Costco

is the greatest store ever. How did they do it? CEO Jim Sinegal makes it seem so obvious.

snippets

"Costco cares more about its customers and employees than its shareholders; it pays workers an average of $17 an hour and covers 90% of health-insurance costs for both full-timers and part-timers."

"[Walmart has] made significant improvements to their Sam's operation. We watch them like a hawk. Hardly a week goes by that I'm not in a Sam's...I think I purchased one of their men's dress shirts one time, because I wanted to test it in comparison to ours."

"Our healthiest business from a standpoint of sales growth has been in Asia; we're in South Korea and Taiwan and Japan. At the moment, our weakest, I would say, is in parts of California, Arizona, and around Las Vegas. Those are the places where we think more people have been hurt relative to this mortgage issue."

"they're not even taking into account the war or what's going to happen further down the line with Medicare and Social Security. How are we going to cover those costs? There's got to be some tough decisions made."

"You know, there certainly are days when I'll visit 12. I will be traveling to our warehouses every single week between now and Christmas."