Costco’s strategy can be summarized as primarily a selection of high-quality items sold in bulk in warehouses around the US and Canada, with a substantial part of its business focused on selling merchandise at a low-profit margin. Costco also uses a single-step distributionstrategy to sell its inventory before it gets paid to suppliers. Costco generated almost $242.29 billion in revenue in 2023, of which $4.58 billion came from 71 million paid members.
Costco is a large American multinational corporation with a focus on low-cost, membership-only retail warehouse clubs. Costco is the 4th largest retail operator in the world, operating 785 warehouses in 10 different countries. Indeed, it has enjoyed rapid success growing from zero to $3 billion in sales within six years.
Costco runs a high-quality, low-priced business model powered by its memberships that draw customers’ loyalty and repeat purchases. Top institutional investors comprise The Vanguard Group, 8.98%, and BlackRock, 6.76%. Top individual shareholders include Craig Jelinek, Chief Executive Officer of Costco, and Charles T. Munger (Warren Buffet partner and co-owner of Berkshire Hathaway).
The wholesale model is a selling model where wholesalers sell their products in bulk to a retailer at a discounted price. The retailer then on-sells the products to consumers at a higher price. In the wholesale model, a wholesaler sells products in bulk to retail outlets for onward sale. Occasionally, the wholesaler sells direct to the consumer, with supermarket giant Costco the most obvious example.
Costco generated $242.29 billion in revenue and $6.29 billion in profits in 2023, compared to almost $227 billion in revenue in 2022, nearly $196 billion in revenue in 2021, and over $166 billion in revenue in 2020. Costco also generated $5.84 billion in net income in 2022, compared to $5 billion in 2021 and $5 billion in 2020.
Costco generated $4.58 billion in membership revenue in 2023, compared to $4.2 billion in membership revenue in 2022, compared to $3.87 billion in 2021 and $3.54 in 2020.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.