Beloved warehouse wholesaler, Costco, has decided to make a change in its store layout and customers, particularly the bookworms, are heartbroken.
Costco removes popular section from its warehouses
Around mid 2024, rumors began circulating that Costco Wholesale would no longer be carrying its crowd favorite table of books in its America based warehouses. Soon after, this rumor was confirmed and it was revealed that once the 2024 festive period ended, a significant portion of warehouses would discontinue the beloved table of books once January hit.
The retailer would not put an end to book sales entirely, however. The table of books would only be available seasonally, during the last quarter of the year. Many shoppers felt that this was decision was entirely unnecessary as the warehouse offered a broad selection of books that made for an enjoyable shopping experience. Shoppers would often stop by the table just to peruse all kinds of genres from cookbooks to fiction and others often picked gifts for loved ones from this table.
The retailer currently operates well over six hundred warehouses across the country and of these, only one hundred will continue to carry the crowd favorite table of books throughout the year. The remaining five hundred or so warehouses will only bring out the table of books from September to December, just in time for shoppers to start planning and purchasing their gifts for the Christmas period.
On December 3, ABC News shared a post on TikTok announcing the discontinuation of book sales and Costco shoppers wasted no time in sharing their disappointment in the comment section of the post. One user wrote, “No!! I love the table of books.”
“What a horrible decision,” another commenter posted. Another user lamented the end of the table of books and said that they “were always great as gifts.”
Many other TIkTok commenters also agreed that this change was quite saddening as they always shopped for books at Costco because the warehouse offered “the cheapest prices.”
What brought on this decision?
The company cited costs and labor as the main driving force behind this decision. The retailer explained to the executives that it felt pushed to make this decision since “stocking books on tables is labor-intensive and must be done by hand rather than by forklift like other products.”
Another factor contributing to this decision is the consumer preference of purchasing books through online platforms like Amazon, not to mention that these outlets do not require any membership fees in order to make purchases. Additionally, a survey by Statista Consumer Insights published in April revealed that consumers are no longer going in to brick and mortar stores like Barnes and Noble, Costco, or Target for all of their book needs. According to the survey, 71% of consumers in the U.S. stated that they had purchased a book from the online platform.
It appears that the initial plan for the retailer was to discontinue the table of books at all locations, however this was later amended to allow a hundred stores to continue on with book sales. Perhaps the widespread disappointed shared by customers pushed the retailer to change its initial plan.
Impact on the publishing industry
Shoppers are not the only cohort of individuals disappointed in this big change, it appears that publishers might feel the pinch of this too.
Robert Gottlieb, a literary agent and chairman at Trident Media Group, explained how the discontinuation of book sales at Costco warehouses will impact publishers in an interview with The New York Times. “Costco across the country was a big outlet for books,” Gottlieb said. “There are now fewer and fewer places to buy books in a retail environment,” he added.