Costco Wholesale

For my short business case report I chose to represent the Costco Wholesale. Formally known as Price Club and today known as Costco, it has been a company that has came up me the economy and has grown over the past years. The company was founded by Jim Sinegal, and to this date still owns the company. Costco is the largest warehouse membership club chain in the United States today, and coming up in ninth in the world. As of October of 2007 Costco became the top retailer of fine wine in the world (Mass market). Stated in the employee agreement book the mission of Costco is "to continually provide our members with quality goods and services at the lowest possible price." Costco is primarily is marketed to large family and businesses. Costco does not carry much brands and but mostly focuses on variety. The store brand is Kirkland Signature. From experience and a shopper at Costco Wholesale, Kirkland Signature brand is a good quality brand and is sold at a low price. Kirkland has been Costco's store brand since 1995, and is a trademark of the company (Costco). Kirkland offers all kinds of items such as water, food products, and clothing. Costco today has over 500 stores worldwide and offers full time and part-time jobs to more than 140,000. During the summer and Christmas seasons Costco hires seasonal workers and most times hire permanently. It is a great job for college students and not too bad to pursue a career with. Costco sales model is to not carry a variety and multiple brands. Its focus is to stay with brands and companies that will allow them to carry their items but with a condition of giving a low price. There have been times where management at Costco has felt that the price of an item is too high and they discontinued the certain item. This happened in 2009 when Coca Cola products did not want to lower their wholesale items (fredrix). Costco brings in revenue of 71.4 billion dollars, operating income is 1.7 billion, and its net income is just over 1 billion dollars (Costco).

Costco also saves a lot of money by the way in which they organize the store. Every item that comes into Costco is delivered in pallets and the same way that it is received the same way it is sold. Instead of having shelves they put out pallets. Other services offered at Costco are the tire center and the food service. In this project I interviewed the Montclair Costco food court manager Maria Alvarado and warehouse front end supervisor Rigo Mena. Talking to food court manager Maria, a big part of her job is to come up of forms to save money with the economy getting tougher each year. In the food court many items have to be bought on a daily basis, but all depending on what was sold that day. These items include pizza sauce, dough, boxes, plates, cups, and other items. Every night they have to buy the items so that they are fully stocked for the upcoming day. About year ago they used to have the drivers drop every pallet