How Costco Won in Japan

these transitions looks very uneaven : at macro level it looks like progress but at individual level it can take years of instability before things settle again ; that gap between the aggregate story and experience is probably bigger than we think

I’m Japanese and I’ve lived in a town with a Costco. The part-time pay being a bit higher is nice, but because Costco stores are usually out in the middle of nowhere, they’re not somewhere you casually commute to. So honestly, it doesn’t really feel like they’re raising local wages in any visible way.

Costco makes me want to be American

The main reason it's doing well is because it's basically Disney. Freezers in Japan are tiny and nobody buys in bulk. The experience of going there and buying huge packets of stuff, sharing with friends/family, wrapping and freezing the individual items inside or immediately cooking them to make meals to keep in the fridge - it's a novel experience and has become something of a ritual or hobby among people. Lots of YouTube videos about this. Everyone wants to go at least once just to try it. Many don't go again.

Living in Okinawa I also noticed the proliferation of reseller stores. They charge a reasonable margin and let you buy 4 or 8 muffins instead of 50. It makes perfect sense in Japan.

Incidentally I was disappointed that 90% of Costco Japan's goods are Japanese origin. You'd expect them to be full of American stuff but the majority is not. Even the imports are often the same items you can find in other supermarket import sections.

Perhaps add (2025) suffix to the title

Costco has become negative value for me compared to Amazon Fresh.

Amazon saves SO much time. Costco is SO slow, a preposterously slow experience. Minutes of ordering and unpacking Amazon Fresh takes hours for Costco. And the food is fresher.

It is dark patterns in retail embodied.

I hate their social media advertising. That is, they pay to tip the scales on algorithmic recommenders, they don't pay influencers or ads.

They really are the thing that Pixar mocks them to be.

Everyone has to stop going there and just buy this shit online.

It'd be nice if AI-written articles had an [AI] after the headline