Idea Lawyer Blog

He started as an attorney. By all accounts, he was a splendid one, but in the prejudiced 1940s and 1950s, a Jewish attorney had no hope of representing the big corporations, so his clients were mostly small business owners. Over time, though, he noticed two things. First, his clients increasingly sought his business, rather than his legal, advice. And second, he liked solving business problems.

More than a decade of solving other people's business problems left him suprisingly well prepared to act when opportunity presented itself in a most unlikely fashion. An odd turn of events left his mother-in-law owning a rather nice but empty warehouse in the industrial part of town. What was she to do with it?

Two of Mr. Price's clients saw the building. To them, it looked just like that of a nonprofit outfit called Fedco, which sold merchandise at a discount to federal employees who joined as members.* They thought Fedco had an interesting business and suggested, perhaps half-jokingly, that Sol Price could probably do the same thing, only better.

Sol Price visited Fedco, liked its idea, and decided he could do it better. So he found eight investors each willing to put up $5,000 and his law firm added another $10,000. With that $50,000 they opened a for-profit company called "Fedmart," using Fedco's idea of selling discounted goods to a restricted group but aimed at a somewhat broader market.

Unfortunately, that broader market meant big trouble. Sometimes when you invent a better mousetrap the world doesn't beat a path to your doorstep--it just beats you over the head.

*Fedco still operates successfully today, still a nonprofit membership store open to government employees.

Excerpted from
The Great American Idea Book: How to Make Money from Your Ideas for Movies, Music, Books, Inventions, Businesses and Almost Anything Else!
Authors: Bob Coleman & Deborah Neville
Publisher: WW Norton
Copyright: 1993; 1995
All Rights Reserved