How Did Walmart Get Ahead of Kmart?

David Senra, reading from Vance Trimble's biography of Sam Walton, says Walmart got ahead of Kmart because Kmart ignored Walton's small-town stores and gave him a 10-year period to learn the discount business.

Sam Walton copied what he found in other stores. He studied Harry Cunningham, who came up with the Kmart concept, and said he took pieces of it and made Walmart as much like Kmart as he could. At the start Walmart was amateurish and far behind. Kmart let those stores stay out in little towns while Walton developed and learned. Walton said a competing store in a small town would have been unthinkable, and the small-town market protected him.

Kmart focused on major cities. Walton kept building in the tiny towns he already knew. Kmart was self-satisfied, thought it could roll over everybody, and woke up one day to find the world had changed.