Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…But they’re not structured like this. But they can make a lot of the same long-term thinking decisions. In fact, Costco even runs on thinner margins. IKEA’s gross margins are mid-30% and Costco’s are 13%. There’s definitely this thing that we’ve talked about a few times, frugality as an edge. They originally built in the potato fields as a way to save money, but it ended up creating and inspiring their business model that they need to create this destination experience. The culture of frugality is interesting. Trying to buy materials at a discount, minimal sales staff, no finishes on unseen services, flat-packing, no one has assistance, I think actually the CEO is the only person at the company with an assistant, no one flies first class, they print on both sides of the paper. The assistant thing, the CEO may have an administrative assistant these days, but for years Ingvar had an assistant. But it wasn’t an assistant like an administrative assistant. It was like his chief-of-staff, like COO.…

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