A lot of times something Costco does is they buy products from a 3rd party (not the actual company itself) and then sell it in their stores. For example, an office supply store where I live sells Herman Miller chairs (about 1100$ each), and this supply store was supposed to have exclusivity to those chairs and no one else in the city had a contract from Herman Miller to sell them. One day these chairs ended up at Costco, and when the office supply store called to ask Herman Miller representatives what was up (since they were obviously a little pissed, thinking the agreement they had with Herman Miller was broken), the company said that Costco had purchased the chairs from a 3rd party, not directly from Herman Miller, and were selling them at Costco.
