Speakers in the public record
Claim mix
belief 32evaluation 7commitment 7prediction 3uncertainty 1preference 1recommendation 1
Evidence policy
Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.
Claim ledger
The useful parts, with receipts.
52 published records
“In some ways, we have to tell a whole industry history here. But in other ways, these are all the same company, because they're all stacked learnings from Sol Price and his various brain children over the years to create the Costco that it is today.”
- Publisher
- Acquired
“(1) We will be including little hints at what the next episode will be to the email list now.”
- Publisher
- Acquired
“David, the other crazy thing is, I think Robert may have signed every copy of this book because he signed yours, and he signed the one that I got.”
- Publisher
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“One of the things we're going to talk about here in bear and bull, and I think we should transition, is what Costco is doing that is Costco-flavored ecommerce instead of Amazon-flavored ecommerce, but I will save that for my bookcase.”
- Publisher
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“All of these innovations, even though Sol came up with them, as these other companies are scaling and I think particularly Kmart, they don't really have the large scale operational expertise, nor the access to capital to really fend off the competition.”
- Publisher
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“I will say, too, that there's this famous quote about Amazon being a charity that's run for the benefit of customers.”
- Publisher
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“In fact, it's right around, and I suspect this is why management price is that way, it's right around the average household spend at Costco.”
- Publisher
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“I think what was going on here is Hugo Mann just realized that FedMart was sitting on a goldmine of real estate and just wanted the real estate portfolio.”
- Publisher
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“I really appreciate it. We will link to the Fast Company peace in the show notes, too.”
- Publisher
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“Let's analyze some of the second order effects of membership, which I think are potentially even more interesting than the obvious ones.”
- Publisher
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“There was a Deutsche Bank analyst that said, "It is better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder," which Costco management would say, yeah, that's literally like we've printed it.”
- Publisher
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“I didn't learn a lot, I learned everything. Absolutely everything I know, I learned from Sol.”
- Publisher
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“Their machine really works. I think that's the point. They've earned the right acting this nobly partially got them to where they are, but where they are earns them the right to continue to be noble.”
- Publisher
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“Today, we will walk through the very specific path of decisions and trade-offs that Costco has chosen to accomplish just this.”
- Publisher
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“Part of the enormous diaspora of retailers that come out of not only FedMart but Price Club, Jim Sinegal, I think, was probably locked up at FedMart under new management for a while.”
- Publisher
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“I think the dynamics are actually the opposite way with Costco, where Costco gets to hold an auction and say, we have an enormous amount of payment volume with enormously good customers with good credit.”
- Publisher
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“I think the origins of this though start all the way back with the original Price Club business plan.”
- Publisher
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“We are going to be including little tidbits after we release episodes, including listener corrections and little fun stories that we didn't have in time for recording.”
- Publisher
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“I think Costco has incredible counter positioning power today as a large incumbent in a way that they did not have when they got started.”
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“I think I'm going to quote Charlie on this one and say, I have nothing more to add.”
- Publisher
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“I think that's exactly right. You can see it in the numbers. They do very well in every economic environment.”
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“You are very much paying for the convenience of shopping on Amazon, I think on almost every product these days.”
- Publisher
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“Actually, I think you need to go in and have your picture taken. I was on a personal one before.”
- Publisher
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“Of course, Jim, Sinegal looks at him and goes, if you raise the price of the hot dog and drink combo, I will effing kill you.”
- Publisher
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“I actually don't know why, but I suspect it's because prices are artificially high in the entire glasses supply chain.”
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“Actually, they condemned the pier and took it down because it was really last year that it was still… I don't know.”
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“We're going to clone the Price Club model and start the same thing up in Seattle. Again, I think Sol is totally fine with this.”
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“I actually did not know Bernie Marcus's name or that he was the founder of Home Depot. I think now we have to.”
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“I think, David, you mentioned before, about 3000 at Price Club is what they had available for sale.”
- Publisher
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“One of the best podcast episodes this period all year, I think, especially because we know Jeremy pretty well from Tiny, and we know Patrick very well.”
- Publisher
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“What I think also, back to the membership, it all comes back to member trust. The members have to trust that they are going to get the absolute best price on everything and that Costco isn't going to be playing these games.”
- Publisher
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“Mann literally fires Sol, I think and Robert, too, and changes the locks on their office doors.”
- Publisher
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“I think what's interesting to talk about next is, okay, everybody knows how this all works.”
- Publisher
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“I think by the time they actually launched it, they had relocated to Issaquah, a little farther south.”
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“While we're talking about the people here, I think a related but separate playbook theme is truly the promoting from within culture there.”
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“I think for the items again, the non-staples, the treasure hunt type items, they intentionally want to run out so that they're not going to be there next time you come.”
- Publisher
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“There are some concepts that I think we've talked about at a high level, but we haven't really drilled into why they work so well.”
- Publisher
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“If I remember from our Walmart episode, Walmart (I think) has over 2 million employees.”
- Publisher
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“Interestingly, the transaction really is about as close to a merger of equals as I think we've ever seen on the show, with the caveat that Jim is clearly going to be the CEO that's going to run the combined company.”
- Publisher
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“I think Walmart has basically decided, look, we're not going to kill the Sam's Club business, but this is not where we're focusing our competitive energies right now.”
- Publisher
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“If we have a small number of additional ooh, ahh, and wow, one time items, such that every time as a member you come into the store, there's something new and different for you to find and buy at a really low price, that would drive repeat traffic and make coming to Costco more of a novelty, more of an entertainment event. Today, I think about 25% of their SKUs are these treasure hunt items.”
- Publisher
- Acquired
“The individual warehouses these days, you may have the stats exactly, but I think an average Costco warehouse generates over $200 million in revenue, and the top ones generate three $400 million of revenue for a single store.”
- Publisher
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“The split is just significant enough for the retail business where you're like, okay, yeah, we should care about growing sales in the retail business. But if it wasn't 70/30, if it was 90/10, or 95/5, you'd be like, well, I'm actually not sure why we care about making a single nother sale of toilet paper, because unless it is increasing the likelihood someone retains, I don't care about it.”
- Publisher
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“There are so many fun, little paradoxical things about this company. They sell goods at the lowest possible price, but that means that they have a wealthy customer base.”
- Publisher
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“Very often, I will buy something that's a little bit more expensive on Amazon because I'm like, well, it's going to be easy to return.”
- Publisher
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“It is such a good value that 55% of US members now do it. But much like everything else we've talked about with Costco, it is also amazing for Costco, because they get your money at the beginning of the year further advantaging their cash flow position.”
- Publisher
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“What's interesting is I think at the time, I suspect there were very few other Western style, globally aspiring retailers that were entering Asian markets, because it's not exactly obvious that a huge warehouse with bulk packaging would work in cultures like (say) Japan, where people live in tightly packed, dense urban environments, much smaller houses and apartments than in America.”
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“Had this not gone down like this, I think Sol probably would have just retired as new management, took over at FedMart, and all would have been amicable.”
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“To be honest, this scale economies that they then share with customers, I don't know how anyone could ever catch them in this moat that they've built from that.”
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“Every single time Costco does something amazing, they needed to because of the trade-offs that they chose.”
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“Costco decides, we will only markup anything a maximum of 14%. They actually do mark other things up less than that because things like electronics, they actually can only mark up 6%, 7%, 8%.”
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“I highly recommend Tifosi. They're also pretty cheap. I bought three pairs. They're goofy in different colors and they're fun.”
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