Sol Price

“You can't understand Jeff Bezos until you study Sam Walton. You can't understand Sam Walton. So you understand JC Penney and sole price.”

“The low cost structure thing, that's not, that's a Walton thing. That's a sole price thing. That's a Jeff Bezos thing. That's a Rockefeller thing. That's the most common theme in the history of entrepreneurship.”

“There have been three CEOs in the history of Costco. Saul Price, Jim Senegal, Craig Jelinek. All of whom worked at FedMart.”

“As Saul is running the company during these first few years, he starts to codify some retail management philosophies, and he famously sort of canonizes these as FedMart's four priority order principles, and he teaches every new employee throughout the whole co…”

“So they decide as they're getting started that in order to keep the operations really tight and realize the maximum benefit, Ben, of everything you were describing of how these warehouses operate, they're only going to stock about 3000 of the highest volume it…”

“Also in 1982, Saul gets a call from his old buddy Sam Walton... Saul tells him all about Price Club, how the model works, the cash flow dynamics, everything. Sam, of course, goes back to Bentonville, and within 12 months, guess what pops up? Ben Gilbert: Sam's…”

“Right around the same time, another person comes out to San Diego to visit Saul and Price Club. A guy named Bernie Marcus... Saul has him out to San Diego. He shows him the Price Club warehouse. He gives him the playbook and he says, look, Bernie, You've got a…”

“Sam Walton actually wrote in Made in America That he stole more ideas from Saul than anyone else in his business career.”

“Saul kind of stumbles into figuring out that if you are a membership club, you're not open to the general public, so you can skirt these laws and sell below the manufacturer's minimum price.”