"As of April 2006 Costco has 473 locations: 346 in the United States and Puerto Rico; 68 in Canada; 28 in Mexico; 17 in the United Kingdom; 5 in South Korea; 5 in Japan; and 4 in Taiwan." - Is there anyway to generate locations of the stores on a global map?

Edit for reply : While I haven't seen a map of all of them together, if you go to www.costco.com, and go to the warehouse locator, you can click on any location in the world and get a map of its' vicinity.

I noticed the interesting recent reverts. Upon further investigation, it seems the Cuernavaca boycott/incident is something worth including into the main article. To be honest, in the end, it appears to me that Costco comes out smelling very much like a rose, but nonetheless, I think it's news-worthy material that should be included in an NPOV manner. --Chan-Ho 18:01, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

The article says the first location opened in San Diego under the Price Club name, and that Costco and Price Club merged in 1993. That tells us where Price Club came from, but where did Costco come from?

I'm fairly certain that Costco started in Kirkland, WA. The article is incorrect in placing Price Club history in the same location. Price Club either merged with the pre-existing Costco, or was purchased by it (I'm not certain), but it definitely was not the sole corporate parent of the current company, which is how the article presents it. --jcleaver

Costco's first warehouse was (and still is) in Seattle. The opening paragraph of the article notes that its "flagship warehouse #1" is in Seattle. Costco had its headquartersin Kirkland for some time before moving it to Issaquah, so perhaps that had you thinking "Kirkland" as its first location. I think thopening paragraph covers the issue, but it could certainly be made clearer if someone wants to expound on the issue somewhat. As to Price Club, the 1993 joining of Price Club and Costco was essentially a merger -- it was described by the company as a "partnership," which, while perhaps logical from a business perspective, is not a legally accurate description of the transaction.Cjkporter 22:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article is absolutely horrid. For one thing, the "Price Club" article should not forward to this page -- Costco is what became of Price Club. Costco was not started in San Diego. I am not too sure where it started, however, Price Club was started in San Diego.

Nowhere in this article is the mention of Sol Price! He was the sole originator of the wholesale idea. James Sinegal and others helped to start Price Club but were not the people that first started the club. This cannot be caleld an article on price clob is sol isnt mentioned.

I agree with you and added Sol Price's name for you :)--Chicbicyclist 06:30, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Employees section contains a fair bit of NPOV content I just removed. In particular:

• The "many loopholes" claim is weaselly-worded - it claims the company "is able to hold back this option" by various means, without actually claiming whether the company does or not (or providing sources, if the claim is that it does); "this option" is also ambiguous - does it refer to the 401-K benefit, the stock option benefit, or to the entire benefit package?
• The claim that moving workers around is used to prevent them from gaining seniority (or even that it has that effect) is also doubtful. Costco is unionized, and seniority in union shops is typically based on time employed; this needs more than someone's say-so.
• The NYT article mentioned (hard link at the bottom of the page) emphatically does not claim that the $17/hr rate is only "for those who have worked with the company for 6 or more years"; it's simply cited as average pay.
• The claim that part-time employees lose their benefits upon layoff is unexceptional; the claim that there are periodical yearly layoffs of them for 4 to 5 years is not, and is at variance with Federal and many states' labor law. Given that it's also claimed that 50% of the workforce is part-time, such layoffs would trigger the WARN Act.
• It is untrue that the company has high worker turnover; the WSJ article linked at the bottom of the page puts the annual turnover rate in 2004 at 24%.
• The claim that many employees suffer heat exhaustion is also unsupported, and rather unbelievable given the rest of the evidence on Costco's workforce-treatment policies.
• The claim that "So far [good wages reducing employee theft] has been proven wrong. As there are many thefts among the workers." is unverifiable and unsupported.
• Finally, note that this edit came in from 206.63.89.53, and that IP's edits on other articles during the same timeframe are uniformly vandalistic in nature.

-- Ivanski 14:39, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the above edits (in support)

• Point 2: Not all Costcos are union. Moving between stores does not affect seniority except for a provision as regards moving from a non-union building to a union building.
• Point 3: Pay raises are based upon hours worked the "6 or more years" portion of the original is not factual
• Point 4: The ONLY instance of periodic lay-offs, aside from slowing business, involve Holiday Seasonal help. Those employees are told during phone screening that they will be let go after the Holidays. Those seasonal employees are often the first called when business picks up after the holiday slowdown.
• Point 7: In agreement about employee theft Costco's shrink due to theft is very low and theft by employees is universally the biggest contributor to theft shrinkage. It appears most of the removed sections were unsuportable and false (malicious even?).

