David Price and the price of being trusted

For once, David Price had to answer the questions. On At The Club, the PriceSmart podcast he normally hosted, the chairs had effectively changed places. John Hildebrandt, the company’s president and chief operating officer, was interviewing him. Price was about to become chief executive. A colleague who knew the business would be asking what that meant.

The scene had a pleasing absence of ceremony: two men, microphones, framed photographs, office chairs. For a third-generation retailer preparing to take over a public company, it was an appropriately practical setting. There would be plenty of room for family history. There would also be the rather less sentimental business of getting merchandise onto shelves.

Price took the job on September 1, 2025. His father, Robert, moved from interim CEO to executive chairman. His grandfather, Sol, had helped establish the warehouse-club business that made the family name familiar to shoppers. David inherited a recognizable surname and a demanding proposition: ask people to pay for access to a store, then give them enough value to make them glad they did.

A surname is an introduction. Renewal is a verdict.

A membership fee changes the relationship before the first purchase. The shopper has already committed money. The retailer must justify that commitment through the year, then ask for it again. A famous name can help with an introduction; the household deciding whether to renew has a more immediate concern. Did the arrangement pay off?

PriceSmart runs its business from San Diego, but its warehouse clubs serve Latin America and the Caribbean. In a 2023 conversation, Price called the company “kind of an odd duck” because Americans could struggle to find its physical stores. The description is nicely ungrand. A headquarters address tells you where the executives work. It tells you considerably less about where the customers live.

That geography matters to his education. Price earned a bachelor of science at the University of Southern California, followed by a master’s in international affairs at UC San Diego, where he graduated in 2017. His subsequent career would involve a business crossing borders as a matter of routine. Merchandise, currencies, languages and local expectations all cross his desk, though seldom with equal ease.

UC San Diego included him among its 2026 alumni award honorees. The university’s portrait of his work puts the company’s reach at more than four million cardholders and approximately 13,000 employees. Those are company figures, rather than personal trophies. They describe the number of people for whom a chief executive’s decisions can become an ordinary part of the week.

The apprenticeship ran through the shopping cart

He joined PriceSmart in July 2017. By September 2018, he was a director in its e-commerce division. That starting point is a useful detail in a family succession story. His documented route into leadership passed through the digital shopping experience, where an old retail proposition had to work through a screen as well as a warehouse door.

His responsibilities widened to omnichannel initiatives and environmental and social responsibility, then to chief of staff. In August 2023 he became chief transformation officer, overseeing areas that included information technology, PriceSmart.com and payment solutions. These roles placed him around the machinery of shopping: finding a product, making a payment, connecting the website with the physical business.

The family connection was explicit when the succession was announced. “I am honored to succeed my dad as PriceSmart’s CEO,” he said. Robert stayed involved, and the independent directors unanimously approved David’s appointment. The structure offered continuity, with the incoming CEO still working alongside the outgoing one. The affectionate word “dad” sat inside a decision governed by a public-company board.

By the July 2025 earnings discussion, David was describing his priorities in terms of employees, members, execution and long-term shareholder results. He also pointed to his work building digital commerce and to his experience alongside Robert, Hildebrandt and the executive team. It was a broadening brief. A department can improve its own results; the CEO has to make the parts work together.

Whose side is the mistake on?

His explanation of company culture contains a surprisingly useful instruction for an imperfect world. When an employee makes a mistake, he says, “make it in favor of the member.” The idea comes from his father and grandfather. It gives someone facing a small, awkward decision a direction to move in before a manual has supplied a paragraph.

There is commercial logic behind the courtesy. In a club business, the customer being helped today may be deciding whether to pay again tomorrow. A grudging exchange can cost more than the disputed item. Price’s language makes judgment part of service. It also makes clear that the person at the counter has a role in protecting a relationship.

He has taken an interest in hearing from people elsewhere in the organization, too. In an earlier At The Club episode, he spoke with technical product owner Karina Vásquez about leading technology teams and her experience as a woman in the field. Before the succession episode put him in the guest’s chair, he was using the format to ask colleagues about their work.

The education work around the company gives that employee-and-community language a concrete setting. A fundraising campaign in autumn 2022 collected more than $2.085 million from members for Aprender y Crecer. Matching support brought the total above $2.9 million. Price, then chief of staff, publicly credited employees across the clubs and departments for helping deliver the campaign.

That approach extends to compensation. Asked in January 2026 about Colombia’s minimum-wage policy, Price said the company aimed to pay a living wage in every market and above the legal minimum where necessary to meet that aim. His answer tied employment conditions to the company’s appeal as an employer. It was a specific operating commitment attached to the broader language about putting people first.

The next introduction happens in Santiago

Chile is where the inherited idea meets a fresh audience. PriceSmart plans its first club there in Comuna Las Condes, Santiago, inside Mallplaza Los Dominicos. The company’s September 2026 update targeted spring 2027 for opening. A warehouse club inside a shopping mall will be a new configuration for the chain, with its own practical test of access and convenience.

During the July 2026 earnings discussion, Price outlined roughly $100 million in planned capital spending for the first three Chilean clubs and central offices over several fiscal years. That is a commitment to preparing a market, rather than simply announcing a destination. Buyers, managers and a local assortment must be assembled before the opening-day shopping cart can contain anything useful.

“You have to give before you get in this business.”

David Price · July 2026 earnings discussion

The line was Price’s explanation of the patience involved. A new market needs an attractive price proposition before it has the volume that can make attractive pricing easier to sustain. The first members are being asked to believe in an arrangement they have yet to experience locally. The retailer, in turn, has to spend before those members have established a habit.

He has been careful about the consumer he expects to meet. In January 2026 he described Chile as competitive, digitally advanced and open to imported merchandise. By April, he was discussing what visits and buying delegations were teaching the company about local distribution and product-processing capabilities. International expansion, in this telling, involves learning what already works in a place before deciding what to bring.

There is a less patient side to his operating temperament. Asked about opening schedules in April, he explained that he pushes the team to find ways to open sooner because each day saved begins earning back the investment earlier. Permits had helped one project advance. It is an instructive pairing: patience in building demand, pressure on the calendar where the company can influence it.

The family bargain, with newer software

His earlier technology responsibilities remain visible in the business he now leads. In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, digital-channel sales reached $99.6 million, up 26.2 percent from a year earlier. They represented 6.9 percent of net merchandise sales. The warehouse still did most of the selling. The screen was becoming a more substantial way into it.

The company was also developing a membership platform intended to connect enrollment, renewal, upgrades and transactions across channels. That work sounds less photogenic than a new club. Its purpose is easy to appreciate when a shopper moves between an app and a checkout: the business should recognize the same member without making the member do the administrative work twice.

Price’s task therefore has two clocks. New buildings make growth visible on a map. Systems work changes what happens in the seconds between choosing an item and completing a purchase. Both matter to a member who paid for a useful shopping arrangement. Neither becomes useful merely because the chief executive’s grandfather had a good idea decades earlier.

As of its September 1, 2026 announcement, PriceSmart operated 58 clubs across 12 countries and one U.S. territory. Its next annual results were scheduled for late October. The dated figures are a snapshot of an expanding business, with Chile still ahead. They also put David’s first year in proportion: he is leading an existing organization while preparing it for places it has yet to serve.

Back in the podcast chairs, the succession could be discussed as a personal milestone. Outside the recording room, the family bargain has to survive thousands of ordinary encounters. A payment should go through. A product should justify its place in the cart. A member should feel the annual fee was money sensibly spent. David Price has the family name. Every renewal asks him to earn the next year.