Source: Quartz, Reuters
Costco opened its first warehouse club in China today (Aug. 27), in a suburb of Shanghai. Just a few hours into business, it had to shut down in the afternoon because of overcrowding, according to screenshots of messages (some links below in Chinese) sent to customers around 2pm circulating on Chinas social media Weibo.
Local media reported that local residents swarmed to the storewith cars queuing up to enter half a kilometer (0.3 miles) away, footage from news portal Sina showed.
A video clip that was posted on YouTube by user China on Weixin showed that there was barely any room for shopping carts to move with the outlet filled with shoppers. The store signs visible in the clip and the shelves match those in video footage from the store taken by news outlets.
Even with 22 counters open for check-out, customers still needed to wait for more than half an hour to be rung up, Sina reported.
On Chinese social media, many raved about the prices of grocery and other items. A Shanghai-based Weibo user was excited about the 32.9 yuan ($4.6) price for nearly 4 liters (about 1 gallon) of milk. Inside the shop, shoppers went crazy for steaks at one point, according to another video circulating on Weibo. Some of those videos made their way on to Twitter.
The shopping frenzy could be a result of the heavily discounted membership fees Costco offered to promote its opening. It costs 299 yuan ($41) annual fee to be a gold star member in Chinas Costco, which is known as kai shi ke () in Chinese. Thats $19 less than the Costcos membership fee for the same category in the US.
However, Costco was forced to shut its first store in China early on its opening day on Tuesday, according to state media, after large crowds flocked through the door and caused traffic jams in the Shanghai neighborhood.
More Pictures of the Frenzy
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