Costco to open a NZ store within a year.

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#2039188 17-Jun-2018 18:37

Kyanar:

If you really want to threaten then duopoly, get in touch with Aldi and try encourage them to set up shop in NZ. They've done wonders for keeping Woolworths and Coles honest.

Hmmm...

The Aldi shops I've visited in Aus have been okay-ish, but a lot of cheap "off-brands" and not what I'd consider a good selection of quality products., the store shelves also padded out with cheap and nasty appliances etc.

I knew a fellow who co-invested with Gubay in the attempt to set up 3 Guys in NZ in the '70s. That was a horrific decision - last I heard he skipped the country leaving a trail of debts - and truly disappeared - AFAIK never to be seen again even by his immediate family. I believe Progressive (Countdown) bought out the assets in a fire sale.

Aldi did plan to open in NZ, they had a .co.nz website with an "opening soon" message in the mid-late 00s, that then diverted as it does now to the .co.au site.

Would Aldi work in NZ? I doubt it - and I think Aldi doubt it too.

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#2039219 17-Jun-2018 19:31

Fred99:

Kyanar:

If you really want to threaten then duopoly, get in touch with Aldi and try encourage them to set up shop in NZ. They've done wonders for keeping Woolworths and Coles honest.

Hmmm...

The Aldi shops I've visited in Aus have been okay-ish, but a lot of cheap "off-brands" and not what I'd consider a good selection of quality products., the store shelves also padded out with cheap and nasty appliances etc.

I knew a fellow who co-invested with Gubay in the attempt to set up 3 Guys in NZ in the '70s. That was a horrific decision - last I heard he skipped the country leaving a trail of debts - and truly disappeared - AFAIK never to be seen again even by his immediate family. I believe Progressive (Countdown) bought out the assets in a fire sale.

Aldi did plan to open in NZ, they had a .co.nz website with an "opening soon" message in the mid-late 00s, that then diverted as it does now to the .co.au site.

Would Aldi work in NZ? I doubt it - and I think Aldi doubt it too.

The NZ market probably isn't big enough for Aldi to enter into. You couldn't get any scale - and the costs of even getting 10-20 stores which would probably the minimum to establish a DC here are huge.

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#2039235 17-Jun-2018 19:59

DamageInc:
rogercruse:

I did notice one thing on their website that might cause a problem in New Zealand... in the "General Policies" of their "Member Privileges and Conditions" section:

"Shirts and shoes must be worn inside the warehouse at all times"

Does that mean we'll finally see the end of people in their pyjamas doing the shopping?

I'd like to see an end to people wandering around food shops with filthy disgusting bare feet. So great!

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#2039241 17-Jun-2018 20:12

Geektastic:

I'd like to see an end to people wandering around food shops with filthy disgusting bare feet. So great!

Why does that bother you so much? I always just hope that the cleanup of the last person to drop a glass jar was done well enough.

Richard rich.ms

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#2039246 17-Jun-2018 20:23

Planet Money played a rerun (originally from 2015) recently on Costco etc - made interesting listening

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/25/443519599/episode-653-the-anti-store

It used to be that if you ran a store, you wanted to make it easy for your customers. But Price Club and Costco went in the opposite direction: They made shopping harder. And people loved it.

Today on the show: How Price Club and its imitators changed the way we shop. And how a new company is taking what Price Club started to new extremes.

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#2039254 17-Jun-2018 20:31

richms:

Geektastic:

I'd like to see an end to people wandering around food shops with filthy disgusting bare feet. So great!

Why does that bother you so much? I always just hope that the cleanup of the last person to drop a glass jar was done well enough.

Good point - given that most people would clean their feet daily I'd imagine the bare feet of many may actually carry far less cr@p (and, yep, it may sometimes literally be cr@p) into stores than by those wearing shoes.

I've found so many ex-UK people have a total hangup about NZers' fondness for bare feet. Move on...

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#2039269 17-Jun-2018 21:03

Fred99:

Hmmm...

The Aldi shops I've visited in Aus have been okay-ish, but a lot of cheap "off-brands" and not what I'd consider a good selection of quality products., the store shelves also padded out with cheap and nasty appliances etc.

That tells me you don't understand the Aldi model. Aldi does not stock regular brands, rather they partner with local manufacturers (same as Foodstuffs with Pam's and Progressive with Select) to produce products which are then labelled with an arbitrary brand.

Fun fact: every single "brand" you see in an Aldi store is a trademark of Aldi Food Stores. You don't even know that you're actually just buying an in-house brand, as they've created the illusion of choice by having "lots of brands" - with the customer service details on the back being the only clue that they're really all the same.

End result: they do in fact have a good selection of quality products, just not with the name you recognise. For example, a "Bakers Life Sunny Crumpets" is really just Quality Bakers Crumpets, produced by Goodman Fielder.

jonathan18:

Planet Money played a rerun (originally from 2015) recently on Costco etc - made interesting listening

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/25/443519599/episode-653-the-anti-store

There was a CNBC documentary called "The Costco Craze" that was quite interesting too. It kind of reveals just how complex the model is, and how optimised they've managed to make it.

