Merchandise shrinkage rate
Costco's merchandise shrinkage (unaccounted-for inventory) is only 0.15% of sales, astonishingly low for a major retailer.
Where this was said
The Hugo Mann Disaster and Sol's Forced Comeback
At 33:24 · chapter starts 28:00
By the late 1960s, FedMart is being squeezed by better-capitalized rivals like Kmart, which emerged from the giant Kresge department store chain. Sol and his son Robert, burned out on running operations at scale, bring in professional management and go looking for a European growth capital partner to fund a pivot to hypermarkets — the revolutionary format pioneered by France's Carrefour that smashes grocery and hard goods together under one roof. They partner with German retailer Hugo Mann. Within months of closing, Sol and Hugo clash violently at the very first board meeting — Mann, it turns out, wanted FedMart's real estate portfolio, not the operating business. Mann fires Sol and Robert and changes the locks on their office doors. The person tasked with addressing the FedMart staff after Sol's ouster? Jim Sinegal. FedMart collapses within five years. But the insult to Sol Price at 60 years old lights a fire: the very next day, Sol and Robert lease a new office and start planning their second act — a completely new kind of business built around the one part of FedMart they felt they never fully exploited.
Costco average hourly wage vs Walmart
Costco's average hourly wage is $26 versus Walmart's $19.50, with Costco also offering 401k matching and superior healthcare even for hourly workers.
Post-year-1 employee attrition rate
After the first year, Costco's annual employee attrition rate is only 7%, versus a typical retail industry rate of 20%.
Similar snapshots
Zero users on launch day
Despite months of meticulous preparation, Starter Story's initial launch attracted zero users — a humbling reminder that building alone guarantees nothing.
First Reddit post: 100 users
A single Reddit link post quickly drove 100 visitors to the Starter Story website, igniting the founder's belief in social traffic.
Hundreds of upvotes on repackaged post
After reformatting content as a native self-post (no direct link spam), the post exploded with hundreds of upvotes and thousands of readers.
Millions reading his content on Reddit
By posting again and again with the native-content strategy, the founder's posts repeatedly hit Reddit's front page, reaching millions of readers.
Tens of thousands of email subscribers
Before Reddit banned his domain, the founder converted his viral traffic into an email list of tens of thousands — a self-owned audience independent of Reddit.
Reddit petition to ban domain
Redditors eventually organized a petition to ban starterstory.com posts, effectively ending the Reddit growth channel — but the email list was already built.
$1M business built on Reddit hack
The Reddit attention strategy ultimately served as the foundation for a million-dollar business, proving that free distribution channels can replace paid marketing.
Strategy: native content, small footer link
The key tactic was keeping content fully on-platform (no direct link spam), then adding a small link at the post's end for users who wanted more.
Quit 9-to-5 after email list built
With a thriving email list and a self-owned audience, the founder quit his six-figure New York City salary job to go all-in on Starter Story.
