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.

Part #2 continued....

Money equals business which equals power,

all of which come from character and trust.

J. P. Morgan - Founder J. P. Morgan & Co.

The Financials have got to be the hardest part of all to come up with when everything you need to consider requires alot of math, and a bit of more research.

You have to consider everything from leasing cost, to what every bit of operating expense will be. Then add & subtract profit , and losses of all sorts that when you have to repeatedly figure out the stuff that eventually becomes the bottom line you hope will make an investor smile, and give you the loan without question.

The profit & loss statement... Jeez how many times I have to write about it?

Gross profits are just the part of the dream of what you can do with a $1.00 store. But to be honest when you start doing the numbers and figuring out that $900,000 is the gross profit for just the first year, your eyes go wide open, and your mouth begins to drewl down your chin! That's when the reality set in when I figured in all the other factors of owning the store in the first year.

How I went from $900,00 to 156,358 in one reading of a statement!

My gross profit margin looked great, hell it looked awesome from what I could see! Little Red, and i would be in the big bucks in no time!

Yea right? That's until I started getting the averages for utilities, payroll, freight charges, and all the other stuff that makes it to where you can run the store.

With each cost to run run the darn store the profits began to fade. My hopes of actually being independent of having to work for someone else almost began to fade as well! But there was still hope in the long run.

With net profit as it would be, hey that was not to bad at all. Hey it could help pay for the holes in the wall from when my head connected with the drywall. To own a $1.00 store it takes work, and work you have to be dedicated at if you want to make a profit. Yes there is earnings out there just waiting for a store just like mine but you have to go the distance, walk the line, zig when others zag, and everything in between!

Go for the profit! And all your dreams!

Wounds heal, and so do the wow effect of what it takes. Begin to dream, write it down, bang your head against the wall at times, but remember it can work!

Never stop looking at your dream!