Ruben

A retailer with no advertising budget. Four thousand products on the shelf. A hot dog priced the same as it was when Reagan was president. Costco shouldn't be the most powerful brand in retail. But it is. The rule is almost annoyingly simple: cap markups at 14%. Most stores are at 20% or higher. Every dollar of efficiency gets handed back to the customer as a lower price. That's the flywheel. Lower prices bring more members. More members bring better supplier deals. Better deals bring lower prices. Run it for forty years and nobody can catch you. Ninety percent of members renew. Every year. For decades. You don't get loyalty like that from coupons. You get it from making people feel, every single visit, like they got away with something. Strip away the warehouses and the hot dogs and what's left is a simple decision: the customer eats first. Almost nobody has the discipline to actually do it.