We would not have said 20-plus. It’s got to slow down at some point. But the volumes that we’re now doing in these locations, we’ve got to bleed some of that off. And so that’s one good point. And then we’ve still got plenty going on overseas. And you’ll see that continue to ramp up as well.
Katy Hallberg: Excellent. Thank you so much, and best wishes again.
Richard Galanti: Thanks.
Operator: Next question comes from the line of Scot Ciccarelli with Truist. Your line is open.
Scot Ciccarelli: Thanks for the time, guys. It seems like you guys are doing some things to cut down on membership sharing, food court usage from nonmembers, etc. Richard, are you seeing something in the business that gives you concern that there’s a growing issue from things like membership sharing?
Richard Galanti: No, I think part of it is — first of all, I think the storyline sometimes is a little greater than the reality. During COVID, we did a little bit more. There was a little bit more membership sharing. You had individuals where one family member, maybe not the one that had one of the two memberships, was coming into shop with mom or dad’s credit card. And we allowed it. And then with the advent of self-checkout over the last several years, when you walk in the front door and you just flash your card and do they look at it or not, who knows, you would — people would get in. And if you’re going through self-checkout, you’re not having to show your membership card to the cashier. And so there’s probably an increasing but still small level of abuse of that privilege.
And — but we also had complaints from members saying, I pay, why shouldn’t they? So, the view was — is we needed to just shore that up a little bit. And we did. We did it over a period of six months, I think about six months, where we — first there was warnings, and then ultimately changed. Are we getting some new signups from it? Absolutely. But it’s relative to the 60 million or 70 million members, it’s not terribly meaningful. But it’s more fair and the right thing to do.
Scot Ciccarelli: Yes, I mean, that was actually — you started to answer it. So, like you’ve seen some acceleration in membership. Should we kind of expect to see that in the future, like what we’ve seen with Netflix, for example, as they cut down on their sharing?
Richard Galanti: Right. Well, it seems like Netflix had a much bigger issue or the ability to share was much easier because, first of all, it’s electronic. In this sense, you still have to show a card when you walked in. And we’re actually doing testing on that too, in terms of having your card be scanned and reviewed when you walk in. And we’ve done that in the UK, I believe, for a few years. And so it’s all about — just I would say it’s as much hygiene as anything else. And it’ll be slightly profitable to the extent that we make sure everybody — I think we signed up more members than there were non-members then lost the small sales that that non-member did.
Scot Ciccarelli: Makes sense. Thanks again. And enjoy the next stage.
Richard Galanti: Thank you.
Operator: Next question comes from the line of John Heinbockel with Guggenheim Securities. Your line is open.
John Heinbockel: Congratulations, Richard. Enjoy your retirement. You’ll be missed. So, when you think about — you don’t have many pain points in your in your clubs. But when you think about kind of throughput and things like, I know you tested BOPUS and cost really didn’t make sense there. Things like that and/or scan and go, what — do you think there are some unlocks here to do more volume and/or reduce any pain points?
Richard Galanti: I think the biggest challenge with pain points, first of all, is full of merchandise and pallets through the system, which we continue to work on and improve. Never — if you’d asked us 10 years ago, will you ever have 150 of your 600 US locations doing over $300 million and 40 of them doing over $400 million? The answer would be no, no way, even with inflation. The fact is, is we’re doing a lot more volume than we’ve ever thought we would do. And so the biggest answer of not only making it a little more efficient, but driving more sales is cannibalizing. We find existing members that sometimes will say, I don’t want to go there. It’s too busy today. And by opening up that third or fourth unit in that city, we’re seeing not an increase of by a third or fourth of the membership base, but a significant increase in sales.
And I can’t think of anything specifically. We’re always doing things with — Oh, David mentioned something here. One of the things we’re in — we should be doing shortly is having warehouse inventory online. So when you go online to — now, I say that a couple of people in the room are smiling and says it may be a few months or a few more than a few months, but it’ll be soon. But at the end of the day, if you look at something to buy online and we have it in the location or two in the zip code where you typically shop — in the location you would shop physically, we’ll let you know you can buy it there. And in many cases, it’ll be cheaper if you go pick it up yourself because the online cost might be higher. It’s typically higher, particularly on the non-food items.
So, I think that’s something that’ll help that as well.
John Heinbockel: And secondly, is there any way to tell you think about email outreach. I mean, it seems to be getting better and more call to action. I try to think about the seven days of spring, which are in the middle of now. Is there a way to tell the productivity of that outreach? And is that driving some of the e-com pickup?
