Saturday, June 28, 2008

So How do I buy the quality stuff, and make profit?

Hm.. just how do you make profit? Or even sell quality?
It's a question not many ask when they open their dollar store, ok the profit part they may ask themselves, but lose sight of of what the quality they sell.
Nany store owners get cuaght up in the what I like to call the 1 cent theory. This is where merchants sbuy products for one penny a piece, thats as long as you buy say the 24 to 100 cases of them at a time, and you end up with 1000 tooth brushes because you got to buy them for one penny a piece.
The penny a peice works when you have 1000 tooth brushes, and your the local dentist!
But buying even 24 tooth brushes for your store , well you may sell two or three in six months. So That leaves you with a inventory you have to pay taxes on if there are items on your shelves or even in your storage room if you have one. Why do you want to buy produducts for a penny a peice if you have to pay twice the tax on them because you can not sell them fast enough for profit?
It's the age old thing of "Hey that's cheap!"
To many times store owners, and I say that singular , as in people only own one store, and will either close down later or sell their store to someone else later all because the buying stuff for a penny seemed like a gold mine to them, but a gold mine instead that collasped around them. Buyining merchadise to sell fore $1.00 later, and making a profit from it comes from not what you paid for it but what people realy want to but. Then again there are store owners trapped in the corprate franchise way of buying. Those poor souls that think getting all the junk for one penny a piece, and thinking they are going to get rich from it it have only the bad taste in their mouths when someone talks about owning a a dollar store.
If you could get a loaf of bread for $1.00 you would buy it, but how many times in a month do you need a cell phone case for the same price of $1.00? Unless your your real clumsy, or have a strange need to match you cell phone to every article of clothing you wear each day, you probly buy the loaf of bread more often, right?
That's where owning a $1.00 store you can own more than one store.
Yes you can be sucsesful! It's real simple sort of, it all depends on the way you look at it. I look towards owning thousands of stores. Hell, I can't wait for the day when Dollar Tree, Inc. Lawyers come knocking on my door to say " We want to buy you out, here is our offer", that's when I write a simple note at the botton asking how much will it cost to buy them out?
It's all about what you offer the customer!

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Where's the quality products at $1.00 stores?

A most recent comment from a person reading my blog made a good point recently. The person that made the comment may have been from New York city, but the same comments he made about the Big Apple, also hold true in many other cities across the nation. Where there may be a $1.00 store either right done the block, or just around the corner, they all sell junk people do not always need.

Merchandise these stores sell for the most part are not the things you or I need every day to survive.
No it is items like that figurine of a frog I might put in my garden out front or the hard back cover book of author’s interpretation of how you should live your life that you never heard of before?

Quality items are sold at most ever major supermarket, or mega-store, but you must pay retail value so they can make profit from it. But with today’s economy many people are doing without certain things or buying them in minimum quantity. Cost of many things are rising, bring a large strain on everyone, except the people that are making top dollar profit from selling you an item they get well over sometimes 250% profit from. Their excuse is “Hey we have payroll, utilities, insurance, etc.” to me that’s just plain means one of two things, either you need to fire who buys or purchases products you sell, or you are real happy making people make you rich while others struggle!

Now running my $1.00 store does have all the same financial responsibilities as same as anyone else, how can I sell the same quality products for just a $1.00? Hell I can make as much as I want selling quality products for a margin of 40% to 75% profit, for the same products sold in the other stores.

So how do I stay afloat without crying about the cost of the merchandise of quality?

It’s real simple really. The words most everyone has ever heard some time or later is “Supply & Demand”. Now yes the word Supply comes first, but let’s talk about demand first.
Demand for quality products at a price people can afford has become a major part of people’s lives these days no mater what their budget is. No one wants to buy a product that does not work as well as the quality brand product. Sure they may try it once to save a few bucks but if it does not work the way they want, they never buy it again.

Now the Supply thing, well that brings me back to who is buying or purchasing your products for your store?
Where are they buying these products, and agreeing to pay top dollar for these items? Well I can’t speak for most individually owned dollar stores because I know most of them are dealing with importers from China, that get the products for cheap they can sell for a high profit margin even at flea markets. But they fall under a category I call “Being Stupid”, this where the low quality products are bought and put on shelves, as the owner or merchant at the flea market think “Oh yea we got that screwdriver for $0.05 a piece and sell them for $1.00!” Geez they had to buy 100 or more of them to get that price, but they only sell that same screwdriver maybe if they are lucky once a week!

So what do people need all the time?
We need, Food, Paper products, Baby items, Stationary products, Household cleaning products, just to name a few. This is what we use everyday to maintain our lives.
Even the President of the United States gets off the toilet; the first thing he is thinking about is where the toilet paper is?

But there is a way to buy quality brand name products at a fraction of the manufacturers suggested price, and that’s one of the secrets to running a successful $1.00 store, and another entry later to this blog.

I welcome your comments anytime, good or bad.