wild how "sell high quality products at a fair price" is like some revolutionary business genius wisdom these days - ThreadSky

ryanlcooper.com • 3 days ago

wild how "sell high quality products at a fair price" is like some revolutionary business genius wisdom these days

“You can’t say people are our most important product and then treat them like shit.” - Jim Sinegal, co-founder of Costco

Comments

cavandy.bsky.social•3 days ago

so simple and yet so few commit to it

wild

minionofmidas.bsky.social•3 days ago

He's selling people!?

cross-the-streams.bsky.social•3 days ago

Guy is a legend, for the hot dog alone

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costco_hot_dog

ryanlcooper.com•3 days ago

of course it's not easy to actually manage a huge globe-spanning supply chain and nationwide store network. I suspect not a coincidence that this guy came up from within the industry, starting at the very bottom, rather than MBA school

lawnerd.bsky.social•3 days ago

When Costco wants an MBA they take a Costco guy and send him to business school to get an MBA, rather than finding an MBA and trying to make him a Costco guy

lawnerd.bsky.social•3 days ago

The development of independent institutional identity is important! Guys with MBAs who are at Costco have identities as Costco guys first. This contrasts with management consultants who are MBA guys first!

lawnerd.bsky.social•3 days ago

This is not-unrelated to why the predatory billionaire class is trying to destroy the institutional identity of the federal workforce

economymedicine.bsky.social•3 days ago

And the new CEO started as a worker in the warehouse.

gregsowa.bsky.social•3 days ago

Many people are saying "Abolish business schools."

jeninmotion.bsky.social•3 days ago

According to my friend in business school for credential reasons, it would be for the best.

petergratton.bsky.social•3 days ago

I’m sure corporate headquarters get pitches each week about how they can double market cap by adding AI bots to each part of the customer and worker experience.

petergratton.bsky.social•3 days ago

A positive side effect: Costco becoming ubiquitous made Amway salespeople far less numerous.

ryanlcooper.com•3 days ago

there's an article to be written about how vast swathes of American culture simply stopped believing in the possibility of positive-sum bargains. the idea that you can *not* screw your customers and workers *and still come out ahead* is incomprehensible to them https://bsky.app/profile/theryusui.bsky.social/post/3lndc63wpck2k

punkbong.bsky.social•3 days ago

sinegal and the arizona tea guy are both philosophically so healthy for ceos

morefuntim.bsky.social•3 days ago

And you sum up exactly why I went into business for myself. You can do your best to do right by everyone and also make a profit, and the amount of people who believe that is shockingly tiny.

notgonnahavefun.bsky.social•3 days ago

This is especially true with Trader Joe’s - a company that Really doesn’t care about consumers and thinks of their employees as enemy #1.

https://www.thetakeout.com/why-trader-joes-shut-down-union-square-wine-shop-1849445397/

benzipperer.org•3 days ago

relatedly, there's a nice paper showing that when a company changes from a CEO without a business degree to a new CEO with a business degree, sales stay the same but wages fall

https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Eclipse%20of%20Rent-Sharing%20-%20the%20Effects%20of%20Managers%20.pdf

banjofiend.bsky.social•3 days ago

That also seems related to the paper studying correlation between CEO pay and how well the company does

https://www.msci.com/ceo-pay

tiredmusings.bsky.social•3 days ago

Between the revolving door of overpaid CEOs and the focus on shareholders, most companies don’t plan for the future, invest in their employees, or care about their customers. It’s slash and burn. Any series of failures after that open the door for private equity as a final nail in the coffin.

ryanlcooper.com•3 days ago

fascinating! https://bsky.app/profile/benzipperer.org/post/3lnddaplfrk2k

jojosbizarrelife.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yeah, it's because business programs are a laughably stupid cult. You'd think a business degree would be focused on contract and labor laws, understanding logistics, negotiating, etc. Nah, it's just some dipshit writing "MBA = BMW" on a whiteboard while a gaggle of failsons giggle like Beavis.

kmthurman.bsky.social•3 days ago

After getting my MBA that’s the interesting part most of it assumes your working in a growing company that that already sells well. I learned a lot and mostly used it as a transition break, but this is what i would expect from the typical curricula.

survivingyes.bsky.social•3 days ago

Because the endless consumption, endless growth late stage capitalism fantasy combined with the selfish greed is good ethos of the past 40 years has completely corrupted all B schools and industry.

jjoe.bsky.social•3 days ago

Most of this US MBAed business culture probably thinks that it is Costco's fault, not their shit business acumen. They could get away with being unethically ideological towards their workers and customers if the class traitor running costco didn't give people an alternative.

jjoe.bsky.social•3 days ago

Going to industry conferences all wink wink agreeing that is 'efficiency' if they suppress wages and don't create revenue increasing products / sales events for their paying black/gay/trans/disabled/etc customers

camtreblig.bsky.social•3 days ago

I think a symptom of this is the way that so many businesses, when you ask them to provide the service or product you have paid them for, act like you are making them do something onerous and unreasonable, and that they are doing you a massive favour by fulfilling their end of the deal

camtreblig.bsky.social•3 days ago

They’ve got into the mentality that they are entitled to a business model where customers just give them money for nothing, and anything that requires them to do more than that means they’re being screwed

nycrogue.bsky.social•3 days ago

Most companies are run by the accountants, not business leaders.

susubrooks.bsky.social•3 days ago

And people wonder how we got Trump. He was inevitable.

bill-fouche.bsky.social•3 days ago

In their defense, Fox, Bannon, Hannity, Carlson, Newsmax, etc. have been telling them that for years.

