James Sinegal Quotes & Sayings

#1. Everybody is watching you every minute anyways. If they think the message you're sending out is phony, they're going to say, 'Who does he think he is?' It's again good business. But it is also an obligation.

James Sinegal

#2. If you hire good people, give them good jobs, and pay them good wages, generally something good is going to happen.

James Sinegal

#3. I think the biggest single thing that causes difficulty in the business world is the short-term view. We become obsessed with it. But it forces bad decisions.

James Sinegal

#4. Paying your employees well is not only the right thing to do but it makes for good business.

James Sinegal

#5. I think that most of the people running companies today are motivated and pay is a small portion of the motivation.

James Sinegal

#6. It is improper for one person to take credit when it takes so many people to build a successful organization. When you try to be top dong, you don't create loyalty. It you can't give credit (and take blame), you will drown in you inability to inspire.

James Sinegal

#7. You destroy the initiative of the working people if they don't feel they have a fighting chance to be a part of the American Dream.

James Sinegal

#8. In the final analysis, you get what you pay for.

James Sinegal

#9. One of the strengths of our nation has always been a strong middle class who could afford their own homes and send their children to school.

James Sinegal

#10. You take an educated gamble. If you don't occasionally make a mistake, you're not doing your job.

James Sinegal

#11. You just can't get too focused on worrying about what's going to happen in the next quarter. You have to worry about where the business is headed long-term.

James Sinegal

#12. You could raise the price of, say, a bottle of ketchup to $1.03 instead of $1, and no one would know. Raising prices just 3% per product would add 50% to your pretax income. Why not do it? It's like heroin: You do a little and you want a little bit more. Raising prices is the easy way.

James Sinegal

#13. If somehow a proclamation were made that C.E.O.'s could only make a maximum of $300,000 a year, you would not have any shortage of very qualified men and women seeking the jobs.

James Sinegal

#14. It doesn't do much good to have a quality image, whether it's with the facility or whether it's with the merchandise, if you don't have real quality people taking care of your customers.

James Sinegal

#15. If you've got to work for the rest of your life, you'd better do something you'll enjoy.

James Sinegal

#16. We want to turn our inventory faster than our people.

James Sinegal

#17. There was a proposal in California that would keep out Wal-Mart but allow Costco. You opposed it. Are you nuts? That's true: I always oppose these kinds of things. Competition makes us better. Some of our best stores have a Sam's Club next door.

James Sinegal

#18. You don't have a very motivated working class, it starts to affect the dynamics of the economy. If workers are disenchanted and disenfranchised, productivity losses will go along with that.

James Sinegal

#19. It doesn't do Costco any good if nobody can afford to buy anything.

James Sinegal

#20. If you're going to say to all the people that you're working with, 'We want you to treat the customers honestly; don't lie and don't cheat,' it is somewhat hypocritical if you're not following the same rules.

James Sinegal

#21. We've always been in favor of improved wages for workers. When you have a strong middle class, they want to buy more stuff at Costco.

James Sinegal

#22. I say at our management conferences that the amount Wal-Mart grows in just one year is the equivalent of Costco's size.

James Sinegal

#23. Obscene salaries send the wrong message through a company. The message is that all brilliance emanates from the top; that the worker on the floor of the store or the factory is insignificant.

James Sinegal