Sol Price, Founder of the Price Club, Has Died

The NBC Nightly News included a 30 second obit for Sol Price last night, which is embedded below. He died at the age of 93 of natural causes. He was the pioneer of membership-based wholesale stores, having opened his first "Price Club" in San Diego in 1976. I remember driving by one that was located just off the freeway when I was in high school in the mid-1980s. His "Price Club" chain later merged with "Costco" in 1993. And that "Price Club" off the freeway is now the "Costco" I go to today, 25 years later.

His obituary in the New York Times today ended with perhaps the ultimate compliment from a one-time competitor. "One of the chief beneficiaries of Mr. Price’s legacy, Sam Walton, acknowledged the debt in his 1992 memoir, 'Made in America'. Mr. Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, wrote, 'I guess I’ve stolen — I actually prefer the word ‘borrowed’ — as many ideas from Sol Price as from anybody else in the business.'”

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