BenRossTransit.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy•3 days ago

@ryanlcooper.com I really don't see this infecting large swathes of American culture. I see it only in the business elite and associates (corporate lawyers, consultants, marketers, media etc). Yes, much (but far from all) of the grassroots of the MAGA right buys into the performative cruelty […]

theangelofhistory.bsky.social•3 days ago

Downstream of college admissions anxieties

pedsortho.bsky.social•3 days ago

Authenticity and consistency matter. Customers and suppliers know what they’re getting from Costco every encounter. The fact that their front facing employees are great and this guy was once one of them, speaks volumes about the company.

darthhippy.bsky.social•3 days ago

Bet they are like Arizona Tea as well. They own everything and have very low or have no debt.

kleinman.bsky.social•3 days ago

The guy who turned around McDonald's after Super Size Me knocked them down literally got his start slinging fries

bendwalsh.bsky.social•3 days ago

*don draper pitch meme but sincerely*

people keep asking for breakfast all day, so let's do breakfast all day

tyler.britten.us•3 days ago

The CEO that's turned around B&N is a long time bookstore guy and did stuff like "hey lets let the staff of the stores that know and love books have a lot more control over what books they stock" real brain genius stuff

ryanlcooper.com•3 days ago

I was just reading about Chili's, another remarkable turnaround in a supposedly dying segment, apparently because the CEO was like "hey what if our food was better"

ilovepets420.bsky.social•3 days ago

finance guys: eventually the lower taxes for the rich will help out everyone else

also finance guys: look, the only way to provide shareholder value is to pay dividends

markshatraw.bsky.social•3 days ago

Wait, is Chili's edible now? That's good to hear

ryanlcooper.com•3 days ago

I am honestly curious to try it out, I haven't been in like 20 years lol

bendwalsh.bsky.social•3 days ago

Chili's is also doing a big push on low prices at this very moment

attackofhubris.net•3 days ago

My family can eat at Chili's for about the same price as fast food, and it's so much better. It's hard to beat.

manofsuds.bsky.social•3 days ago

Domino's did the same thing years ago and it sent their stock through the roof!

felgraf.bsky.social•3 days ago

I still miss that I cannot get dominos here in Finland, as someone that fucking loves garlic, I fucking LOVED their change.

nstenhouse.bsky.social•3 days ago

A big maverick trend when the VC dominance starts to break will probably be “build quality products and dial back the push for growth if it starts degrading core product quality”

haredurer.bsky.social•3 days ago

“Exchange goods and services for money” seems like an exotic idea to a lot of companies these days.

thebestbrian.bsky.social•3 days ago

Well the problem is most businesses who do this get big enough to go public, when the go public their shareholders and board of directors start demanding more profit, and that's how the cookie crumbles.

josephusbrown.bsky.social•3 days ago

MBAs staring at this written on a board like my dog stares at an airplane diagram

bryebread.bsky.social•3 days ago

This was Apple’s deal until Jobs death (Jobs was still an asshole) but for all talk about Apple cult the business model was “do you want to buy this device for money than we made it?” And holy shit, it worked until we all had to deal with SaaS-Hell that we can’t escape from.

mcirwin47.bsky.social•3 days ago

Should be said that in the traditional grocery store space Wegman’s is annually ranked as a great place to work and it’s also beloved by its customers. It goes hand in hand.

dashwallkick.bsky.social•3 days ago

No one got time for that shit when you got an MBA and consulted with McKinsey

gt4pete.bsky.social•3 days ago

He wants to be in the business he was in. That alone is heresy to the modern business environment. Kirkland is taking products from smaller businesses which is not good but the execs do act like they intend to be in the business of running Costco and not selling the land under the stores.

zachlj.bsky.social•3 days ago

Wild how having a subscription service that isn’t wildly exploitative is also revolutionary business wisdom these days, too.

Just looked it up: Costco has raised membership prices 9 times since opening in 1976 ($25 to $65 for basic membership). Prices have *not* kept up with inflation.

zachlj.bsky.social•3 days ago

Source: https://www.mashed.com/1814591/every-time-costco-raised-membership-prices/

theryusui.bsky.social•3 days ago

as i put it elsewhere, the thing about the people running most businesses these days is they're solipsists; they literally don't think other people are real

you tell them "don't be shit to your customers," they think "what next, you want me to thank every Cheerio in the bowl before i eat it?"

catblanketflower.yuwakisa.com•3 days ago

The Third Man: “What if you made 10,000 dollars every time one of those dots stopped moving”

oksettledown.bsky.social•3 days ago

there should be a court of enshittification that only takes class action suits against companies for doing shrinkflation, moving to a subscription model, disallowing maintenance or modification, selling your data w/o authorization, etc and so on and so forth

girlfromseattle.bsky.social•3 days ago

And be nice to people.

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