Costco has already created 500 direct jobs in Spain and plans to create another 400 in the next two years

How did the Costco sales model come about?

Costco opened its first store in 1976 under the name of Price Club. This was the first shopping club in history, and was located in a converted aircraft hangar in San Diego (California, United States). It initially only operated as a wholesaler for small enterprises, but they soon realized they could also serve customers who didn't have businesses. This idea led to spectacular growth for the company, and in 1983 Jim Sinegal and Jeff Brotman opened their first store in Seattle. Costco was the first firm to grow from zero to 3 billion dollars in sales in less than six years. In 1993 Price Club and Costco joined forces and merged their 206 stores to generate 16 billion dollars' worth of sales in one year. The new company was called Price Costco. Today Costco serves over 83 million members and invoices over 113 billion dollars in sales a year.

Why did you pick Spain for your first stores in Europe?
We've been interested in Spain for a long time, as well as in other European countries. We were given the chance to open quickly in Spain, and we seized the chance. We're currently working to open in other European countries, and in fact we'll be starting up in France in 2017.

What your plans for expansion in Spain?
Were going to open our second store in Madrid in 2017, and we're looking at other cities such as Valencia and Barcelona.

How much investment and how many jobs has Costco brought to Spain?
Our investment was 100 million dollars, and we've created over 500 direct jobs so far. In the next two years we'll make a further investment of a little over 60 million dollars and create around 400 direct jobs.

What sets you apart from your competitors?
Costco is the second largest retailer in the world, and what really makes us different is that we're a shopping club; our members have to obtain their card for a small yearly fee to be able to shop in our stores. Another difference with our competitors is that we have very few product references compared to them, but they are all major brands and at very competitive prices.

What is your policy for capturing and creating loyalty among your customers?
To guarantee our members' loyalty of we always need to remain faithful to our goal, which is to consistently provide our members with quality goods and services at the lowest possible price. To achieve this, we always operate under the following code of ethics: uphold the law, look after our members, look after our employees and respect our suppliers. If we can perform these four actions throughout the whole organization, we will achieve our ultimate aim, which is to remunerate our shareholders.