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List where they shop, not where you want them to shop, and let the platform's delivery infrastructure do the last mile.
$33 billion
in 2026
65%
of retail
Costco's digital sales reached $33 billion in 2026, growing more than 20% year-over-year, according to Modern Retail. The warehouse operator achieved the number by extending reach beyond its physical locations through delivery partnerships with DoorDash and Uber Eats, pulling in younger customers who expect same-day delivery without a warehouse trip.
The company layered third-party delivery platforms onto its existing warehouse footprint. Members can now order through DoorDash and Uber Eats for same-day fulfillment from local Costco warehouses. The partnerships let Costco tap the delivery infrastructure these platforms already built, avoiding the capital cost of building its own last-mile fleet while accessing the platforms' user bases.
The move works because it removes the trip friction that keeps younger buyers out of warehouse clubs. Costco's core model requires a membership fee and a car trip to a suburban location. That works for families stocking a pantry every two weeks. It fails for urban renters, one-person households, and buyers under 35 who expect two-hour delivery and shop by occasion, not bulk. By offering same-day delivery through apps these buyers already use, Costco converts demand that would otherwise go to Amazon, Instacart, or a neighborhood grocer. The partnership also lets Costco test basket composition and frequency with a demographic that doesn't match its traditional profile, without changing the warehouse experience for existing members.
A small physical-product brand can run the same play by listing inventory on a platform where the buyer already shops, rather than forcing the buyer to a direct site. Identify one or two marketplaces or delivery apps where your target customer already has an account and a payment method saved. For a food or beverage brand, that might be Instacart, Thrive Market, or a regional grocer's delivery service. For a home or personal care brand, it might be Amazon, Target.com, or a specialty retailer like Crate & Barrel or Sephora that offers same-day through Instacart or DoorDash. Apply to list your product on that platform. Expect a wholesale rate between 50% and 65% of retail, depending on category and platform. The platform handles fulfillment, customer service, and last-mile delivery. You ship case quantities to their warehouse or, in some models, directly to a store that acts as a micro-fulfillment center.
Start with one platform and one SKU. Track cost per acquisition and repeat rate for 90 days. If unit economics work, add a second SKU or a second platform. The goal is not to own the customer relationship immediately. The goal is to meet the customer where they already transact, prove demand, and use that traction to negotiate better terms or justify building your own direct channel later. Costco didn't abandon its warehouses. It made them accessible to people who weren't coming through the door.
The broader pattern is distribution-led growth. Brands that wait for customers to find them lose to brands that show up in the buyer's existing shopping routine. The platform fee is the cost of customer acquisition. The question is whether the lifetime value covers it.
Apply to one marketplace your customer already uses, ship case quantity to their warehouse, and track 90-day repeat rate before adding a second platform.
For the operator
Negotiate co-op or discovery placement with the delivery platform to surface your SKU in category browse and offset the margin hit from wholesale pricing.
For the house
Ask your vendor if they fulfill through Instacart or DoorDash partners so you can order smaller quantities with same-day delivery instead of bulk case shipments.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
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This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori heritage press through approved vendors · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.