Costco Australia is ramping up its online offering, launching a new wholesale delivery service that will provide bulk delivery to metropolitan Melbourne from the company’s Docklands Warehouse.
The service has a minimum order of $1,000 and delivers within a 10-kilometre radius of the Docklands location, offering everything from meat and seafood to office supplies.
The move signals a shift in pace for Costco and local CEO Patrick Noone, as the business has traditionally operated on a bricks-and-mortar model with a requisite membership fee.
“Our Docklands Warehouse in in the downtown Melbourne core with 000’s [sic] of businesses in the surrounding area. To assist our business members we have set up a business-to-business site that members can order online and have delivered to their business the next day, we are working with some select members at present to fine tune the site and will be asking our business members to join in the program in the next several weeks,” Noone told Inside FMCG.
Unsurprisingly the website operates on a similar membership model to Costco’s bricks-and-mortar stores, with delivery is being touted as next-day service, when orders are placed before 3pm. The investment is the latest addition to Costco’s local offer after the business set up shop in Australia in 2009.
Earlier this month the company announced the opening of its second Queensland location at the Walker Corporation’s $1 billion Citiswich Business Park in Ipswich. There’s no word yet whether Costco could expand the delivery model to its other sites around the country, or even to Sydney.
