The Dollar-Store Economy: How the lowest end of American retail does business | Hacker News Reader

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

nytimes.com

62 pointslinhir35 comments

About 10 years ago I worked the register at a Dollar Tree store for exactly 1 six hour shift. I almost didn't go back to pick up my paycheck it was so bad. The customer base of these stores is very very sad. For every artist that's browsing for materials and inspiration there are a thousand little old ladies buying shit they don't need with money they don't have.

And for the most part it is shit. The food is too suspect to feed to my pets, and the consumer goods are notional facsimiles of real products. Like the Wow brand ShamWow, or the dish rag that won't make it through a wash cycle, or the Nerf gun knockoff that doesn't have any moving parts. None of this stuff is worth lifting off the shelf, let alone paying a dollar for.

I spent 6 hours of punching 1 dollar, 1 dollar, 1 dollar pondering over the people bringing this garbage to my counter, demanding indestructible plastic cups be wrapped in a dollars worth of tissue paper, repeatedly asking how much products cost as if they had not yet noticed they were in a dollar store. "How did this 70 year old woman decide today was the day she needed 20 slightly deformed acrylic cups? Has she been cupless all this time? And why return 2 hours later to get a dozen fake flowers?" I think I attributed that hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach to some concern that all these fools were being had, or perhaps that I was contributing to their hoarding illness.

The dread I felt was spot on, but the attribution was faulty. These people are not fools. The products they buy aren't fake but symbolic. They brought these offerings to my altar so that I might perform the "glassware" wrapping and price-check rituals of consumerism. I thought I was taking a job working a register, when I was really stepping behind the altar to become the liturgist of the Enfield congregation of the Dollar Tree denomination of Consumerism.

I have never been much of a devotee of the Consumer way of life, and the Dollar Tree denomination is the snake handling denomination of Consumerism. The products in a Walmart or Target could conceivably fill someone's need or desire. I doubt that much of what they sell is sold to fulfill practical wants and needs--their congregation of faithful parishioners who come to worship and trample every Black Friday for the year's must have electronic gadget attend regularly on a more distributed schedule throughout the year as well. But there is still a semblance of shame in the Walmart and Target version of idol worship. Your car floormats are a little dusty and the ones with the really rad flames on them just happen to be on sale! Outside the dollar store we're not quite ready to honestly confront what we believe in, who we are. At 16, with the quickly fading inoculation of an upbringing in the values of Presbyterianism, hard work, and education I was certainly not ready to deal with what I found in that Dollar Tree.

"How did this 70 year old woman decide today was the day she needed 20 slightly deformed acrylic cups? Has she been cupless all this time? And why return 2 hours later to get a dozen fake flowers?" I think I attributed that hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach to some concern that all these fools were being had, or perhaps that I was contributing to their hoarding illness.

Maybe she was just lonely or bored and needed errands to run. I volunteered to teach some basic computer stuff 1-on-1 at a 50+ organization and frequently the people there didn't care about actually picking up the skills, they just wanted someone to talk to.

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)

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.

My sister has actually been telling me about this. She has gotten in to "extreme couponing", and there are big groups online sharing information on where to get things from local grocery stores for free or less with promotions like double coupon weekends.

My mom is an extreme couponer. And while true that you can get great deals (she once saved over $600 in a single trip), you have to balance that out vs. how much your time is worth. For most of us who are entrepreneurs, an hour would be far better spent working on our businesses.

But for a typical salaried employee who's not motivated to start a business and who just wants something fun to do on the weekends, sure, it works great.

As another commenter said, this is a pretty poor story to post here... most people here have a $/time utility that strongly favors time. But for people that invest the time in couponing (friending companies on facebook and getting high value coupons, finding grocery store member weekly discounts, tracking super-double/triple sales, getting multiple newspaper subscriptions, etc) they routinely save 75-90% off their orders. The problem is that this takes some degree of thinking, so the 'low-information' shoppers in Dollar General, Dollar Tree, etc end up paying more than they would otherwise.

My wife coupons, and I don't remember the last time we paid over $.25 for a gallon of bleach, either...

I remember a study estimating that the time value of clipping and using coupons averages out to about $7/hour. I don't remember the methodology and can't find the study (anyone else seen it?), but, even if you could be substantially above average and "make," say, $10 / hour clipping coupons, I still doubt it would be worth it for many people.

The other danger: you see a coupon that excites a desire for a product you didn't previously think you wanted. Unless you have unusually tight control over yourself, you'll find your buying more stuff (http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html) you don't actually need.

Reading Kevin Kelly's quasi-blog Cool Tools: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/ also offers this danger, but it also very occasionally makes me find something I've always wanted and didn't realize, like the Best Book Stand Jasmine: http://jseliger.com/2010/09/04/highly-recommended-the-best-b... , which I use almost every day.

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?"

I can not speak for other dollar stores but please let me educate you on how Dollar Tree manages their corporate chain.