Chris Beckett 04:53, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Edit to support above -about 10% of the employees are covered by a union

what does costco stand for on mean?

The name "Costco" doesn't mean anything AFAIK but it does seem to follow the "mart", "price", "save" word formulas used by many retailers. Additionaly, though not worthy of inclusion in the article, Costco is occasionally mispronounced "Cosco" which is a Chinese company (I believe shipping). Chris Beckett 01:19, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article mentions profit margins on most items at 14% with a strict cap at 15%. I believe the percentage is "most items at 10% with a strict cap at 15%". Per the company's training literature 10% is the goal. Costco operates on the philosophy, "how little can we charge for this product and still profit" instead of "how much can we charge." Additionally the company does not make use of loss leaders.

Edit to clarify: the goal is about 10% average for the store, the maximum is 14%, and the Kirkland line is 15%

There is some mention of the limited selection at Costco maybe a comparison? Typical Costco: 5,000 items Typical Grocery: 60,000 items

This also ties into a sales philosophy 'inteligent loss of sales'. I believe that philosophy goes beyond the scope of the Costco Article but it might be worth mentioning. Again I think giving examples is best, but beyond the Costco article. Gernerally speaking, by carrying a smaller selection of the most purchased products in a given category more customers will "move up" to the more expensive model that costco caries rather than not purchase the item, though some will decline the purchase. Example: Instead of carrying 10 types of blenders in 3 price categories $25, $50, $75 Costco will carry 2 blenders one each in the $50 and $75 categories. More customers are likely to "move up" to the $50 blender then leave and find a $25 blender at another retailer.

In the current "Products" section there is a mention of a $3 pizza coupon. Perhaps this should be expanded to mention the 2 yearly coupon books that are mailed out? Coscto mails a "Passport" coupon book and a "Wallet" coupon book. These mailed coupon books are also suplemented by coupon handouts which are given to member as they enter the warehouse. For the last several years Costco has also had a coupon strategy to help compete with Post-thanksgiving shopping, a special coupon booklet with coupons valid for the holiday shopping weekend. The Thanksgiving coupons tend to be on higher end electronics.

There is no mention of Costco's "early in, early out" strategy? Seasonal merchandise is stocked very early and sold out before many retailers even carry their seasonal products. Chris Beckett 04:03, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't get me wrong, I'm a Costco fan, but the article in general feels rather biased in a pro-Costco way. Not like it's marketing PR or anything, but more just that it's written by Costco fans. I'm not particularly sure of how I would fix it though. Glasser 13:48, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the article is horribly biased.

Weasel words: "Considered by many to be the most innovative and talented retailing team in the world today"

"Jim Sinegal and Jeff Brotman continued to lead Costco, and many talented employees from both the original Costco and Price Club contributed their expertise at all levels of the company."

Impossible to verify: "Costco's success is a result of its focus on selling products at low prices, often at very high volume."

"Costco is able to charge sometimes astonishingly low prices..."

Un-encyclopedic marketing-speak: "Costco concentrates more on overall value than the lowest possible price for its product range. Many of the products it stocks are high quality at a reasonable cost instead of inferior quality at a low price."

More marketing-speak: "In many other categories the company constantly seeks the best deals currently available, so products will appear and disappear over short periods of time. This encourages consumers to regularly visit their local warehouse for surprise deals."

And again: "These perks are the highest in the industry and especially surprising considering Costco's price-centric sales strategy..." (Also, citation needed at the end of that paragraph. Quoting Sinegal without a source is especially egregious)

Biased and unencyclopedic: "These policies are considered a significant factor in Costco's high rate of customer loyalty, although it is true that some people of questionable morals do abuse the generous return policy."

Source? "The price of the hot dog and soda is still the same price as it was when they first opened ($1.50)- a price Jim Sinegal has stated will remain indefinitely."

