- There’s a Costco to one side of Gwendolyn Hammer’s house and a Sam’s Club to the other. But when the 28-year-old needs 12-packs of paper towels, or 36 rolls of toilet paper, she heads online instead.
Once a month she uses her smartphone to place a bulk order on Boxed.com, a website founded five years ago as a millennial-friendly alternative to warehouse wholesalers. There is no membership fee, and most orders arrive within two days. Other times, she stocks up using Amazon Prime.
“I’ve never had a Costco membership, even though I knew shopping there would likely end up saving me money,” said Hammer, who lives in Utah Valley, Utah, and grew up shopping at Costco with her parents. “I do like not having to haul my kids to the store.”
Personally all the Costcos around me in Northern New Jersey are pretty crowded. They are so crowded that I hate going there due to the long lines and massive crowds. Maybe if they weren’t as crowded, I might go there more. How crowded are the Costco’s around you?
There are two in my city (metro area has a population of ~900,000), including one very close to my house. It's always crowded, and we just time our trips to times when it's less so. But we love it. It's also fantastic for major purchases (e.g. electronics), due to a fantastic return policy and frequent sales.
The several Costco I go to are all business owners, Mormon families, and young people. They are always packed. If anything Costco is winning; Sam's is considered the place old people go to and they are closing 10% of their stores
Yeah, the article is laughable. Damn near any business with more than 10 people has a pallet of Costco shit show up every 2-4 weeks. Every business with a pallet of shit showing up every 2-4 weeks gets to give out steeply-discounted memberships to everyone who works there. Everyone who works there has an incentive to shop at Costco. And shit - when I had the corporate costco card I only bought beer for parties. But I bought beer for parties. Amazon and Box have cardboard boxes full of shit. Costco works freight. This is why Sams Club is dying: it's a Walmart with a membership card. And this is why Costco is not: they're like Grainger or McMaster Carr for human stuff. STUDIOUSLY NOT MENTIONED IN THE AMAZON-OWNED WASHINGTON POST: Wayfair. Like Ikea, except they ship it to your house or business and give you a 30% discount if you buy more than $500.
I'd say no, but that's a lie: WaPo seems a respectable newspaper. Is it? Any news source recommendations?IN THE AMAZON-OWNED WASHINGTON POST
Nope. Amazon.com, the huge, publicly traded, Fortune/S&P 500 company, does not own The Washington Post or any of its affiliated publications. Bezos [the CEO — FBR] is buying us with his personal fortune rather than through Amazon.
They haven't had any dust-ups like Judith Miller or Jayson Blair. They've got skilled and seasoned reporters on staff. That said, Bezos is a shady fuck. Is there some sotto voce directive to write shit about how Costco is fucked but not about how Amazon has its own challenges? I doubt it. But it also wouldn't surprise me if they did.
Wayfair is a $4 billion a year income company now. Wow. I recall when they were basically a tiny online-only BigLots. The Grainger catalog is better pornography than Playboy could every hope to be. I wish we got a discount at work for Costco. I can almost justify the 15 minute side trip on the way home to get gas, but living by myself in a smaller house I cannot justify using Costco for food and sundries. Gas is consistently $.05 less than anywhere else.