First off there should never be an expired item in the store. If by chance you happen to come across an expired item, by making an employee or manager aware the item will be removed from the shelves immediately.

Secondly if you look closely at many of the products in the store you will find brand names to be different but the manufactures to be fairly well known. Americans tend to buy known brand names, thanks to advertising. Ask anyone who works in a packaging and labeling factory and they will tell you they label the same product with multiple different branding labels.

With that said my final point. Many company's have to much product, Dollar Tree corporate finds these companies and offers to buy all of their over head that would otherwise go spoiled or unsold at less than 48 cents on the unit. A prime example is Chicken of the Sea tuna which is owned by Van Camp's, however in Dollar Tree it is simply labeled Van Camp's (same great tuna just a different label and 20 cents cheaper).

Items will only be thrown in the dumpster if they're damaged or expired. Otherwise they're sent to another branch location for sale if it doesn't sell well.

Sure Dollar Tree deals with mass production companies located in china and other "cheap labor" parts of the world, so does the rest of the big boys in the S&P 500.

In my community Dollar Tree is the only company that hasn't frozen wages, still offers competitive wages, and offers decent employee benefits. I do not work for Dollar Tree nor am I affiliated with them in anyway, I currently work for the black hole A&P.

All around, the stacks of products and aisles of merchandise screamed a technicolor siren song.

To me it screamed lots of overpriced cheap junk. Seriously, these stores are overpriced for the merchandise they sell.

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...

I must admit I always worry about toxic chemicals in the cheap plastic stuff from dollar stores. Probably I am too paranoid, but that is the way it is for now.

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.

Must be, around here(South Texas) dollar store implies a place where things cost a dollar.

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.

I remember when you'd still hear people refer to dime stores, though I'm pretty sure the term was obsolete well before my time.

There's a "five and ten" store in Palo Alto, but it's $5 and $10.

I'm not sure of the name but there is a true dollar store. I think it is called, "The Dollar Tree" and everything in them is a dollar. You find them throughout malls in the midwest.

Dollar Tree the place the author visits in the article is a actual everything is a buck store.

The "99 cent only" stores are still true to their word (nothing is over a dollar), but they recently had to raise their prices to 99.99 cents, heh.

In Canada Dollarama is the market leader, and they've recently added $1.25, $1.50 and $2.00 items.

I honestly think you could grocery shop there - they have things like pasta sauce which is made specifically for them (same kind I buy in the grocery store, but at dollarama it has the label printed with dollarama price tag). There are tons of fantastic buys and I go there all the time, despite probably not needing to. I buy a ton of office stuff there too (even DVD sleeves, which I run through like you wouldn't imagine).

They even have iPhone cases, chargers, USB cables, etc. I don't know what I'd do without them...

100 Yen shops are everywhere in Japan. I was amazed at how much I began to depend on them. Craft supplies and costumes for Halloween, snacks, towels, etc. If I used it every day, and it wasn't clothes or food, I probably bought it at a 100 Yen shop.

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2077.html

IIRC, 100en stores are a lot more legit than their American counterparts. Same thing with convenience stores. In America, even the poor are reluctant to visit dollar stores because the wares are so sketchy. But all my Japanese friends were avid devotees of the 100en store and combini.

What do you mean legit? I've been to the Dollar Tree a few times, and it all seems perfectly acceptable, for a dollar. You're not going to get quality cookware, for example, but it seems fine for tons of other stuff.

There are a few items that are so hard to mess up (e.g. toilet paper — it's just a long roll of paper!) that they are indeed perfectly fine at the dollar store. But all the food and a lot of the other items are really awful, and it makes people wary of relying on the stores for anything.

I don't know, maybe this is a regional thing and it's only been that way in places I've lived while other places have awesome dollar stores. But I've had friends who lived in places only marginally better than slums who still would only very reluctantly shop at dollar stores because they didn't trust that the candles wouldn't burn down their house and the food wouldn't poison them.

There is a Japanese dollar store here in mountain view called Daiso and it is great.

Ichiban-Kan in SF is pretty good, too.

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 :-)

Sorry, but why the Downvotes? I'm quite serious that some apps that would make it easier for you to find Dollar Stores near you - or better yet that would show you who has what in stock would help the adoption of shopping there by folks who have grown accustomed to those kinds of things where they have been shopping. I could also imagine an app that would let you scan in what is on sale there, and link you to articles like the one mentioned in the opener to make the "alien" lamp.

I am pretty sure there are apps out there that do this already. Also, dollar store goers are probably not the biggest users of apps or smartphones. Generally.

But the article pointed out that 22% of the dollar store audience is now people making over $70K - and that was what I was referring to.

Your comment is so odd that I think people are reading it as facetious. People in the target market for a dollar store will generally have an easier time finding a dollar store than finding or using an app related to dollar stores. It's a bit like suggesting that Silicon Valley startups should buy ads in community newspapers. The interests just don't align.

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