Visionary, Born Retailer Collaborate

Jeff Brotman and Jim Sinegal came up with Costco's name over beers at a restaurant in South Seattle. "We didn't need to hire a firm for a couple hundred thousand dollars to come up with some name for us," Brotman said. "We got loose enough to come up with a name ourselves."

Brotman describes Sinegal and himself, Costco's two top executives, as "plain-thinking, straightforward-thinking people."

Brotman, 54, an attorney, comes from a long line of retailers. Sinegal, 61, who cut his teeth working for warehouse pioneer Sol Price in California, traces his lineage to immigrants from Italy and Poland. His father worked in the coal mines and steel mills of Pittsburgh.

Brotman's grandparents were merchants in Canada. His father, Bernie Brotman, founded Bernie's in the 1950s, the first specialty apparel stores for young men in the Northwest. His father also was an owner of Seattle Knitting Mills, which made Penguin sweaters. The family owned the Brotman's women's stores until the mid-1980s.

Jeffrey Brotman went to the University of Washington's law school to get out of the retail business. But after he graduated, he and his brother, Michael, started a store that specialized in jeans and pants for young women. They called it Bottoms. They also started the Jeffrey Michael chain of men's stores, which operated in the 1980s and early- to mid-1990s.

"We're clever with names. Bottoms. Bernie's. Jeffrey Michael," he said.

Brotman also became an early investor in some other types of businesses, such as Starbucks Coffee with its chairman, Howard Schultz, and Garden Botanika, the Redmond-based retailer of natural cosmetics and personal-care products he co-founded with President Michael Luce in 1990. His wife Susan used to be an executive with Nordstrom.

Brotman also had been president of Bellevue-based ENI, which sold oil and gas drilling partnerships that were popular as tax shelters. But sales plummeted in the early 1980s as oil and gas prices turned down, leaving behind a number of angry investors. Brotman left the company, which no longer exists, in 1982.

Sinegal spent his early years with Sol Price, first with Price's Fed-Mart discount chain and then with Price Club.

Friends call Sinegal a visionary in merchandising, a person who gets things done. He seems to be Everyman as he makes his way through Costco's Issaquah warehouse, saying hello to customers and employees, and stopping for a hot dog and Coke at the food stand outside.

In his office are a Clinton-Gore '96 campaign sign and a signed letter of appreciation from President Clinton for Sinegal's support during his first administration. "Yes, I'm a Democrat. I'm probably one of the only Democrats in our company, so I have to rub it in all the time," Sinegal says, harking to his family's immigrant and labor roots.

More noticeable than the political mementos are all his sports memorabilia, from the Sonics and Lakers chairs in his office to the autographed pictures of Laker legends Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson.

Sinegal's interest in basketball began when he was a schoolyard player in Pittsburgh. He was a Lakers fan for years while working for Price.

"Somebody sent me those (Lakers) chairs as settlement of a bet," said Sinegal. "I had bet them Chicago wouldn't sweep Los Angeles in the finals and Los Angeles won the first game and lost the other four. But I won the bet."