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Costco is the anti-Amazon

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Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#61

Post by AnotherGoodName »

Backslasher wrote: post #19

The part about Costco choosing to avoid the last mile shipping problem reminded me of a proverb, roughly translated as: A clever person solves a problem; a wise person avoids it. I think it holds a lot of truth in engineering.

It’s also amazing how bad delivery services are in general. The incentives for third party delivery services don’t align well with the other parties. A retailer is judged on the quality of delivery yet only amazon has seemed to realize this (queue incoming anecdotes about amazon screwing up delivery yet i’ve never had an issue getting a refund when it happens).

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#62

Post by whatever1 »

mullingitover wrote: post #54
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also offer some degree of curation, so your dollar goes further by volume/weight/unit on average, but also in less quantitative ways quite often. I trust what I buy from Costco, but I’ve completely stopped buying from Amazon (many years ago now) because apart from the poor value prop, I simply don’t like the quality or reliability of what’s offered.

Amazon largely being a dumb marketplace, a faster-shipping AliExpress/Temu, really makes them easy to drop if you find that shipping speed isn’t super important for those types of products. You can just go straight to the source and cut Amazon out entirely.

It’s not only a faster Temu for e-junk. It can also deliver your paper wipes and bananas in the same order.

Could you just place 3 different orders to 3 different vendors? Sure.

Could you just drive to the grocery for 2 bananas and then to Costco for the big discounted paper wipes? Sure.

But likely you will not. Which is why Amazon pulls a Trillion in revenue.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#63

Post by stonogo »

clickety_clack wrote: post #52
righthand wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this, I have been in plenty of meetings where I propose a solution that eclipses most of the project requirements, often for a product person to turn around and say something like “yeah but I like working with X techhnology”, for example Tailwind. Okay you like Tailwind because you seem to think “p-2” is better than specifying “padding: 2rem;” because when it comes time to tinker with things you don’t want to…

Often, you are better off with a single standard environment rather than one with a hodgepodge of locally optimal solutions.

Depends on who "you" are. A project manager might be better off. An individual contributor is probably better off using the right tool for the job.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#64

Post by claw-el »

gwbas1c wrote: post #33

> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…

Also, in the photo, it shows a huge car park. The stores, have to support large empty spaces for parking of those 100 people all driving to the store. I also wonder about the social value of utilizing the land that way.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#65

Post by donatj »

gwbas1c wrote: post #33

> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…

It's a little my complicated than that though, I'm very rarely driving to the store for a single item.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#66

Post by nemomarx »

mc32 wrote: post #16
mmooss wrote: post #12

> To put it crudely, having someone in a Sprinter van deliver a recently-purchased toothbrush to your doorstep is simply not a universalizable action, from either a business or logistical standpoint. It is a modern feat that Amazon is capable of doing this, but that it can be done does not mean that it should, nor even that it can be done writ large. For most consumption, it is far more efficient for people to handle…

Indeed true. Even more efficient is when people can wait a few days and let Amazon bundle your orders and deliver on a designated day. That said people don’t typically get in a car to buy one thing -though obviously sometimes they do. On average though their trips will be for multiple things. I still think even without using designated delivery days Amazon deliveries are more efficient than individuals going out to b…

I've always wondered why I don't see passed on savings for the "amazon day" thing. It's gotta be way better for their logistics to deliver bulk orders, or pick a standardized delivery day for each neighborhood or something. Why do they only offer a single dollar of credit for choosing it?

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#67

Post by borski »

whatever1 wrote: post #62
mullingitover wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon largely being a dumb marketplace, a faster-shipping AliExpress/Temu, really makes them easy to drop if you find that shipping speed isn’t super important for those types of products. You can just go straight to the source and cut Amazon out entirely.

It’s not only a faster Temu for e-junk. It can also deliver your paper wipes and bananas in the same order. Could you just place 3 different orders to 3 different vendors? Sure. Could you just drive to the grocery for 2 bananas and then to Costco for the big discounted paper wipes? Sure. But likely you will not. Which is why Amazon pulls a Trillion in revenue.

In Q1 2026, AWS was 60% (roughly) of Amazon’s operating income.

I’m not so sure their retail piece is the part that’s making them big money.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#68

Post by ghaff »

donatj wrote: post #65
gwbas1c wrote: post #33

> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…

It's a little my complicated than that though, I'm very rarely driving to the store for a single item.

Not groceries, which I'm typically buying locally anyway. But I'll frequently drive to a store for some item I need.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#69

Post by dragontamer »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #49
gwbas1c wrote: post #33

> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…

> I suspect delivery of single items cuts back significantly on trips to the store. Amazon is also specifically incentivized to be efficient at scale, it impacts their bottom line to the point where they care about the shape of their vehicles. Individuals don't operate on the same scale so these sort of micro-optimizations don't happen.

Humans are specifically incentivized to be efficient at scale. They'll tend to shop at loctions on the way home from work, or otherwise cut down on travel times because traffic sucks.

I honestly can imagine that Costco is overall more efficient than Amazon, especially for people who do shop at Costco. If there's no Costco closeby, its more likely that the individual humans will shop elsewhere or somewhere more convenient.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#70

Post by newaccountman2 »

Loudergood wrote: post #45
gwbas1c wrote: post #33

> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…

Yeah, this argument falls flat on it's face. Of course it's more complex than that. When I worked from the office, centralized retail was very convenient and hardly added any driving. If you work from home, the opposite is true. The next revolution would be to standardize reusable packaging, that same daily delivery truck could bring that back. But only government could make that happen.

I could imagine Amazon incentivizing reusable containers on their own TBH. If I was living in a house and not an apartment, I could easily imagine putting the Amazon bins back out so the next time I get a delivery, they take those, and we are constantly cycling bins back and forth.

Even environment aside, from a purely self-interested perspective, I would much prefer it to dealing with the recycling Amazon deliveries entail.

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