Costco has 81 million members in 2015, Gold Star and Business members pay $55 a year, Executive members pay $110 a year. The minimum membership fee Costco take in last year was $4.455 billion (assume that no one was paying Executive membership fee of $110).
Quote:
For the fiscal year ending on Aug 31, 2012, the company's sales totaled $97.062 billion, with $1.709 billion net profit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costco
Assume that Costco had 30% less members in 2012 than 2015, 56.7 million member paid no less than $3.1 billion in membership fee in 2012.
This means Costco had operating lost of $1.4 billion in 2012.
Many items at Costco are much cheaper than anywhere else, Amazon included. The biggest saving is gasoline, usually Costco sells gas at 10-30 cents cheaper than other Top-Tier stations within 2-3 miles radius.
Quote:
For the fiscal year ending on Aug 31, 2012, the company's sales totaled $97.062 billion, with $1.709 billion net profit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costco
Assume that Costco had 30% less members in 2012 than 2015, 56.7 million member paid no less than $3.1 billion in membership fee in 2012.
This means Costco had operating lost of $1.4 billion in 2012.
Many items at Costco are much cheaper than anywhere else, Amazon included. The biggest saving is gasoline, usually Costco sells gas at 10-30 cents cheaper than other Top-Tier stations within 2-3 miles radius.