Company profile

Future of Costco

#
Rank
507
| Quantumrun Global 1000

Costco Wholesale Corporation is the biggest US membership-only warehouse club. Costco was the world’s second-biggest retailer next to Walmart as of 2015. Costco was the number 1 retailer of organic foods, wine, choice and prime beef, and rotisserie chicken in the world as of 2016. Costco is globally headquartered in Issaquah, Washington, but the company opened its first warehouse in nearby Seattle in 1983.

Home Country:
Sector:
Industry:
Specialty Retailers
Website:
Founded:
1983
Global employee count:
214000
Domestic employee count:
143000
Number of domestic locations:
514

Financial Health

Revenue:
$116073000000 USD
3y average revenue:
$113317000000 USD
Operating expenses:
$12068000000 USD
3y average expenses:
$11470666667 USD
Funds in reserve:
$3379000000 USD
Market country
Revenue from country
0.73

Asset Performance

  1. Product/Service/Dept. name
    Foods
    Product/Service revenue
    26118180000
  2. Product/Service/Dept. name
    Sundries
    Product/Service revenue
    24930990000
  3. Product/Service/Dept. name
    Hardlines
    Product/Service revenue
    18995040000

Innovation assets and Pipeline

Global brand rank:
103
Total patents held:
1

All company data collected from its 2016 annual report and other public sources. The accuracy of this data and the conclusions derived from them depend on this publicly accessible data. If a data point listed above is discovered to be inaccurate, Quantumrun will make the necessary corrections to this live page. 

DISRUPTION VULNERABILITY

Belonging to the retail sector means this company will be affected directly and indirectly by a number of disruptive opportunities and challenges over the coming decades. While described in detail within Quantumrun’s special reports, these disruptive trends can be summarized along the following broad points:

*First off, omnichannel is inevitable. Brick and mortar will merge completely by the mid-2020s to a point where a retailer’s physical and digital properties will complement each other’s sales.
*Pure e-commerce is dying. Starting with the clicks-to-bricks trend that emerged in the early 2010s, pure e-commerce retailers will find that they need to invest in physical locations to grow their revenue and market share within their respective niches.
*Physical retail is the future of branding. Future shoppers are looking to shop at physical retail stores that offer memorable, shareable, and easy to use (tech-enabled) shopping experiences.
*The marginal cost of producing physical goods will reach near zero by the late-2030s due to significant oncoming advancements in energy production, logistics, and automation. As a result, retailers will no longer be able to effectively outcompete each other on price alone. They will have to re-focus on brand—to sell ideas, more so than just products. This is because in this brave new world where anyone can practically buy anything, it’s no longer ownership that will separate the rich from the poor, it’s access. Access to exclusive brands and experiences. Access will become the new wealth of the future by the late 2030s.
*By the late 2030s, once physical goods become plentiful and cheap enough, they will be viewed more as a service than a luxury. And like music and film/television, all retail will become subscription based businesses.
*RFID tags, a technology used to track physical goods remotely (and a technology that retailers have used since the 80s), will finally lose their cost and technology limitations. As a result, retailers will begin placing RFID tags on every individual item they have in stock, regardless of price. This is crucial because RFID tech, when coupled with the Internet of Things (IoT), is an enabling technology, enabling the enhanced inventory awareness that will result in a range of new retail technologies.

COMPANY’S FUTURE PROSPECTS

Company Headlines