The Costco Connection: a Lifestyle Magazine for Costco Members.

Costco Connection is a magazine sent free to members of the warehouse club Costco and includes articles which regularly tie into the corporation along with business, political, health, and social articles. (Wikipedia.org)

The monthly Online Edition combines a replica of the print version with bonus content. Cover stories and popular features such as Buying Smart are extended with supplemental material. This electronic version makes the magazine easy to find, print and share articles with family and friends.

Costco Wholesale Corporation (Costco) operates membership warehouses based on the concept that offering its members very low prices on a limited selection of nationally branded and selected private-label products in a range of merchandise categories will produce high sales volumes and rapid inventory turnover. It buys the majority of its merchandise directly from manufacturers and route it to a cross-docking consolidation point (depot) or directly to its warehouses.

The Company’s depots receive container-based shipments from manufacturers and reallocate these goods for shipment to its individual warehouses, generally in less than twenty-four hours. The Company’s warehouse format averages approximately 140,000 square feet; newer units tend to be larger. Its warehouses operate on a seven-day, 69-hour week. It carries an average of approximately 4,000 active stockkeeping units (SKUs) per warehouse in its core warehouse business. (Google Finance)

Costco.com: Offering thousands of items you won’t find in your local Costco

Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ: COST) is the largest membership warehouse club chain in the world based on sales volume, headquartered in Issaquah, Washington, United States, with its flagship warehouse in nearby Seattle. Costco's Canadian operations are based near Ottawa, Ontario, and Vancouver, British Columbia.

View The Costco Connection, April 2008

Full & free, powered by Texterity.

Click the "Download" button, you can download the entire magazine in PDF format.

Why is this man smiling?
Coach-turned-restaurateur Mike Ditka finds success off the field
By Stephanie E. Ponder

IT’S A COLD, gray Thursday in early January—a little more than three weeks before Super Bowl XLII. A small crowd is enjoying ESPN Radio’s Waddle & Silvy Show, starring Tom Waddle and Marc Silverman, which is broadcast live from Mike Ditka’s restaurant in downtown Chicago. With the Chicago Bears out of the playoffs, the real excitement this evening lies in waiting for the arrival of the restaurant’s namesake and one of the city’s most famous icons: Mike Ditka.

Whether you’re a sports fan or not, Ditka’s name is instantly recognizable. The player turned coach is known for his intensity on the sidelines and for taking the Chicago Bears to the 1986 Super Bowl.

Now, more than 20 years after that Super Bowl win, he’s winning in the business world—with two restaurants and lines of wine, cigars and clothing— and as a sports commentator and motivational speaker.

Though still involved in the world of sports, these days Ditka measures wins in customer satisfaction and sales.

Download The Costco Connection, April 2008

PDF format, 22.7MB, 72Pages.

From the Publisher’s Desk
Ginnie Roeglin

MIKE DITKA IS STILL smokin’—literally and figuratively. Not content to bask in the glory of his long and
distinguished career in football, including Super Bowl wins as a player and as a coach, this Chicago icon juggles
a broadcasting career, two bustling restaurants and popular lines of wines and cigars. Beneath the gruff exterior,
“Da Coach” and Costco share several guiding principles.

First, Ditka understands the importance of putting your name only on top-quality products. He and Costco have built solid reputations based upon quality. Equally important is customer service, or member service as we call it here at Costco. Very simply, the customer is right. After all, your customers are your business. As our CEO Jim Sinegal often reminds us, it takes decades to build a good reputation, but no time to ruin it with bad quality and service.

World-famous author and Costco member Ken Blanchard agrees in his newest book, The One Minute Entrepreneur: The Secret to Creating and Sustaining a Successful Business. According to Ken, the key to beating the competition is to create legendary service in those moments of truth when you have an opportunity to make a positive impression on your customer. You can read more of his advice in the article on page 17, and in his book, available online at costco.com.

It is that time of year for a little spring-cleaning. Included in this issue are several articles and ideas to help you spruce up your home and declutter and reorganize your life. First up, Rhonda Abrams offers advice on recharging your batteries and refreshing your business (page 9). On the technical side, Marc Saltzman explains how to organize your digital photos and display them on the hot new digital picture frames (page 13), and Pat Volchok explains the options for protecting your computer files (page 60). Costco.com has products to help you organize your closets, your garage and your yard and even preserve your wine collection.

Happy spring from all of us at Costco!

From the Editor’s Desk
David W. Fuller

IT’S NOT OFTEN I use this space to call attention to one of Costco’s great products or services; we do that in plenty of other places throughout the magazine. This month, however, as we note in our “What’s New” department on page 62 (and in an ad on page 59), Costco is introducing a service that I believe can have a profound impact on members’ lives. I know that I, for one, can’t wait to use it.

The service is one you may have seen elsewhere: converting old films, videotapes and 35 mm slides to DVDs. If you are like me, there are two reasons you might not have used such a service in the past: (1) lethargy; and (2) fear of handing over your priceless memories to people who might not properly care for them. If you are even more like me (and, for your sake, let’s hope the resemblance ends here), you will see Costco’s entry into this field as an opportunity to (1) end the lethargy; and (2) get this conversion done by people you can trust to treat your memories with the respect they deserve.

So what is so “profound” about all this? That’s simple. It is the ability to preserve for yourself and future generations a much more complete record of what it meant to be you, of those times your family cherished. Recently I received a DVD onto which a cousin had transferred a 1937 film of my father at age 11, unimaginably alive, running and playing with his relatives. The effect was, indeed, profound.

Previous generations have had such records edited by the vagaries of time, the loss or destruction of printed photographs, the deterioration of film and tape. Archival DVDs, with their attendant capability of being uploadable to computers, allow us to permanently record ourselves for our descendants and anyone else who might be interested.

Not to mention that feeling of accomplishment and relief we will all have once we’ve converted all the stuff that’s been languishing in those shoe boxes in the closet.

Comments (0)

Name

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Add Comment