Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…Amazing. This is really the major difference here between Sol and Sam. Sol doesn't care. He's like, sure. Again, what am I going to do, stop you? They stay friends. There's this amazing story that Sam tells in Made in America, where a few years later, Sam is going around again to Price Clubs, shopping his competitors with his tape recorder, making notes about how they're doing pricing, inventory, and stuff. The security at the store confiscates Sam's tape recorder. Sol ends up just mailing it right back to Sam and he's like, keep your notes, it's all good. It's so funny. Right around the same time, another person comes out to San Diego to visit Sol and Price Club, a guy named Bernie Marcus. For some listeners, that is going to ring a lot of bells. Bernie has a story very much like Sol's. He was the president running the Handy Dan hardware store chain. He had gotten kicked out by the board, was pretty salty about it, and was looking for a second act. Sol has him out to San Diego. He shows him the Price Club warehouse. He gives him the playbook and says, look, Bernie, you've got all this hardware expertise, take the Price Club playbook, go kick their butt and open the Price Club of hardware stores. Bernie Marcus, of course, then goes home, turns around, and starts Home Depot. Which we've heard from listeners 10 times that we need to do the Home Depot story at some point. I actually did not know Bernie Marcus's name or that he was the founder of Home Depot. I think now we have to. Now we have to. This now brings us finally to one more call that Sol gets also in 1982. There are these years in retailing, 1962, and Walmart, Kmart, and Target started in 1982 when all this is happening. Another Bernie, this time a Seattle retailer named Bernie Brotman and his son Jeff, call up Sol. They say, Sol, this Price Club thing is fantastic. We're retailers up in the Northwest up in Seattle. We'd love to open a franchise up here, a Price Club franchise in Seattle. It's just like the Fedco, FedMart days. Sol and the Price Club management team think about it. They make the very poor decision to say no. In the same echo of what happened 30 years earlier, Bernie and Jeff say, okay, we understand. We're going to do it anyway. We're going to clone the Price Club model and start the same thing up in Seattle. Again, I think Sol is totally fine with this.…

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