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Love Song to Costco

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Re: Love Song to Costco

#121

Post by barry-cotter »

divbzero wrote: post #115
slyall wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Zealand is getting our first store in a couple of months and people are obsessed with it. Stories in the media nearly every week. Long queues for membership. A lot of this is because the local Supermarket Duopoly avoids competing on price and makes great profits. People are looking forward to cutting their costs and also a flow-on as the supermarkets cut their prices a little to compete. Similar to IKEA which is…

It would be fascinating to be part of that team at Costco or IKEA planning to open a new store in a new country. On top of the challenges you can think of, there must be aspects of running the business that you take for granted in your home country and don’t realize will be a challenge in the new country.

> On top of the challenges you can think of, there must be aspects of running the business that you take for granted in your home country and don’t realize will be a challenge in the new country.

New Zealand has an educated, English speaking workforce, uses the English common law and actually has rule of law. They know how to do this. IKEA has stores in Vietnam, where all of those are much less true. They’re not going to learn much about international expansion they don’t know already. This is very different from a Canadian company opening up in the US, or a French one in Belgium. IKEA, and I presume Costco know how to do this already.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#122

Post by mongol »

unicornmama wrote: post #103
mongol wrote: post #98

Costco will open in Sweden soon. On the opposite part of Stockholm from where I live, so I don't think it will be useful for me. I don't know much about it but I am excited to see what it will bring, and if it will affect the general grocery market around here.

Hmmmm I wonder if they will try the bulk model. Americans have very large fridges and grocery shop once a week. Grocery stores are often a 20-30 minute drive away. In my European country people have small fridges and may buy groceries several times per week. Grocery stores are a 5-10 minutes away.

People that live in houses here usually have one fridge and one freezer, about 180 cm or so tall. In apartments, usually less.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#123

Post by nradov »

kvark wrote: post #54
lbrito wrote: post #47

Haven't read the piece yet, but I definitely will - for a long time I would like to understand why people are so enamored with Costco. I recently joined because they have some good food that is hard or more expensive to find elsewhere, but that's about it. To me it's just a store. Outside of the US/Canada I've never seen people evangelize a store so much.

For me, it’s a modern equivalent of the soviet stores. There is no 10 kinds of everything, but the ones available are guaranteed to be fairly good quality and at an affordable price. Speaking more modern, it saves the mental effort of researching choices. Need something? Check Costco, buy if there, done. Of course there are negatives associated with them, too.

That's true for some categories of goods but not all. They have way more than 10 kinds of wine.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#124

Post by pionar »

divbzero wrote: post #115
slyall wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Zealand is getting our first store in a couple of months and people are obsessed with it. Stories in the media nearly every week. Long queues for membership. A lot of this is because the local Supermarket Duopoly avoids competing on price and makes great profits. People are looking forward to cutting their costs and also a flow-on as the supermarkets cut their prices a little to compete. Similar to IKEA which is…

It would be fascinating to be part of that team at Costco or IKEA planning to open a new store in a new country. On top of the challenges you can think of, there must be aspects of running the business that you take for granted in your home country and don’t realize will be a challenge in the new country.

You hire people from the new market who do know those quirks. Or, you can be like McDonald's and most fast food/QSR companies, and simply license your name to "master franchisees" in those markets.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#126

Post by shp0ngle »

lbrito wrote: post #47

Haven't read the piece yet, but I definitely will - for a long time I would like to understand why people are so enamored with Costco. I recently joined because they have some good food that is hard or more expensive to find elsewhere, but that's about it. To me it's just a store. Outside of the US/Canada I've never seen people evangelize a store so much.

The piece is not really about costco though. I mean it is, but not really.

Re: Love Song to Costco

#127

Post by namdnay »

kvark wrote: post #54
lbrito wrote: post #47

Haven't read the piece yet, but I definitely will - for a long time I would like to understand why people are so enamored with Costco. I recently joined because they have some good food that is hard or more expensive to find elsewhere, but that's about it. To me it's just a store. Outside of the US/Canada I've never seen people evangelize a store so much.

For me, it’s a modern equivalent of the soviet stores. There is no 10 kinds of everything, but the ones available are guaranteed to be fairly good quality and at an affordable price. Speaking more modern, it saves the mental effort of researching choices. Need something? Check Costco, buy if there, done. Of course there are negatives associated with them, too.

I guess the european equivalent would be LIDL

Re: Love Song to Costco

#128

Post by listenallyall »

jedberg wrote: post #89
divbzero wrote: post #61

I’ve always had a gut feeling that Costco’s customers represent a broader swath of socioeconomic diversity than most other stores. Don’t know how true that is and would love to learn if there’s real data behind it.

The median Costco shopper makes over $125,000.

No, according to a dubious "research firm" that provides no data, the "typical" Costco shopper (define typical however you want) earns 125k. The same firm also states the typical Wal-Mart shopper earns $80k, same as both Whole Foods and Target. You can decide how close their numbers are to reality.

https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-walmart-shopper-demo...

Re: Love Song to Costco

#129

Post by p_l »

badpun wrote: post #119
kvark wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it’s a modern equivalent of the soviet stores. There is no 10 kinds of everything, but the ones available are guaranteed to be fairly good quality and at an affordable price. Speaking more modern, it saves the mental effort of researching choices. Need something? Check Costco, buy if there, done. Of course there are negatives associated with them, too.

> soviet stores. (...) but the ones available are guaranteed to be fairly good quality and at an affordable price Must be different soviets that I lived in. The quality was often terrible (e.g. "chocolate" that did not contain cocoa at all, ugly clothes and shoes that would break down quickly, beer that tasted like piss etc.) and that is assuming the goods were in the store at all. Basic western goods, such as Levi j…

At least with chocolate, during communist times in Poland AFAIK if someone was packaged as "chocolate" it had to be chocolate - it was "chocolate-like product" that you had to be wary of which was closer to american "chocolate"[1]

[1] I jest, I jest, but what is legal to be in store-bought chocolate in USA, based on things I actually ended up getting while visiting, was literally one of the ways communist poland cut chocolate to make "chocolate-like product" :V

Re: Love Song to Costco

#130

Post by ggm »

bobsmooth wrote: post #118

I think one of the things in becoming an adult is understanding the trauma of your parents. This was a nice article.

Nice isn't the word I'm reaching for. Very well written, hard to deny, quite angry. The one thing it isn't is a love song.

Great writing. Good read.

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