Costco

It's hard to believe we're less than a month away from Thanksgiving. Over the last few years, retailers have opened their stores earlier and earlier on Black Friday in order to cash in on the holiday shopping frenzy. So much so that Black Friday doorbuster sales have crept — uninvited — into our Thanksgiving dinners. Big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart and Toys"R"Us have gone on record as to how opening on Thanksgiving has increased their sales drastically. But honestly, how in the world did 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving turn into the new midnight for Black Friday sales?

At Costco, the Black Friday deals won't begin until, well, Friday. The warehouse retail chain will again stay closed on Thanksgiving this year, bucking the trend of retailers opening their doors earlier and earlier. "Our employees work especially hard during the holiday season and we simply believe that they deserve the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with their families," a Costco spokesman told the website Think Progress. The company didn't say when on Friday it would open the doors of its 468 locations. Most locations normally open at 10 a.m. on weekdays.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) today released a study authored by a University of Georgia economist who found that retail jobs pay wages that are highly competitive with those in other industries. The NRF's report, Wages in the Retail Industry: Getting the Facts Straight, is part of its Retail Jobs Week, an initiative from the trade association to educate Washington lawmakers about the value retail jobs deliver for millions of workers and the economy as a whole.

U.S. warehouse club operator Costco Wholesale said it would open an online store in China using Alibaba Group's fast-growing Tmall online marketplace, entering the country's booming e-commerce market to combat slowing sales at home. Costco said the online store would provide customers in mainland China with both branded products, which would initially include food and healthcare goods, and also products under its Kirkland Signature private-label business.

In the near future, D-to-C selling will be an imperative for manufacturers hoping to compete and grow brand loyalty. Those not offering online shopping invite brand skepticism, if not scorn, among consumers who visit a site only to find that the shelves are bare. The cost is more than a one-time sale lost; it can mean brand degradation that inflicts long-term damage on a manufacturer's fortunes. With concessions to retail partners and the right technology, manufacturers will be well on their way to meeting the D-to-C mandate.

Costco has been a remarkably successful player in discount retail over the last several years, and the company has outgrown competitors such as Wal-Mart and Target by a considerable margin. But investing is about the future, not the rearview mirror, so investors need to analyze if the company can continue outperforming on a forward-looking basis. Interestingly, there are some reasons to believe Costco should continue getting stronger over time. When comparing Costco versus other mass-merchant retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target, the difference can be truly remarkable. Costco has done much better than both 

Is that television-size box of graham crackers at Costco really a better deal than a standard box at Wal-Mart? Soon, online consumers won't have to do the math to figure it out. Some of the country's largest supermarkets and drugstores have agreed to display prices by unit of measurement, as well as by item, on their websites and mobile apps, to help shoppers slice though the confusion that sometimes arises from different packaging and discounts. Major retailers including Wal-Mart, CVS and Costco have agreed to the deal.

Growing his e-commerce business from $5,000 in sales in year one (2008) to $27 million in sales five years later, Josh Neblett, co-founder and CEO of Etailz.com, which operates three e-commerce websites — GreenCupboards.com, ecomom.com and everyCasa.com; a soon-to-launch site, coybeauty.com; a brick-and-mortar store in the company's hometown of Spokane, Wash.; and etoolz, a division focused on developing proprietary software solutions and tools, is well schooled on what it takes to grow a business from startup to thriving operation. Neblett shared those insights yesterday at a session at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago. Here's a list of his five things bootstrapped e-commerce businesses should do, followed by five things they shouldn't do:

For a retail company with a profoundly simple business model and interior layout, there always seems to be interesting Costco secrets floating around the internet. How many rotisserie chickens does Costco sell in a given year? Hey, did you know that Costco sells caskets and really pricey bling online? So as a means to join this Costco cult underworld of facts and figures, Belus Capital Advisors CEO Brian Sozzi has dug through his notes on the company compiled through seven years of client coverage.

Last year, Groupon's CEO Eric Lefkovsky said that his ambition was to make the e-commerce company's Goods business more like Costco, not Amazon.com. Yesterday, the company announced it's launching a new business called Groupon Basics — offering discounts on home goods to compete with warehouse-based bulk-buying clubs — that will bring it one step closer to that idea. As an expansion of the online e-commerce portal Groupon Goods, Groupon Basics is a discounted, bulk-shopping service for home goods. Starting with household, personal care and health products, the plan is to expand to canned and packaged groceries in the next few months.