GOING TO EXTREMES–“In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and or minimizing one or a few variables—like the discount warehouses of Costco.”–Costco is obsessed with keeping operating costs to a minimum. It does not provide shopping bags—customers bring their own bags or use an empty packing box the store supplies—saving Costco 2 to 5 cents each on plastic bags and 10 to 25 cents each on paper ones. That might not seem significant, but consider this: Costco does $ 15 billion in sales a year. If the average customer spends $ 100 per shopping trip, that means that Costco has approximately 150 million customer checkouts every year. If three paper bags at 10 cents per bag were used per checkout, the total bag cost per checkout of 30 cents, multiplied by 150 million, would cost Costco approximately $ 45 million a year. By simply by getting rid of paper bags at checkout, Costco arguably saves itself $ 45 million a year.” — Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth With Commentary by David Clark by David Clark