Business
Visualizing the Number of Costco Stores, by Country
Visualizing Costco’s Global Presence
Costco is a membership-based retail chain founded in 1983 in Seattle, Washington. Best known for its unique warehouse stores and high-quality products, Costco offers everything from electronics to groceries.
Since its founding, Costco has become a major retailer in the U.S., while also greatly expanding its international presence. As of August 2023, the company has 859 locations globally, with a split of 69% domestic (591 stores) and 31% international (268 stores).
In this graphic, we’ve visualized Costco’s global presence with a treemap diagram.
Number of Costco Stores Worldwide
The following table lists the number of Costco stores by country, as of Aug. 17, 2023.
Country | Number of locations |
---|---|
🇺🇸 U.S. | 591 |
🇨🇦 Canada | 107 |
🇲🇽 Mexico | 40 |
🇯🇵 Japan | 32 |
🇬🇧 UK | 29 |
🇰🇷 Korea | 18 |
🇦🇺 Australia | 15 |
🇹🇼 Taiwan | 14 |
🇪🇸 Spain | 4 |
🇨🇳 China | 4 |
🇫🇷 France | 2 |
🇮🇸 Iceland | 1 |
🇳🇿 New Zealand | 1 |
🇸🇪 Sweden | 1 |
Total | 859 |
From this data we can see that Costco’s biggest non-U.S. markets are Canada, Mexico, and Japan.
In fact, Costco’s first non-U.S. location was opened near Vancouver, British Columbia in 1985. The company expanded to Mexico several years later in 1992, and then Japan in 1999.
Costco has recently turned its attention to China, opening four stores in areas around Shanghai since 2019. Reception was overwhelmingly positive—as CNBC reported, massive crowds at the grand opening of Costco’s first store forced an early closure. The company is planning to grow its Chinese presence even further, with new locations planned for Hangzhou, Shenzhen, and Nanjing.
For context, Costco is hardly the first U.S. retail chain to break into the Chinese market. Walmart first expanded to China in 1996 with a store in Shenzhen, and as of January 2023, operates 365 stores in the country.
The Sweden and New Zealand locations both opened in 2022, showing that Costco’s international expansion is still very much underway.
Number of Costco Stores by State
Focusing on the U.S., here are the number of locations in each state.
State | Number of Stores |
---|---|
California | 134 |
Texas | 38 |
Washington | 33 |
Florida | 31 |
Illinois | 23 |
New Jersey | 21 |
Arizona | 20 |
New York | 19 |
Georgia | 17 |
Virginia | 17 |
Michigan | 16 |
Colorado | 16 |
Utah | 14 |
Oregon | 13 |
Minnesota | 13 |
Ohio | 13 |
Maryland | 11 |
Pennsylvania | 11 |
Wisconsin | 10 |
North Carolina | 10 |
Missouri | 9 |
Connecticut | 8 |
Nevada | 8 |
Indiana | 8 |
Hawaii | 7 |
Idaho | 7 |
Massachusetts | 6 |
South Carolina | 6 |
Tennessee | 6 |
Montana | 6 |
Puerto Rico | 5 |
Alabama | 4 |
Oklahoma | 4 |
Alaska | 4 |
Iowa | 4 |
Kentucky | 4 |
Louisiana | 3 |
Nebraska | 3 |
New Mexico | 3 |
Kansas | 3 |
North Dakota | 2 |
Arkansas | 1 |
Mississippi | 1 |
South Dakota | 1 |
Delaware | 1 |
District of Columbia | 1 |
Vermont | 1 |
New Hampshire | 1 |
Maine | 0 |
Rhode Island | 0 |
West Virginia | 0 |
Wyoming | 0 |
America’s most populous state, California, leads the nation with 134 locations (23% of total). This is likely due to Costco’s business strategy, which relies more on membership fees and sales volume rather than high markups on products. According to analysis by Forbes, the average markup at Costco is estimated to be 11%, while at Walmart it stands at 24%.
This may explain why Maine, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and Wyoming do not have any Costco locations. Most of these states are relatively low in population density, with the exception of Rhode Island which is very small geographically.
Editor’s note: According to local news sources, Maine is set to receive its first Costco location later in 2023.
Local Adaptations
While Costco locations in the U.S. often take the form of a traditional warehouse with ample surface level parking, some stores in other countries break from that formula.
In the Santa Fe neighborhood of Mexico City, the retail space and parking of the Costco lies below ground, while the roof of the building acts as an extension to the adjacent park, featuring sports fields and a green roof.
Vancouver, Canada, is home to an urban Costco, which blends into its high density surroundings and is capped by multiple condo towers.
While the price of the company’s famous hot dog and soda combo may stay the same, the company continues to adapt to changing preferences and new locales.
Finance
Ranked: The World’s 50 Largest Private Equity Firms
In this graphic, we show the largest private equity firms in the world—from titan Blackstone to China’s leading alternative funds.
The World’s 50 Largest Private Equity Firms
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
In 2023, private equity firms controlled $8.2 trillion in assets globally according to McKinsey & Company, a figure that has rapidly expanded since the industry first emerged 40 years ago.