I didn't write this, but I'll see if I can find a source for this. I recall hearing that from employees here in San Diego for years. Etcetera 01:47, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Needless to say, a "criticism" section does not an NPOV article make. I'm going to do some hack-and-slash editing; please don't take it personally, anyone. I just suspect it'll be easier than trying to fix such biased text piecemeal. Lunkwill 23:49, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest merge of Costco cash into Costco. Costco Cash is just Costco's single-store value card, so it really belongs in the Costco main article. --John Nagle 05:36, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. --Takeel 02:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good to me. --Matt 04:17, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

After an extended period of time, done. --theSpectator _talk 04:15, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Costco is only open to members and their guests, except for purchases of liquor, gasoline and prescription drugs in some U.S. states due to state law and liquor license restrictions. The food court where one can purchase fast food items such as hot dogs and pizza is open to both members and non-members (except in Mexico, where it is restricted to members only).'

I'm not sure how Costco decides which sections are open to non-members, but in their Redwood City, CA store, the "snack bar" ("food court" would be a stretch) is entirely inside the member-only store area. Maybe it's a construction and site planning thing. --John Nagle 22:52, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

edit : some US locations have windows in their food courts opening to the outside of the building. The food courts inside the building are in all cases restricted to members and their accompanying guests.

This is almost certainly a regional thing. In San Diego, the former Price Club locations and the post-merger Costco locations both have their food courts outside immediately adjacent to the store (generally integrated with the building itself but only reachable from the exterior). There is no membership card checking at that location.

While we're on the subject of food stands, perhaps someone could write up some small details on the origination of this concept. The food stands started as a small contracted service until it was discovered that they were bringing in over 100K a year on $1.50 hot dogs and sodas and subsequently brought it in-house. If no one else can, I'll see if I can whip something up; my father's been a Price Club/Costco employee for over 20 years. Etcetera 01:45, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen the same arrangement as Nagle (food concessions on the inside only) at Mountain View, Santa Clara, and Culver City. --Coolcaesar 06:00, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In Mexico, regardless of where the food court is located, you must to show your member card to the cashier before ordering. This policy was introduced during the late 90's but the reason why was not disclosed. SanGatiche 21:08, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge, it's a private-label brand, not really notable by itself. Wl219 04:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge, I would oppose if the KS article offered anything interesting, but since it's a very basic stub, merge it. But put the "this section is a stub" tag on the section because it should be expanded. If later it became very in-depth I'd say re-split it. —Dan 18:05, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge --Matt 18:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge If and only that page is redirected to Costco. Herenthere (Talk) 00:19, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Should we mention the location of the worlds largest Costco. Hillsboro, Oregon

This is a judgement call, but I feel rather strongly that recent edits from 71.240.185.114 are biased. Adding information from internal Costco documents is suspicious, doubly so when another edit the same day lists Sam's Club as #2 behind Costco -- as the second sentence of the article. I'm particularly jumpy as the Costco article seems to get marketer-speak edits on a fairly regular basis (which is why I watch the article at all), and earlier edits also crowed about Costco's employee policies in glowing terms. I doubt that our anon editor is an evil and brooding astroturfer making subtle jabs at competitors by bragging about employee policies, but on the other hand, he/she/they do seem to know quite a lot about Costco and other retailers, and have been writing in a promotional rather than an encyclopedic tone. I get the distinct impression that they have a point to push.

Sorry to wipe out the cleanup done by other editors -- I hate to make such harsh edits, but I think the choice to add the section was biased, which will only be softened (but not removed) by followup editors. Lunkwill 02:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I forgot to address the "skylights" paragraph that our anonymous editor asked about specifically. Partly that paragraph suffered guilt by association with the other content. But even alone, "lighting costs are kept to a minimum" along with "very common ... to have no interior lights burning" sounds like copy from a "Look how green and frugal Costco is" flyer.

Also, in Sam's Club edit comments, the editor comments that "Many, many people mistake Sam's to be #1 b/c they have more stores." That strongly implies to me that the editor has a conflict of interests. How many unbiased editors have talked to "many, many people" about the relative sizes of Costco/Sam's, and call it a "mistake" when they call Sam's #1 for having more stores, versus equating rank with sales volume? That's a biased statement in itself.

So I apologize in advance for being aggressive and so critical of the editor's edits, but I do still think they're pushing a viewpoint. And for what it's worth, I have a Costco membership myself, and have never even shopped at Sam's club... so if it were about taking sides, I'd probably side with Costco anyway. I just want to keep the debate off of WP. Lunkwill 03:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to above------

Just found this page AFTER posting to Lunkwill's personal page. Yep, I'm a newbie.

