Costco vs. Walmart || Good vs. Evil

How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart

This is a great article which wholly and definitively demolishes the Wall Street conventional wisdom that a large scale retailer needs to pay it's employees slave wages, and shitty, if any benefits in order to succeed in the marketplace.

Take a few minutes and read this NYT piece on how warehouse retailer Costco has stuck a big progressive thumb in the eye of Wall Street by showing them that, unlike Walmart, treating your employees with respect and dignity by providing them with a decent living wage and robust benefits is not only a successful business formula, it is also making a positive economic impact in the communities where they do business.

Here's a key excerpt from the article:

But not everyone is happy with Costco's business strategy. Some Wall Street analysts assert that Mr. Sinegal is overly generous not only to Costco's customers but to its workers as well.

Costco's average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam's Club. And Costco's health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco "it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."

Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street's assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street's profit demands.

Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco's customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers' expense. "This is not altruistic," he said. "This is good business."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/business/yourmoney/17costco.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


So "Wall Street analysts" have a case of the sad eyes because Costco has the unmitigated gall to treat their employees like human beings who are valuable assets and who are vital to the success of the business?  You know what The Gadfly says to those Wall Street analysts??  GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!  You Wall Street charlatans are the incompetent and greedy shit heels who crashed the world economy with your small minded, limp dick financial chicanery and you have the goddamn nerve to criticize a very successful retailer (read the article to see how Costco's employee centric business model is creaming Walmart in the stock market) for doing the right thing?  It's enough to make your blood boil, if like The Gadfly, you truly give a shit about your fellow American's quality of life.

It just simply goes without saying that America needs more CEO's like Costco's Jim Sinegal and once and for all a universal condemnation of and refutation of the business practices of the Walmarts and Bain Capitals (Willard's former vulture capitalist firm) of the world.

America is the greatest country on earth.  But if we allow the Walton family and the Bain blood suckers to get their way, we will simply become the largest, most dysfunctional banana republic on the face of the planet.

So please stop spending your money at places like Walmart.  Spend it at Costco and local establishments.  The only way Walmart and their ilk will ever change their ways is if we the people stop giving them more of our money to hoard.

Do your part and make America a better place to live for all of us.


----TFG