They
aren't Woolworths or McCrory's. Not
Kresge’s either, even though they morphed into K-marts. Nope, no lunch counters! In fact,
none of today's reincarnated dime stores have any of the amenities
of the stores I grew up with. There are no soda fountains to be found
anywhere today, and certainly no stools to sit on. There are no
longer any lunch counters where you can sit and have a cherry coke
and a grilled cheese sandwich with a pickle. Things have changed
socially as far as meals and fast food, but not the marketing concept
of selling to the everyday housewife.
Today's
five and dime stores are called Dollar Tree, Family Dollar Store,
Dollar General, or even Big Lots, but they are still reinvented dime
stores, simply renamed to account for inflation. The products they
carry are a mirror image of what was ideologically sold by their
predecessors; ie, common household items priced so the everyday
shopper can afford them. The new, low-end retail stores have
flourished everywhere in the country long after the traditional dime
stores have gone the way of blacksmiths and harness shops.
The
smaller stores require far less overhead than the mega-stores such as
Wal*Mart or K-Mart, and can be found just about everywhere on the
outskirts of just about every community in America. They don't need
the constant flow of thousands of customers to show a profit.
Dollar
Tree, Inc., where everything in the store costs one dollar, reported
in their 2012 Annual Statement that their 4671 retail stores brought
in 7.4 billion dollars in net sales. Family Dollar Stores, Inc's,
annual statement lists 9.33 billion dollars in net sales through 7442
stores. Family Dollar stores sell many products costing more than a
dollar, but inexpensive goods are their staple products. Big Lots,
Inc., which is also known for low prices on everything from groceries
to furniture, brought in 5.4 billion through just 1574 stores.
But
hold your horses, Dollar General, Inc., with 10,506 stores, brought
in a whopping 16 billion dollars in net sales!
That's
a little over 38 billion dollars in net sales just between those four
retailers. For those who think in terms of how many dollars would
that would be stacked toward the moon, it's 38 thousand millions,
which would be quite a bit taller than me even if you stacked
one-million dollar bills. In fact, according to ask.com
(http://www.ask.com/question/how-tall-is-a-stack-of-dollar-bills
) using one-million dollar bills, the stack would be just under 13 feet high.
And
they did it without selling a single grilled cheese sandwich.
