Business View Magazine - November 2016

56 Business View Magazine - November 2016 the US. It has 1.5 million membership accounts repre- senting a total of about three million members. Naylon says that the company doesn’t do a great deal of marketing, relying mostly upon Sol Price’s maxim that the “unsolicited testimonial” is the best way to run a business. “People tell each other about the great deal that they found, the great prices. It spreads word- of-mouth,” he declares. “We have a very limited mar- keting budget. We spend money when we open a new club to do some initial marketing. Other than that, we have a small team of people in each club that go out and work with large employers. We go to a business that has, say, 500 employees, and try to get employ- ers to buy memberships for their employees. We also have a few people in each club who focus on our small business members, helping them grow their business through the items they can purchase from us.” Naylon concedes that the membership warehouse model is not necessarily the best choice for every shopper in every situation. “If you want to come in to a warehouse club in the United States or a PriceSmart in the markets we operate in, and you want to buy chick- en, you’re going to buy four or five pounds of chicken; if you want to buy beer, it’s going to be a case; if you want to buy toilet paper, it’s going to be 32 rolls. As far as buying 12 tomatoes - if you only have two people at home, that doesn’t necessarily make sense.” Nonetheless, he also insists that almost everyone can save some money with a club membership, especially when buying individual items. For example, PriceSmart carries a good selection of fine wines and a shopper