Costco shoppers stocked up on supplies in anticipation of the US port strike and Hurricane Helen. Costco says the “abnormal” activity has had a measurable impact on monthly sales. A quick resolution of the port strike is likely to minimize disruption to the flow of imports.
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Shoppers turned to Costco to prepare ahead of hurricanes and a U.S. port strike.
When reporting its sales results for September – as it does every month – the Wholesale Club included the following salient piece of information:
“This year’s total comparable sales for September at retail benefited approximately 2 percent in the U.S. and 1.5 percent worldwide as a result of increased sales in the last week of the month due to abnormal consumer activity related to Hurricane Helen and port strikes,” the company said in a statement. “.
In one of Costco’s bookkeeping oddities, the last week of September actually ended on October 6th. Helen had already come and gone, the strike lasting from October 1 to October 3, and Milton had only just begun.
But all the panic buying of toilet paper, bottled water — two products that are mostly produced domestically — and other supplies last week had a measurable impact on the wholesale club’s monthly sales.
Before the dockworkers’ strike along the eastern ports, which has since been suspended, Costco said it had done everything it could to ensure the availability of goods.
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“The port strike is something we’ve been monitoring closely for some time,” CEO Ron Fatkris said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, noting that only about a quarter of Costco’s products are imported.
“We did a little bit of everything,” he added. “We’ve cleared the ports, we’ve pre-shipped, we’ve done a lot of different things we can do to get holiday goods in before that time frame, and we’ve looked at alternative plans we can implement by moving the goods to different ports and coming across the country if necessary.”
The stoppage was relatively short-lived, and these preparations could minimize disruption to Costco as the ports work through any remaining backlogs.
