Wal-Mart (WMT) has a New Year's resolution: to save more. Yep, it sounds like the kind of thing you'd see in a Wal-Mart commercial, "This year, I resolve to save more with everyday low prices!" But, it's actually quite real for the Bentonville, Arkansas company. The plan for 2010 is to purchase directly from manufacturers -- rather than procurement companies or suppliers -- which should reduce its supply chain costs for private label products significantly.

Currently, Wal-Mart spends around $100 billion to acquire the private label products it sells around the world, approximately 25% of its $400 billion in revenue. The discount retailer will also purchase more of these products internationally -- today, it picks up less than 20% of its private label goods on a country-by-country basis.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

You probably wouldn't think that the world's largest public corporation is located in a small town with a population of just 29,538 (based on the 2005 Census), but Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) maintains its corporate headquarters in such a town -- Bentonville, Arkansas. Sam Walton opened his first store there in the mid-1940s -- Walton's Five and Dime -- on Main Street as a Ben Franklin franchise. Today that store is Wal-Mart's visitors' center where you can find thousands of company photographs and memorabilia.

Sam Walton's first Wal-Mart Discount City store opened in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas, and within five years Walton had 24 stores in various towns in Arkansas. In 1968 he opened his first stores outside Arkansas, in Missouri and Oklahoma. Walton incorporated Wal-Mart Stores in 1969 and started selling shares over-the-counter in 1970. The company was first listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. Today Wal-Mart has more than 6,700 stores worldwide and serves more than 176 million customers weekly.