Sam's Club

Sam's West, Inc. (doing business as Sam's Club) is an American chain of membership-only retail warehouse clubs owned and operated by Walmart, founded in 1983 and named after Walmart founder Sam Walton. As of 2012, Sam's Club chain serves 47 million U.S. and Puerto Rican members and is the 8th largest U.S. retailer.As of January 31, 2008, Sam's Club ranks second in sales volume among warehouse clubs with 57 billion in sales behind Costco, despite the fact that Sam's has more retail locations.

Sam's Club had sales of $57.157 billion in FY 2014. It reported a 0.3% sales increase in 2014, 4.1% in 2013, and 8.4% sales increase in 2012. This is significantly higher growth than Walmart U.S. stores, which did not have higher than 2% growth since 2010.

Its major competitors are Costco and BJ's Wholesale Club.

As of December 31, 2015, Sam's Club operates 655 membership warehouse clubs in 48 U.S. states and Puerto Rico.Oregon and Vermont are the only states where Sam's Club does not operate. It also operates 160 locations in Mexico, 27 locations in Brazil and 12 in China. Locations generally range in size from 70,000–190,000 sq ft (6,500–17,700 m²), with an average club size of approximately 134,000 sq ft (12,400 m²).

Fireman Sam

Fireman Sam is an animated comedy children's television series about a fireman called Sam, his fellow firefighters, and other townspeople in the fictional Welsh rural town of Pontypandy (a portmanteau of two real towns, Pontypridd and Tonypandy, which are situated approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) apart in the South Wales valleys). The original idea for the show came from two ex-firemen from Kent, who took their idea to artist and writer Rob Lee who developed the concept, and the show was later commissioned by S4C.

Fireman Sam first appeared in Welsh on S4C as Sam Tân in 1987, and later that year in English on BBC1. The original series finished in 1994, and a new series that expanded the character cast commenced in 2005. The series was also shown in Gaelic in Scotland, where it was known as Sam Smalaidh. The series was sold to over 40 countries and has been used across the United Kingdom to promote fire safety.

Development

The original idea came about from two ex-firemen from Kent – Dave Gingell and David Jones. They approached Mike Young, creator of SuperTed in Barry, Wales, and asked them to further develop their concept. The idea was then brought to S4C's Director of Animation, Chris Grace, who saw potential in the idea and commissioned the series. Grace had previously commissioned Superted, which had achieved success across the United Kingdom and worldwide. The characters and storylines were created by Rob Lee, an illustrator from Cardiff, and the program was produced using stop-motion. It could take up to 4 days to produce 1 minute of this form of puppet animation. Fireman Sam has to this day been translated into over 25 different languages including Mandarin. In the first four series, all the character voices were performed by John Alderton (in English) and Gareth Lewis (in Welsh). The later series used several actors' voices. Voice direction in Welsh was by Pat Griffiths.