Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedDavid Rosenthal: belief
4 Mar 2026 Acquired Costco
“All of these innovations, even though Sol came up with them, as these other companies are scaling and I think particularly Kmart, they don't really have the large scale operational expertise, nor the access to capital to really fend off the competition.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- David Rosenthal
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 4 Mar 2026
- Publisher
- Acquired
- Episode
- Costco
Transcript context
…It's crazy. What happens? FedMart truly was the first discounter that scaled nationally. All of these innovations, even though Sol came up with them, as these other companies are scaling and I think particularly Kmart, they don't really have the large scale operational expertise, nor the access to capital to really fend off the competition. Kmart, if you remember back to our Walmart episode, came out of the Kresge department store chain, which was huge. They had so much more access to capital certainly than FedMart. Even then, Sam Walton and Walmart, Sam had to fight bitterly last mile by last mile, building out his distribution network to beat Kmart. Sol and FedMart don't really have the firepower to compete. So they need capital, or they need to sell the business, one or the other. It seems like what they did was accidentally both.…
Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.