James Sinegal

“If you don't have the best people, you're not going to be the best company.”

“Paying good wages and keeping your people working for you is good business.”

“We're in the business of selling merchandise, not membership.”

“Culture is not the most important thing. It's the only thing.”

“You can't build a great company on unhappy people.”

“Reputation is everything. You can't buy it. You have to earn it.”

“We're not in the business of making our quarterly numbers look good. We're in the business of building a company that's going to be here 50 years from now.”

“Technology is a tool, not a strategy.”

“We only have one gimmick. That is, we sell merchandise at a very, very low price.”

“The business model is to have a very limited selection of high-quality items and to turn that inventory very rapidly.”

“You need to be a merchant. You need to be able to understand what it is that your customer wants.”

“If you want to be a world-class company, you've got to have a world-class health-care and benefits plan for your employees.”

“We pay the highest wages in retail.”

“At Costco, we have a very simple and unsophisticated rule of thumb: we don't mark up any item more than 14 percent.”