Skylights. If you read retail publications (you guessed it...like me) you'll see that a "new" idea at Sam's is to have lots of skylights. In the past, they had far fewer than Costco. Some Sam's (such as Gilbert, AZ and Plano (Coit Rd) TX), have NO SKYLIGHTS. But just recently they discovered the benefits of what Costco has known all along. The handful of BJ's stores I've been didn't have any either.

When I was working for a city govt Costco was just coming to Texas. Every single person I spoke to (work, school, etc) thought that Costco was "like Sam's," but of course smaller.

Why is hourly pay rates and benefits worth mentioning? Because it is frequently in the media. Costco is a retail company that gets lots of good PR from their pay/benefits. The Container Store is another that comes to mind for being employee-friendly, however I don't know much about them. On the flipside, how often to you read/watch/hear about the pay and benefits at Albertson's, Office Depot, Macy's? Uh-huh. My point exactly. It is news because it stands out. Conversely, Wal-Mart's pay and benefits is relevant because it is also "always" in the news, however usually in a negative light. Whether Wal-Mart's pay/benefits "sucks" and whether Costco's pay/benefits "rocks," is a subjective matter of opinion. However simply providing the details allows people to make an informed comparison. The comparison is much easier on the Costco end of the equation because the pay/benefits is uniform (and published via the employee agreement) throughout the USA.

But again, simply becuase someone else hasn't yet provided the details on Wal-Mart doesn't mean you sould be deleting the factual info that I've posted.

In terms of me, I'm a retail manager, I've worked retail for all of my adult life, along with a part-time stint with a city. Most of my friends also work/have worked in retail. I can tell you good and bad things about tons of retailers from their personal experiences, but that's not objective. I follow retail news quite intensely, and as such I do happen to know a good deal about several retailers, not just the ones for whom I've worked. I have a Costco card and a Sam's card, both active...I don't live near BJ's. As for personal biases, I prefer Costco to Sam's; Lowe's to Home Depot; Office Depot to Office Max; Target to Wal-Mart; Kroger to Albertson's; 99 cent store to Dollar Tree; Whole Foods to Wild Oats; Cinemark to AMC; Wendy's to McDonald's. But I wouldn't say I'm on a mission to praise one and dis the other. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Elpablo69 (talk • contribs).

Some of the details are just too deep though. The price of hotdogs could be in the trivia section, but it's only interesting due to the fact it's stayed the same since opening. Which holidays employees get floating are a bit overboard (though since costco.com doesn't seem to list which holidays the stores are closed, I'm actually happy to have those in the article, but I could understand them being a bit out of scope). Also, some of it doesn't really flow, it needs to be more fully integrated into paragraphs and be made more cohesive and less list-like. --Matt 05:25, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting! I wasn't aware that Costco gets a lot of external press about their employee relations. How much of it do you think is influenced by Costco's PR department? (I say that not to be contentious, but because I'm curious about what you think; if I were Costco, I'd want to bring as much of the anti-Walmart backlash to my stores, so I'd make a lot of noise about how I treat my employees better.) It's one of the reasons I'm skeptical about having a major section in the article, though -- we can't let a PR department decide /what/ we focus on any more than we'd let them write the article itself.

So I'm reluctant to have a section about employee relations at all. But consider also the selection of facts you've chosen to include: guarantees of hours for part-timers, time and a half on Sunday, "Most supervisors earn the top rate of pay of $20.17 an hour", /minimum/ salaries for managers. Those are all positive things. That says "look how *good* Costco's policies are". So we have a section that Costco would want included, which is populated with the upsides of the issue.

Note that I'm not disputing whether what you've written is /factual/. You've just chosen your facts to place Costco in a positive light, and promoted them rather than presenting them. Consider your Sam's Club statement: I believe you that they're number 2 for sales volume. You said "It is the number 2 warehouse club based upon sales volume, behind rival Costco Wholesale." Instead you could have written "It is the number 1 warehouse club based upon number of locations, ahead of rival Costco Wholesale." Both factual, both biased. Worse, it's right at the top of the article, so now I'm skeptical about the whole article. We could put both statements at the top, but then it starts to get obsessive about ranks, which is also suspicious in an encyclopedia.