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Fred99

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#2039357 18-Jun-2018 08:21

Kyanar:

End result: they do in fact have a good selection of quality products, just not with the name you recognise. For example, a "Bakers Life Sunny Crumpets" is really just Quality Bakers Crumpets, produced by Goodman Fielder.

They might with bread and milk, but most multinationals and large brand owners will not supply their product relabelled as home brand to any supermarket chain. For better or worse.

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#2039378 18-Jun-2018 08:41

Costco Chicken bakes and pizzas so large that you need to cut them into 4 pieces just to fit in my oven :-). I can't wait!

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#2039410 18-Jun-2018 09:11

eracode: I was under the impression that Costco are a retailer in bulk quantities - and not necessarily a direct competitor to ordinary supermarkets?

We are currently in France and first went into a Lidl outlet here a couple of days ago. They are certainly cheap but don’t have everything you need in a weekly supermarket expedition - so you still need to go somewhere else to get everything you want. Thought Costco was like this too? Maybe more a competitor to The Warehouse.

We were in Europe during May, and did a fair bit of shopping at the French Hypermarkets.

They.Are.Awesome.

Cheeses, meats, pastries - just awesome.

I couldn't get over how cheap Alcohol is in Europe (goes with their maturity towards it too I suppose).

We were just buying decent Rose wines - we didn't go for the cheapest, but were getting nice wines for 4 Euros a bottle, and in some places it was buy one, get one free for that. Baileys in those places - 9 Euros. 7 Euros for a bottle of Bourbon.

Bring on Costco, but as mentioned above, they will have to spend a lot to make any dent on the big two, and I'm not sure the big two will allow their big suppliers to supply to Costco.

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#2039444 18-Jun-2018 09:52

Aredwood:

Thought I might as well post this as well. It is about a couple who got married in a Sydney Costco store.

https://www.9news.com.au/good-news/2017/09/23/17/35/sydney-couple-get-married-at-cosco-in-casula

I doubt that anyone has ever gotten married at a Countdown store.

Article also has a video that was filmed inside the store. Which as least gives some idea what the store is like.

Thats really funny. Never seen anything like this before and its mostly unheard of here.

On the other hand though, I'm sure I have witnessed plenty of marriages ending inside Pack n Save stores. Plenty of domestics seem to happen there. I refuse to shop at Pack n Save anymore for this reason.

Fred99

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#2039503 18-Jun-2018 10:47

Wiggum:

On the other hand though, I'm sure I have witnessed plenty of marriages ending inside Pack n Save stores. Plenty of domestics seem to happen there. I refuse to shop at Pack n Save anymore for this reason.

Thank you for this! It's one more valid excuse for me to refuse to go supermarket shopping with my SO.

Kyanar

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#2039531 18-Jun-2018 11:21

Fred99:

They might with bread and milk, but most multinationals and large brand owners will not supply their product relabelled as home brand to any supermarket chain. For better or worse.

Totally wrong. They'll happily do it, because it's big business - Aldi is a massive company itself, operating in the US, UK, Australia, all over Europe, like with Costco (who do the same with "Kirkland Signature"), it's bad business to turn down advances from Aldi.

Fred99

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#2039565 18-Jun-2018 11:50

Kyanar:

Fred99:

They might with bread and milk, but most multinationals and large brand owners will not supply their product relabelled as home brand to any supermarket chain. For better or worse.

Totally wrong. They'll happily do it, because it's big business - Aldi is a massive company itself, operating in the US, UK, Australia, all over Europe, like with Costco (who do the same with "Kirkland Signature"), it's bad business to turn down advances from Aldi.

Not when I was in the business of importing and supplying "home brand" labels they wouldn't. We'd have our own (minor) labels that were unknown in NZ, the chains would ask us to ship with their labels - be that "no frills"style or a premium home brand, in whatever quality the customer wanted. The brand is the most important thing - if you think that Coca Cola or Colgate will supply their product with a generic label, you're very mistaken.

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#2039595 18-Jun-2018 12:34

Fred99:

Not when I was in the business of importing and supplying "home brand" labels they wouldn't. We'd have our own (minor) labels that were unknown in NZ, the chains would ask us to ship with their labels - be that "no frills"style or a premium home brand, in whatever quality the customer wanted. The brand is the most important thing - if you think that Coca Cola or Colgate will supply their product with a generic label, you're very mistaken.

To a small fry customer like Woolworths/Progressive or Foodstuffs, no. To Costco Wholesale Corporation or Aldi Food Stores, yes, because they're both massive. Unilever definitely does (the people who make Colgate), but you are correct that Coca-Cola does not as they are fiercely defensive of their brand.

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