Marani Brands Inc. (MRIB)

[Matthew Berg]

What doesn't make sense? Costco clearly states such as their policy on new products and tests. They neither want to launch a new company nor be an exclusive reseller except as it applies to other club stores and they often have agreements that they will be the exclusive reseller just in that retail space and/or they will receive a preferred increased discount as compared to those other membership stores.

Simply put, they do not want to be solely responsible for a company going belly up with too much dependency on Costco if Costco should elect to discontinue any given company's product.

The following is a direct quote from Art Jackson, VP General Administration - Costco Wholesale.

Your sales through Costco can represent no more than 20 percent of your total business. “If something’s not selling well, we’ll swap it out,” Jackson said. “We don’t want to be the cause of any business going under because they’re no longer dealing with us.”

That said, I can't say how closely they monitor the situation and it might be a hard pill to swallow to limit a product if it's selling but They certainly have the technology to monitor the situation and there are a whole lot of products out there fighting for that shelf space that don't represent the potential risk they're trying to avoid. I wouldn't bet against them sticking to the policy pretty tightly. Pretty bad PR to put people out of work these days and the plight of a small company and jobs going away is not something they want to be attached to.