Costco
- Costco president and COO Ron Vachris took over as CEO from Craig Jelinek on January 1.
- The 40-year employee started as a forklift driver at Costco's predecessor, Price Club.
- He has worked in every area of the company, and is set to earn $11.5 million as CEO.
Costco's new CEO, Ron Vachris, has worn more hats for the company than probably anyone alive. Now, he's just the third person ever to hold the top job at the wholesale club.
The 58-year-old had been on the shortlist for the top job since February 2022, when he was appointed president and chief operating officer.
Serving as outgoing CEO Craig Jelinek's right-hand man "almost certainly" paved the way for his eventual succession, Morgan Stanley retail analyst Simeon Gutman said in a note at the time.
The company confirmed that Vachris had been working "hand in hand" with Jelinek on a transition when it announced in October that Jelinek would end his 11-year run effective January 1.
"I have total confidence in Ron and feel that we are fortunate as a Company to have an executive of his caliber to succeed me," Jelinek said in a statement.
Of course, Vachris' history with the company goes back much farther than his most recent role — four decades, in fact.
In 1982, while majoring in business as a community college student in Arizona, Vachris took a part-time job as a forklift driver at Costco's predecessor, Price Club, which was founded by retail entrepreneur and wholesale visionary Sol Price.
He earned various promotions over the years, eventually moving to Colorado to work as an assistant general manager and a general manager at Price Club locations there, per Crunchbase. When Price Club and Costco merged in 1993 (Costco co-founder Jim Sinegal was a protégé of Price), Vachris was tasked with overseeing the company's expansion back in Arizona.
He spent the next three decades rising through the ranks in all aspects of merchandising and operations, the company said.
While Vachris is the youngest member of Costco's board of directors, the company says his qualifications "include his extensive knowledge of the Company's business developed over the course of his long career with the Company."
In the span of Vachris' career, Costco has gone from zero to more than 871 warehouses around the world, annual revenues of $242.3 billion, 129.5 million membership cardholders, and a market capitalization of $293 billion.
As of last November, Vachris was the owner of 27,620 shares of Costco stock, per SEC filings, which is currently worth about $18 million. The disclosures also show he received a total compensation of nearly $8.5 million in 2023, $7.4 million in 2022, and $4.7 million in 2021.
Vachris will see a compensation raise to $11.5 million in 2024, made of $1.15 million base salary and $10.4 million stock, per SEC filings — a notch up from Jelinek's $9.9 million compensation package in 2022, but below Jelinek's final-year total compensation of $16.8 million.
Both CEOs make far less than Walmart's Doug McMillon and Target's Brian Cornell, who last year received $25.3 million and $17.6 million, respectively.
Like his counterparts at Walmart, McMillon, Vachris is one of the few retail employees to go from earning an hourly wage on the loading docks to pulling in a multimillion-dollar compensation package in the top office in the C-suite.
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Update: October 26, 2023 — This story was updated to include compensation details for Vachris that were filed after initial publication, and a portrait provided by the company.
Update: January 2, 2024 — This story was updated to reflect the CEO transition taking effect, and include the latest figures from the 2023 proxy statement, filed in December.