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The Dollar-Store Economy: How the lowest end of American retail does business

nytimes.com

1–10 of 36 posts

Re: The Dollar-Store Economy: How the lowest end of American retail does business

#2
All very interesting, but it sounds like one thing this area is missing are the apps and social media links that might help grow the 22% part of their audience into an even larger share. I presume there are folks on here who could help fix that :-)

Re: The Dollar-Store Economy: How the lowest end of American retail does business

#3
People saving money are using coupons (I mean old fashioned coupons in newspapers like P&G Brandsaver). For example, lets say you need bleach, and you have a coupon for 50 cents off. You'll wait til Target/Walmart has bleach on sale for 50% off, then purchase it with the coupon as well. You can sometimes get bottles of bleach for 25c or sometimes free. My family does this, so don't tell me it doesn't work :)

Most of the dollar stores do not accept coupons (Dollar Tree definitely does not)

Re: The Dollar-Store Economy: How the lowest end of American retail does business

#4
Always nice to see that friendliness can go a long way for smaller local places, that aren't necessarily restaurants.

Of course, not all dollar stores are created equal. There are some nice ones, but also "soul-less" ones that just sell complete, Toys-R-Us bargain bin junk that no one would enjoy...

Re: The Dollar-Store Economy: How the lowest end of American retail does business

#5

People saving money are using coupons (I mean old fashioned coupons in newspapers like P&G Brandsaver). For example, lets say you need bleach, and you have a coupon for 50 cents off. You'll wait til Target/Walmart has bleach on sale for 50% off, then purchase it with the coupon as well. You can sometimes get bottles of bleach for 25c or sometimes free. My family does this, so don't tell me it doesn't work :) Most of…

How often does the Dollar Tree sell things that you could actually find a coupon for? Around here at least the overlap between items in the dollar store and items that have enough of a brand name to print coupons is zero or indistinguishable from it.

Re: The Dollar-Store Economy: How the lowest end of American retail does business

#6
A "dollar store" story: http://www.neardeathexperiments.com/smf/index.php?topic=1966...

Short version: on a casual challenge, I assembled a camping/survival ("bug out bag") kit from a dollar store with just $15.

Fun when a store has a broad range of stuff and one wonders "what can I do with pocket change here?"

Re: The Dollar-Store Economy: How the lowest end of American retail does business

#7
Wow, is it the fact checking department's day off? I mean they actually interviewed the president of Dollar General and yet they haven't figured out the fact that Dollar General is not a dollar store. Guess what Family Dollar is not a Dollar Store either.

Re: The Dollar-Store Economy: How the lowest end of American retail does business

#8

Wow, is it the fact checking department's day off? I mean they actually interviewed the president of Dollar General and yet they haven't figured out the fact that Dollar General is not a dollar store. Guess what Family Dollar is not a Dollar Store either.

I'm not sure what part of the country you are from, but I think this is a regional difference. Here in the midwest it is common to say, "I"m headed to the dollar store" and mean either Family Dollar or Dollar General.

Re: The Dollar-Store Economy: How the lowest end of American retail does business

#9

Wow, is it the fact checking department's day off? I mean they actually interviewed the president of Dollar General and yet they haven't figured out the fact that Dollar General is not a dollar store. Guess what Family Dollar is not a Dollar Store either.

I'm not sure there are any true "dollar stores" any more in the sense that "Everything is one dollar." However the stores evolved from the original gimmick are still called dollar stores even if the strict definition no longer applies.

Re: The Dollar-Store Economy: How the lowest end of American retail does business

#10

People saving money are using coupons (I mean old fashioned coupons in newspapers like P&G Brandsaver). For example, lets say you need bleach, and you have a coupon for 50 cents off. You'll wait til Target/Walmart has bleach on sale for 50% off, then purchase it with the coupon as well. You can sometimes get bottles of bleach for 25c or sometimes free. My family does this, so don't tell me it doesn't work :) Most of…

How often does the Dollar Tree sell things that you could actually find a coupon for? Around here at least the overlap between items in the dollar store and items that have enough of a brand name to print coupons is zero or indistinguishable from it.

The article mentioned bleach as a product that is in both stores so that's what I was using for my example. I haven't been inside a $1 store in a while so maybe the difference is that the $1 store doesn't carry Clorox while the Walmart/Targets of the world do.
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