How Did Sam Walton Start Sam's Wholesale Clubs?

David Senra says Sam Walton started Sam's Wholesale Clubs by copying a membership wholesale club that Sol Price had already made successful.

On a sunny January morning in 1983, Sam Walton flew into San Diego to investigate a membership wholesale club. Sol Price, a California entrepreneur, had originated the idea five years earlier and was getting rich by selling merchandise at only 10% above manufacturing prices. Sam Walton figured he could do the same. He intended to borrow from Sol Price the way he had copied schemes from JCPenney, Herb Gibson, and other merchants. He returned to Bentonville, called his top strategists, and began a division of Sam's Wholesale Clubs.

Walton had spent years looking for a way to carry his everyday low-price methods into rich, sophisticated metropolitan markets. The wholesale club was the way he found.