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The Resilience of Costco (2018)

138 pointsby awiesenhoferalmost 2 years ago

16 comments

RationPhantomsalmost 2 years ago
I love Costco, truly. I love the lack of mental noise I feel when I browse the aisles. I love the selection of goods and pricing leverage they have on manufacturers and their competitors.<p>However, Costco&#x27;s technology is woefully inadequate for a wholesaler of their size. I&#x27;ve even heard this from Costco employees dealing with their employees portal (shout to &#x2F;r&#x2F;costco). Lack of sufficient tech is a systemic issue with them.<p>How is it possible that they cannot give me an accurate inventory of the items in the stores near me? Sometimes I see a product on social media and think &quot;Hey it would be great to know if that product is only offered in Southwest US Costcos. Even trying to find a map of the store and where the products are kept (when there is some flux) is troublesome (yes, I get it&#x27;s the &quot;Ikea&quot; method of needing to push you through the entire store).
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wanderingmindalmost 2 years ago
Here down under, Costco is the first place I and a lot of people I know go to to buy not just household stuff, but electronics, appliances, clothes, shoes and everything possible. Kirkland is a brand I will buy with my eyes closed. The way they were able to retain quality through covid supply chain issues while every other major brand has regressed in quality is nothing short of a miracle.
ravetcofxalmost 2 years ago
I really don&#x27;t like supporting Costco as it&#x27;s the antithesis to good urban design. It&#x27;s not healthy for people to be living so separated from shops that stores like costco end up with 1000 car parking lots. Grocery stores should be on every other corner or so of every neighborhood within walking distance. Prices would be kept low due to healthy small business competition. Costco is mearly a symptom of the sickness that is Euclidean zoning.
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insane_dreameralmost 2 years ago
We (family of 4) shop at Costco every 2 weeks; get all of our staples, fruit&#x2F;veggies (we eat a lot of that and they have a very good selection of organics), cheese (good selection, much cheaper than other stores); great deals on wine too, and sometimes beer when they carry our craft beer of choice (our local Costco has a lot of nice craft beer), dog food, etc. Some favorites we don&#x27;t find elsewhere at that quality&#x2F;price are the Kirkland organic tortilla chips, toasted seaweed (kids&#x27; favorite), organic flour tortillas (freeze them and they last), roasted almonds, dried fruit (figs, apricots), reduced sugar fruit spread, etc. For a big wholesaler we find they have a very good selection of healthier food (as healthy as you can get in the US, but that&#x27;s another story), at least in our city. I find the layout to be pretty consistent and we know where to go to get our regular purchases. Often along the way we&#x27;ll see something we haven&#x27;t tried before and get that, though you do sometimes find that they stop carrying it, or it was seasonal, but I can live with that. What we don&#x27;t buy there is meat, fish, milk, eggs, all of which we buy at local grocer (sourced locally), plus we&#x27;re not big meat eaters and don&#x27;t want to fill up a freezer with it. Besides that, we get some specialty stuff at Trader Joe&#x27;s (a nice place to shop and the best checkout staff ever -- I think they attract the right kind of employees, a bit like REI). And that&#x27;s about it. None of those companies are perfect but I feel like they pay and treat their employees well. We shun Safeway&#x2F;Albertsons&#x2F;Kroger, and don&#x27;t get me started on Walmart. I truly hate Walmart for having destroyed so many US towns--will never give them my money.
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jacknewsalmost 2 years ago
I like their curated inventory model, and focus on quality, value, bulk sizes, etc.<p>It&#x27;s almost a stake in the heart of consumer marketing and retail, which seems to be all about bamboozling customers with endless new products or packaging, and dressing up staples with new marketing angles or features, eg &#x27;marine hydrocolloids&#x27; or whatever the latest BS in cosmetics is, before that &#x27;microbeads&#x27; (aka glitter), etc.
r00tbeeralmost 2 years ago
This is from June, 2018. (That should be in the title.) I&#x27;m curious how the last five years have been for Costco.
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skybrianalmost 2 years ago
It seems like a decent slide deck, but what&#x27;s the deal with this anonymous blog with the odd domain name?
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jandresealmost 2 years ago
The age of this article is very apparent with the continued discussion of Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods. If that was supposed to be a massive shock to the grocery business it is a long time in coming. Most people forgot it even happened with how little it changed the world.
somsak2almost 2 years ago
&gt; customers prefer the convenience of shopping online<p>Things have actually been flat for ~3 years now <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fred.stlouisfed.org&#x2F;series&#x2F;ECOMPCTSA" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fred.stlouisfed.org&#x2F;series&#x2F;ECOMPCTSA</a>
tragomaskhalosalmost 2 years ago
Our nearest Costco (Wembley in London) has an ophthalmology section that does eye tests as well as (competitively priced of course) eye glasses. That&#x27;s some confident branching out from the traditional retail domain.
DrFunkealmost 2 years ago
For the past year I&#x27;ve noticed their cashiers are oddly hostile. I&#x27;ve just not been digging the vibe of the store lately. I pay $60 for membership. You don&#x27;t need to treat me like a potential criminal who may be using someone else&#x27;s card.<p>Anyway, I have two Discover cards (0% apr for 12 months) that gave me 10% cash back at Costco.com. I purchased $3000 worth of Costco giftcards &amp; will be using them in lieu of membership in the store when mine expires (a little known store loophole). I&#x27;d like to think it&#x27;s in the spirit of Steve Jobs leasing cars for one month at a time to avoid license plates.
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FrustratedMonkyalmost 2 years ago
On one slide showed big dip in profit in 2009. What was it? I don&#x27;t think it was just the 2008 economy downturn.
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a2xd94almost 2 years ago
Let&#x27;s take a moment to appreciate some excellent minimalist UI of this site and especially the slides on this topic.<p>Simple.<p>Clean.<p>To the point.
erhaetherthalmost 2 years ago
According to that site, Costco has 741 stores. And 3 of them are within 10 minutes of me. Noice.
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rylittlealmost 2 years ago
I love this format of ingesting information
latchkeyalmost 2 years ago
I can appreciate why Costco appeals to people. I would go maybe 1-2 times a year to pick up a few items. That said, once they started hard enforcing the card sharing policy and then proceeded to literally scream at me that I couldn&#x27;t use my fathers card, while in line, I decided to not give them my business ever again.<p>I had used his card a couple times before without any issues. It wasn&#x27;t even a busy day and I really didn&#x27;t get the hostility that I received. Certainly, I got some stressed out check out person, but wow... me never going back there again is going to cost them a whole lot more in the long run, than them missing out on my membership fee from my occasional visit.
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