As large investors such as pension funds and insurance companies increasingly look to private markets, these alternative asset managers have seen their assets grow by more than twofold in the last five years.
This graphic shows the top 50 private equity firms worldwide, based on data from Private Equity International (PEI).
The Top 50 Private Equity Firms
To determine the rankings, private equity firms were defined as those that raise capital with the purpose of directly investing in businesses, covering diversified private equity, venture capital, growth equity, buyouts, along with turnaround or control-oriented distressed investment capital.
The ranking does not include funds of funds, private investment in public equity (PIPE), or funds that follow a secondaries, real estate, infrastructure, hedge fund, debt or mezzanine strategies.
Below, we show the 50 biggest private equity companies around the world, measured by the scale of capital raised over the five-year period ending March 31, 2023:
Ranking | Fund Manager | City | Capital Raised |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Blackstone | New York | $125.6B |
2 | KKR | New York | $103.7B |
3 | EQT | Stockholm | $101.7B |
4 | Thoma Bravo | Chicago | $74.1B |
5 | The Carlyle Group | Washington DC | $69.7B |
6 | TPG | Fort Worth | $55.0B |
7 | Advent International | Boston | $52.9B |
8 | Hg | London | $51.0B |
9 | General Atlantic | New York | $48.7B |
10 | Warburg Pincus | New York | $48.5B |
11 | Silver Lake | Menlo Park | $48.3B |
12 | Goldman Sachs | New York | $45.4B |
13 | Bain Capital | Boston | $44.3B |
14 | Clearlake Capital Group | Santa Monica | $44.0B |
15 | CVC Capital Partners | Luxembourg | $41.8B |
16 | Vista Equity Partners | Austin | $41.5B |
17 | Clayton, Dubilier & Rice | New York | $41.1B |
18 | Hellman & Friedman | San Francisco | $40.9B |
19 | Insight Partners | New York | $40.2B |
20 | Leonard Green & Partners | Los Angeles | $39.6B |
21 | Permira Advisers | London | $34.8B |
22 | Cinven | London | $32.7B |
23 | Brookfield Asset Management | Toronto | $31.2B |
24 | Nordic Capital | Saint Helier | $31.1B |
25 | Genstar Capital | San Francisco | $29.9B |
26 | Francisco Partners | San Francisco | $28.3B |
27 | Tiger Global Management | New York | $28.3B |
28 | Blue Owl Capital | New York | $27.2B |
29 | Partners Group | Zug | $26.7B |
30 | Ares Management | Los Angeles | $26.6B |
31 | Hillhouse Capital Group | Singapore | $26.4B |
32 | L Catterton | Greenwich | $24.1B |
33 | Neuberger Berman Private Markets | New York | $23.7B |
34 | PAI Partners | Paris | $23.7B |
35 | TA Associates | Boston | $23.5B |
36 | Apollo Global Management | New York | $22.8B |
37 | Stone Point Capital | Greenwich | $22.3B |
38 | BC Partners | London | $20.3B |
39 | Adams Street Partners | Chicago | $20.2B |
40 | BlackRock | New York | $19.9B |
41 | BDT & MSD Partners | Chicago | $19.5B |
42 | Veritas Capital | New York | $19.0B |
43 | Bridgepoint | London | $18.0B |
44 | Ardian | Paris | $17.9B |
45 | HarbourVest Partners | Boston | $17.5B |
46 | China Reform Fund Management Corporation | Beijing | $16.8B |
47 | Andreessen Horowitz | Menlo Park | $16.7B |
48 | Thomas H. Lee Partners | Boston | $16.0B |
49 | Summit Partners | Boston | $16.0B |
50 | PSG Equity | Boston | $15.8B |
Private equity titan Blackstone is the top in the United States and the world, raising $125.6 billion in capital from 2018 to 2023.
Headquartered in New York, Blackstone’s total assets under management stood at $991 billion as of the first quarter of 2023, and have since surpassed $1 trillion this year. For perspective, this is comparable to the GDP of the Netherlands.
Following next in line are KKR and Sweden’s EQT, each raising over $100 billion. In fact, this was the first time three firms achieved this $100 billion equity-raise milestone in PEI’s ranking over a five-year period. This was particularly notable given a challenging fundraising landscape amid higher borrowing costs and lagging dealmaking activity.
North American Firms Dominate Private Equity
As we can see, the vast majority of the biggest private equity firms are based in America, accounting for 36 of the top 50 firms globally. North American PE firms made up $1.34 trillion (72%) of the $1.85 trillion raised by the top 50 firms in the ranking.
Falling in second by a wide margin is Europe, with nine firms making up $179 billion (9.7%) of the total funds raised. Many of Europe’s largest private equity firms are based in London, England, with the most prominent asset managers in the city being Hg and Permira Advisors.
Across Asia, the top alternative investment firm was Singapore-based Hillhouse Capital Group, which launched in 2005. The firm has backed several internet companies spanning from Tencent, the largest publicly-traded company in China, to Baidu, but has faced increasing setbacks amid regulatory crackdowns and a sluggish Chinese stock market.
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