I think part of the problem is that you're taking a slightly more journalistic approach than an encyclopedic one -- a news article tells us about an ongoing conflict, and provides a forum in which we get to see the arguments for each side so we can make our own decisions, as you've pointed out the reader must do. But an encyclopedia just describes an entity. That entity may be involved in a struggle, but first and foremost we need to know about the entity itself. Any conflicts are then just attributes about that entity. Abortion is a really good example -- news articles are usually all about the debate, while the wp article doesn't even get to it until 2/3 of the way through the article, and it's only a few paragraphs long.

I'm going to whack the section one more time, but we're coming up on the 3 revert rule, and if we can't come to a consensus we'll have to let others decide what to do about it. I'll see if I can find a way to unbiased-ly describe the walmart-costco conflict, but let's point to news articles if people want to research the debate, rather than giving a bunch of factoids from an internal document. Lunkwill 02:47, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've cited a few news articles on the big-box store ethical debate. Interestingly, I could find very little on google news about costco's employment practices. Maybe you notice such things more since you care a lot about retail sales? Lunkwill 03:16, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, Costco does not have a PR dept...seriously, they don't.

I've seen good stuff on TV, newspaper and internet. And of course there is bad stuff like lawsuits (usually in California) over gender bias and wage/hour violations. Whether its true is yet to be seen. But I think bad (factual) stuff is also relevant, but the info I have to contribute is on the good side. Since I'm only one of millions of editors, I'm sure others will come along and "round it out" with some of the bad, as is already the case on Wal-Mart's article. I don't see it as my task to write the entire article and finish it out 100%.

Look at the page for Meijer, a midwest retailer. There you'll see a good example of pay/benefits/employee relations, done by others. And yes, there is negative info too...in this case about protections for gay/lesbian employees. I think all that is relevant there just as my info is with Costco.

I think any facts can be made to sound good. Every watched an infomercial? "My home based business had revenues of over $1M last year!" Whoop-tee-doo! How much NET INCOME did it make??? Revenue means nothing without profit, but on the sleek commercial those revenues sound really good.

Anyway I'm not familiar with the 3 edit rule. As of 9:10pm CT, it still shows up. Why not move it to the bottom like an appendix? I'll try this out and see what happens next....

Actually, I believe they do have some sort of a PR dept. I once emailed them about something I saw and they responded cheerfully and promptly. Herenthere (Talk) 21:49, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To avoid Wikipedia:3RR problems (click the link to see what that's about), I've submitted a request for mediation so that we can get some other opinions on our disagreement (and I'm leaving your reverted section in place for now). But I've removed two problematic statements you added to the Trivia section: saying "CEO Jim Sinegal only earns..." is biased because it includes a value judgement. He /only/ earns this much, see how little that is? You put it in there to point out how greedy you think he isn't compared to other CEOs. See Wikipedia:NPOV for why that's no good. Second, "it has been speculated that" has weasel word problems: see Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words.

I also disagree that it's okay to add positive spin to an article and then leave it to others to add negative spin. Articles aren't debate forums; we need you to help us write an article that anybody would agree to, not one that sways people to one point of view or another (and not even one that sways people in exact proportion to the number of people who feel any which way about it.) Lunkwill 21:45, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Lunkwill has made a request that an involved editor act as an informal mediator in the dispute regarding the "Working at Costco" section. I am very willing to act in this capacity. If everyone is agreeable, my involvement would be to try and encourage the parties involved towards towards a compromise that is acceptable to all. I would not take sides in the dispute, just help everyone keep discussions calm and on-point so a revert war can be avoided.

I have read the article, focusing on the disputed section and also the discussion above. I believe I understand the nature of the disagreement. However, I think it would be helpful if those with an opinion on the matter could write a brief paragraph below expressing their opinion on whether this section should exist and, if it is to be included, what form it should take. I suggest the following questions be born in mind (liks to relevant Wikipedia policies included):

1. Should an article about a major employer include a section about its workers' employment terms?
2. How much detail should such a section have?
3. Should it mention terms standard in the industry or only those unique to the company in question?
4. How should such information be presented- as a paragraph(s) or as a series of bullet points?
5. Is a company handbook a reliable source? WP:RS
6. If the information is from one source only, should this be mentioned in the text itself?
7. Is the use of language in this section appropriate- does it avoid words that convey the opinions of the editors? WP:NPOV

I would appreciate seeing how you apply some of these issues to the matter at hand. Hopefully a middle ground can be found that. I look forward to reading your comments. WjBscribe 05:02, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]