Where this was said
Sol Price's Origins: From the Bronx to San Diego
At 9:14 · chapter starts 6:40
David opens the history section by establishing Sol Price's backstory in granular detail: born in 1916 to parents who arrived at Ellis Island from Belarus with nothing, working in the Lower East Side garment factories during the Triangle Shirtwaist era, Sol grew up in a New York Jewish community where 'the socialists were the conservatives and the communists were the radicals.' The political and moral soil from which the future Costco code of ethics would grow is clearly visible. A childhood eye defect channeled Sol into being a relentless academic overachiever — he skipped two grades — before his family moved to San Diego when it was still a small city of 150,000. There, in a mirror of Sam Walton's story, Sol met his future wife Helen Moskowitz, whose wealthy scrap-metal family was perfectly positioned to benefit from San Diego's WWII-era boom as the principal port of the US Pacific Fleet. By the time Sol returned from USC law school and set up practice, San Diego was on its way to becoming the 8th largest city in America — a city-scale opportunity waiting to be seized.
Sol Price, born in 1916 to Belarusian immigrants in the Bronx, invented two entirely separate dominant retail formats: the discount retailer (FedMart, which Sam Walton copied as Walmart) and the warehouse membership club (Price Club, which became Costco). Sam Walton wrote that he stole more ideas from Sol than from anyone else in his career.
