COSTCO WHOLESALE CORP

Price Club

Costco's earliest predecessor, Price Club, opened its first store on July 12, 1976, on Morena Boulevard in San Diego, California. It was founded three months earlier by Sol Price and his son, Robert, after a dispute with the new owners of FedMart, Price's previous membership-only discount store. Price Club was among the first retail warehouse clubs, beginning with its Morena Boulevard store inside a series of old airplane hangars once owned by Howard Hughes. The store, known as Costco Warehouse #401, is still in operation today.

Price Club's sales model targeted small business owners, selling items in bulk for a discounted price at no-frills outlets that were accessible only with an annual membership fee. The company launched an initial public offering in 1980 and expanded to 24 locations in the Southwest and 1.1 million members by early 1986. Price Club expanded into Canada in 1986, opening a store in Montreal, followed by a Mexico City store in 1992 as part of a joint venture with hypermarket chain Controladora Comercial Mexicana. The company also announced plans to open stores in Spain and Portugal through its Canadian subsidiary.

Costco opens

Jim Sinegal and Jeffrey H. Brotman opened the first Costco warehouse in Seattle on September 15, 1983. Sinegal had started in wholesale distribution by working for Sol Price at FedMart; Brotman, an attorney from an old Seattle retailing family, had also been involved in retail distribution from an early age. Sinegal began his retail involvement as a grocery bagger. At its launch, Costco sold goods to small businesses at a markup of only 8 or 9 percent over the wholesale price.

A second store opened in Portland, Oregon in October, and a third in Spokane in December 1983. In December 1985, Costco went public, opening on the NASDAQ at $10 per share; at the time, the company had 17 warehouses nationally and 1,950 employees. The company was initially headquartered at its first warehouse in Seattle but moved its headquarters to Kirkland in 1987.

The "PriceCostco" merger

In 1993, Costco and Price Club agreed to merge operations after Price declined an offer from Walmart to merge Price Club with their warehouse store chain, Sam's Club. Costco's business model and size were similar to those of Price Club, which made the merger more natural for both companies. The combined company took the name PriceCostco, and memberships became universal, meaning that a Price Club member could use their membership to shop at Costco and vice versa. PriceCostco boasted 206 locations generating $16 billion in annual sales. PriceCostco was initially led by executives from both companies, but in 1994, the Prices left the company to form PriceSmart, a warehouse club chain in Central America and the Caribbean unrelated to the current Costco.

Costco moved its headquarters from Kirkland to Issaquah in 1996. It chose to build a new headquarters campus next to a warehouse store to allow buyers to check sales and merchandise. They had originally planned to move by December 1993 to Redmond, another Eastside city, but delays in road construction near the warehouse site caused the company to reconsider. The former Kirkland headquarters, a 10.7-acre (4.3 ha) campus, was sold in late 1996.

The company began testing store conversions to Costco branding across the Southwestern United States in late 1996. PriceCostco officially reverted to using the Costco name and stock symbol in February 1997, with all remaining Price Club locations subsequently rebranded as Costco. In March 2020, Costco announced the acquisition of Innovel, a logistics company, for one billion dollars.

Other company milestones

The first Costco warehouse in Seattle was replaced with a new building on an adjacent lot to the north in March 2005; the company was able to arrange to keep the same address for the new building, which was on land acquired from Seattle Public Schools. The original building was demolished and replaced by a parking lot, gas station, and car wash—the company's first—which opened in 2006. In 2014, Costco was the third largest retailer in the United States. That year Costco announced plans to open an online store in China using Alibaba Group. Costco entered the Chinese market without a physical store, initially only as an online retailer. The store would sell food and household items to Chinese consumers on Tmall, an e-commerce platform owned by Alibaba Group. Tmall is a business-to-consumer e-commerce platform used by customers in China to purchase items. This allowed Costco to enter the Chinese market without building a brick-and-mortar store. Many other retailers, including Zara, Burberry, and ASOS, also joined Tmall to sell their products, which was an easy way to enter the Chinese market.

Costco announced the opening of 29 new locations in 2016, the most in one year since 2007. Span Construction, led by King Husein, has constructed almost all of Costco's buildings since 1989.

Costco opened its first warehouse in China on August 27, 2019, in Shanghai. The store attracted so many customers that it had to close after only a couple of hours. Soon after opening Costco grappled with fading membership interest and low footfall. With rivals like Alibaba's new retail online/offline model, Hema's Fresh in Shanghai that delivered in doorstep delivery in 30 minutes with extensive online catalogues, both things Costco did not have. Many used membership to get opening day bargains, only to seek membership refunds and cancellations. Free perks from Alibaba's e-commerce sites further fueled drop-offs, resulting in dropping renewal rates to around 60% in China. The first Costco in New Zealand opened at West Auckland in September 2022, delayed from mid-August due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Costco today

In the United States, Costco's main competitors operating membership warehouses are Sam's Club (a subsidiary of Walmart ) and BJ's Wholesale Club. Costco employs 316,000 full and part-time employees worldwide. Costco had 90.3 million members in 2017. In 2020, Costco had 105.5 million members. In 2021, the company had 111.6 million members. As of November 2023 [update], Costco had 129.5 million members. As of February 2026, Costco has over 145.9 million cardholders and 81.4 paid memberships, which is up approximately 5% year over year.

Costco was the first company to grow from $0 in sales to $3 billion in sales in under six years. For the fiscal year ending on August 31, 2012, the company's sales totaled $97.062 billion, with $1.709 billion net profit. As of 2019 [update], Costco is ranked No. 14 on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. The ACSI (The American Customer Satisfaction Index) named Costco number one in the specialty retail store industry with a score of 84 in 2014.

From December 2013, Costco's board of directors was chaired by co-founder Jeffrey H. Brotman and included Sinegal, co-founder and director, and two company officers: the president and CEO W. Craig Jelinek and CFO Richard A. Galanti. On August 1, 2017, Brotman died. As of August 2017 [update], Sinegal and Jelinek remained on the board. Jim Sinegal stepped down in 2018.

During the 2010s, Costco outgrew its original three-building headquarters campus in the Pickering Place area of Issaquah —known simply as Buildings 1, 2, and 3—and was forced to put new employees into various leased buildings throughout the city. In April 2019, Costco broke ground on Building 5, a multilevel parking garage with an attached meeting center and fitness center, followed in January 2020 by Building 4, a nine-story office tower next to Interstate 90. The two new buildings were finished in June 2023, and then Costco moved its headquarters employees from Buildings 1, 2, and 3 into the new Building 4. The three original buildings were repurposed for the use of Costco's information technology department.

In September 2024, Costco raised its membership fees, increasing Gold Star and Business memberships from $60 to $65 and Executive memberships from $120 to $130, affecting 52 million members, and raising the Executive reward cap from $1,000 to $1,250. In June 2017, fees had increased from $55 to $60 for Gold Star and Business and from $110 to $120 for Executive memberships. In 2024, Costco implemented barcode scanners at warehouse entrances, requiring members to scan the QR code on their physical or digital card to prevent membership sharing, replacing the practice of showing cards. Also in 2024, food court access was restricted to members only, ending non-member purchases. Starting June 2025, select locations, such as Manhattan, will offer exclusive 9 a.m. shopping hours for Executive Members to provide a less crowded experience. These changes align with Costco's strategy to bolster its membership model, which generated 65.5% of its 2024 net operating income, by enhancing exclusivity and revenue.

In November 2025, Costco filed a lawsuit against the federal government seeking a complete refund of tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration. The lawsuit, filed with the United States Court of International Trade in New York, asks the Supreme Court to find the administration's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs unlawful.