in an industry dominated by Kmart.

When founder Sam Walton held his first shareholders meeting in 1970 (when its stock was trading around $15), he presided over five other people at a coffee shop table. With the help of Walmart's lead historian Alan Dranow and Walton's posthumously published memoir from 1992, "Sam Walton: Made In America," we took a look at how the Walmart Shareholders Meeting went from that to the spectacle it is today.

After that initial coffee shop meeting in 1970, Walton's financial consultant Mike Smith convinced him he needed to throw an actual event.

The first attempt was an utter failure — exactly zero people showed up for the 1971 meeting, held in a motel in Little Rock. Walton and Smith decided they should invite analysts and major shareholders to Walmart's home turf of Bentonville to show them how Walmart did business, and pay for their flights and accommodations.

It worked, but the meetings throughout the '70s were still low key, and several were held in the Bentonville High School auditorium.

For the third year of being a public company, Walton decided to start holding picnics following the meetings.

Walton wrote in his book that it took some time for New York financiers to get used to Walmart's heartland approach to doing things. "I remember one lady wore a formal gown to one of the dinners," he wrote. "It got quite a few curious looks."

Employees — or associates, as they're known at Walmart — took on an increasingly important role at the meetings in the '80s.

Walton grew up in Oklahoma and raised his family in Arkansas, and they were all fans of the outdoors. He held his first 'float trip' on canoes with analysts in 1976.

One year the float trip was followed with some camping.

"The wildest event I remember was when we all went camping overnight in tents on the banks of Sugar Creek," Walton wrote. "That was a real fiasco. Remember now, these are a bunch of investment analysts from the big cities. Well, a coyote started howling, and hoot owls hooting, and half of these analysts stayed up all night around the campfire because they couldn't sleep. We decided it wasn't the best idea to try something like this with folks who weren't accustomed to camping on the rocks in sleeping bags."

Walmart's current CEO Doug McMillon joined the company as a summer associate when he was 18, in 1984. One year he helped prepare the Bentonville High auditorium for the shareholders meeting.

Walton's influence is still frequently cited by Walmart executives, and his memory is honored at every shareholders meeting. He became a celebrity businessperson and synonymous with the brand in the '80s.

The first year the meeting had a lineup of guests was 1981, when country star T.G. Sheppard performed.

"Throughout the 1980s, the shareholders meetings became more and more celebratory and included more special guests, including Elizabeth Dole, Reba McEntire, Sidney Moncrief, Bill Clinton, and Chet Atkins," Walmart historian Alan Dranow told Business Insider. "During this time, the venue for the meeting grew from the Walmart Home Office Auditorium to the Barnhill Arena at the University of Arkansas."

Walmart became the most profitable retailer in the world in 1988, and the grandiosity of its shareholders meetings continued to grow.

As the company grew, the meetings became much more about the employees. Walmart had far less to prove to analysts as it did in its early years as a public company, and its shareholders meeting was a only chance to connect with employees now spread throughout the United States.

'It was the 1991 Shareholders meeting that was the first at the level that they are today,' Dranum said.

Guests included broadcaster Paul Harvey, country musician Lee Greenwood, baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, TV star Alan Thicke, and first lady of Arkansas and Walmart board member (from 1986-92) Hillary Clinton.

Walmart held its first meeting in the 20,000-capacity Bud Walton Arena at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 1994, shortly after it was built.

Walton died in 1992, but his children, themselves majority shareholders, continued to speak at the annual meetings.

When Walmart began holding its meetings at the arena, it was inviting about 10,000 employees.

Walmart is now a global force with more than 2 million employees. Employee delegates from stores around the world are selected by managers from stores whose eligibility alternates year to year.

All of the celebrities that serve either as guest hosts or performers during the week do so without compensation. Their representative companies all have strong distribution relationships with Walmart, and the free appearances act as both promotion and acts of goodwill toward the retailer.

Walton may have initially not even wanted to hold a shareholders event back in 1970, but by the end of his life, he was proud of the carnival-like atmosphere of the annual meetings.

He considered them celebrations of his company and his employees. "We like to think that this kind of meeting brings us all closer together and creates the feeling that we are a family committed to one common interest," he wrote.

How the Walmart shareholders meeting went from a few guys in a coffee shop to a 14,000-person, star-studded celebration (WMT)

Enhance Your Pulse News Experience!

JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!