A five-and-dime store in Rogers, Arkansas grew into Walmart
- World’s largest private employer — 2.1 million associates
- Still headquartered 30 minutes away in Bentonville
- Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt are both Arkansas companies too
- The Natural State, 25th to join the Union (1836)
How Arkansas’s digital economy grew
Arkansas becomes the 25th state
Admitted to the Union on June 15, 1836.
From a Bentonville dime store to 2.1 million jobs
Sam Walton ran a Ben Franklin franchise in Newport, then opened Walton’s 5 & 10 in Bentonville in 1950, before launching the Walmart chain in nearby Rogers in 1962 with his brother James. The company topped the Fortune Global 500 revenue ranking every year from 2014 through 2025 — 12 straight years — before Amazon edged past it in 2026. It remains the world’s largest private employer, with 2.1 million associates, and it is still headquartered in Bentonville.
More than 1,300 companies that sell to Walmart — Procter & Gamble, Hershey, hundreds more — now keep dedicated offices within about 30 miles of Bentonville just to manage the account, a supplier presence that grew from 48 companies in 1994 to over 1,200 by 2006. It transformed rural Northwest Arkansas into a genuine corporate hub, visible in things like the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art that Alice Walton opened there in 2011.
Two more Fortune 500 names, thirty miles apart
Walmart isn’t Arkansas’s only giant. Tyson Foods traces to John Tyson’s 1931 move to Springdale hauling chickens; it’s now the world’s second-largest meat and poultry processor, $54.4 billion in FY2025 revenue and 133,000 employees. J.B. Hunt started in Stuttgart in 1961 hauling rice hulls, pivoted into trucking in 1969, and is now one of North America’s largest transportation and logistics companies, $12.09 billion in FY2024 revenue.
How Arkansas businesses buy websites
Northwest Arkansas runs on the Walmart supplier ecosystem, but most of the state’s businesses are the trades and shops serving everyone else, from Little Rock to the Delta towns further east.
Trades and home services
Arkansas’s regions differ a lot — Northwest Arkansas, Little Rock and the Delta all read as different markets, so say which one you’re in.
Professional and B2B services
A lot of Bentonville’s economy is other companies serving Walmart — being specific about your niche matters here.
Shops and hospitality
Clear hours and location, readable on a phone — basic, but it’s what converts a search into a visit.
How well do you know Arkansas’s digital economy?
3 quick questions. Get all 3 right and you win a 10% off discount code. Every answer is somewhere on this page.
Arkansas quiz · 1 of 3
In what Arkansas town did Sam Walton open the first Walmart, in 1962?
Why FastSites works here
A state whose most famous company built an empire on “every day low prices” understands the appeal of a clear, published price and no surprises. A one-page site, live in days, fits that same instinct.