It is almost like goodwill is an asset: Costco

[applegrove]

— (@darren32359.bsky.social) 2025-12-14T13:21:20.484Z

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. Decent human beings would bargain in good faith with their employees instead of pushing back on an organizing campaign.

[Henry203]

14. You do realize they pay the highest in retail.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

15. And? People organize around things other than wages. Bosses hate to give up any control.

[Girard442]

2. For Christmas, I'd like to see a wave of DEshitifcation.

Could happen.

[JI7]

3. So DEI isn't hurting their business ?

[haele]

17. DEI is just another way of categorizing resources.

Costco, like other long term profitable businesses, are only really concerned about the category of the best way of attracting the widest range of customers for long term profits.

[IronLionZion]

4. The Costcos here are always packed full of shoppers

It would be fine if MAGA boycotted them

[surfered]

5. From my former life

When a company purchases another, it often pays more than the net fair value of the target's assets and liabilities. This excess is recorded as goodwill, an intangible asset reflecting brand strength, customer loyalty, and proprietary technology, among other factors. It signifies a competitive edge and justifies premiums paid during acquisitions.

[ProfessorGAC]

7. Beat Me To It!

Was going to post the same thing. If I had it would nearly have been verbatim.

[surfered]

9. Were you an accountant, too?

[ProfessorGAC]

16. No I Was Not

I was an R&D chemist for 23 years, then was director of stable operations for multinational corporations.
I was involved in due diligence in acquisitions on multiple occasions & worked on a lot of transitional periods after them.
In addition, added to my PhD in chemistry I have an MBA so I was exposed to all that terminology both academically & in practice.
I was also involved in mergers of a few small credit unions into our larger one when I was on the board.
Finally, my MBA was focused in economics & finance.
That's why I can talk like an accountant without being one.

[surfered]

20. Then you were smarter than I was

[ProfessorGAC]

22. The MBA Was Not A Choice

I was sent back to school to be further promotable. The technical path was not developed for another 8 or 10 years.
I was tracking toward VP but the new CEO didn't trust a guy who played in a rock band. This despite the fact that my groups was adding 10 -12 times to gross profit what it cost for our group to exist. Not sure what "tryst" had to do with anything.
So, I topped out at director the last 17 years.

[Ilsa]

8. I remember learning that in my Bookkeeping class in high school.

It was all manual back in those days!

[surfered]

10. CPA firms used pencils and columnar pads into the 80s

[OMGWTF]

19. When I went to work for Bill Gates, Sr.'s law firm in 1977 we were using carbon paper and electric typewriters.

I was sitting at the receptionist desk when his son come in to meet with one of the business lawyers about Microsoft. We have come a very long way since then.

[surfered]

21. A long ways. We prepared tax returns by hand. The early software required an IBM 34

[LogDog75]

28. Back in the very early 70s I took a business machines class in junior college

We had a variety of adding machines and desktop calculators but my favorite machine was the SCM Marchant Transflo Model TR.




I loved working that machine.

[ChicagoTeamster]

6. That strategy worked for the United States for over seventy years after the end of WWII.

Trumpers sre so ill informed they have no idea that a lot of the market share the US had for their products was people grateful that the US came to the aid of the world and led in Science, Technology, Medicine etc. Sure we also offered quality but a lot of that was a result of US goodwill. Under Trump, that's now gone. He's destroyed our agricultural export market, tourism, University recruitment. Investment in the US dollar. His being an asshole to the rest of the world will cost Americans a lot.

[paleotn]

11. It is good for their business. Costco knows their shopper demographics extremely well.

They tend to be middle to higher income and better educated than the traffic at some other retailers. Costco's footprint is cities and big city burbs, not the broad saturation model Walmart practiced for decades. Simply put, a higher % of Costco's customers vote Blue compared to traffic at an average Walmart and they know this. Might be just a smart business decision not to repeat the Target disaster, or perhaps doing it simply for the right reasons. Maybe both. No matter. It's working.

On the flip side, the country is so polarized now we don't even shop in the same stores.

[LogDog75]

26. Costco makes most of it's profits from membership fees

Which helps them keep prices low.

[LogDog75]

27. I agree

I'm a retired AF SNCO and between my military pension, Social Security, and my required minimum distributions I too am in the middle to higher income and I'm a big fan of Costco. Other than Costco and the exchange, about the only other store I shop at is Target. I haven't stepped into a Walmart store in over 20 years and I have no plans to ever shop there.

[karin_sj]

12. Love this!

[Joinfortmill]

13. Ha! Good one!

[Ford_Prefect]

18. Imagine...

[Cha]

23. Wild Concept! Love my Costco DEI! 💙

Mahalo, apple

[iemanja]

24. good will

Not goodwill. The latter Is a store. I only bring it up because the title is confusing when you’re reading just the subject line from the homepage.

[Maru Kitteh]

25. We are buying Costco gift cards as Christmas gifts.

I’ve begun shifting as much of our shopping to them as possible.

[dai13sy]

29. Costco is a classy place. The hardworking people who have helped me cheerful and smart

As long as Costco is there I know I'll have an honest to shop

[jfz9580m]

30. Don't really know much about Costco

They seem like a standard issue corporation for the most part:
https://fresnoland.org/2025/07/22/fresno-costco/

But last summer, the courts found that Dyer’s recipe was really fatally flawed: Developers could opt out of all the pollution-reducing options if they wanted to, with no accountability measures put in place by the city to ensure that pollution nuisances were addressed.

As early as summer 2023, one seasoned environmental law veteran told Fresnoland that the cookbook was one of the most blatant violations of state law they had ever seen.

However, the city hasn’t put together a fresh plan to replace the rejected 2021 version.

In the Costco case, the judge also ripped the city for another shortcut they took.

The city created what amounted to a mother-in-law’s quarters for an industrial warehouse on a side of the new Costco store, not analyzing the pollution and traffic nuisances associated with that.

The judge said the city was unjustified in shoehorning such a huge traffic-generator under the section of the planning code they ended up using.

“Basically, the city failed to follow their own zoning laws. [The mother-in-law warehouse] is not an allowed use. Only something like a mini-storage is allowed,” Brannick said.

The bar is so low for corporations these days though that whether it is Cinnabon or Costco they are definitely exploiting the era’s hellish mess to get goodwill points without doing much to deserve them. It also plays into the business model of TikTok etc so without systemic or structural racism or sexism being addressed nor any serious commitments to the environment, they can score points..

Not being a wet blanket ;-/..but that’s just the world we live in.