Sol Price

Sol Price helped build the membership warehouse model through FedMart and Price Club. Born in New York in 1916, he worked as a lawyer before turning to retail. He launched FedMart in San Diego in 1954. The useful starting point was a different way to sell goods, with low operating costs supporting lower customer prices. In 1976 he founded Price Club with his son Robert and other partners. Its first warehouse occupied a converted airplane hangar on Morena Boulevard in San Diego. It initially served small businesses, then widened membership to selected consumers. The customer group and the operating format developed together: membership was part of the business model, not simply a discount attached to a conventional store. Jim Sinegal’s foreword to Robert Price’s biography describes the practices behind the concept: efficient operations, savings passed to customers, respect for suppliers and competitive employee pay. Sinegal also credits Robert with turning ideas into operating discipline. Sol’s role should not erase the people who made the system work each day. Price Club merged with Costco in 1993. Costco had been founded separately in 1983 by Jim Sinegal and Jeff Brotman. Sol Price was a predecessor and influence, not the original founder of that separate business. The distinction makes his contribution clearer: an operating model could spread beyond the first company and help shape a wider industry. His community work also became a long project. Sol and Helen Price established their family foundation in 1982; he later created the Aaron Price Fellows Program and began work in San Diego’s City Heights. He died on December 14, 2009. His career joins retail design with the choices about who benefits from a company’s savings, work and resources.