家多乐

We strive to grow our base of loyal and satisfied customers by offering convenience and great values, to grow our assortment of nationally advertised name brand merchandise, and to improve quality standards to bring greater value to our customers. Leon Levine opens the first Family Dollar store in Charlotte, North Carolina. The company launches a new pricing policy: they will not be undersold. Company founder, Leon Levine, learned the retail business from his father. In fact, when his father Harry Levine died in 1947, Leon and his brother Al took over the store their father began; Leon was 13 years old at the time. The store, in Rockingham, North Carolina, billed itself as a department store, but was really more closely allied to the old-fashioned general store. By 1959, Leon was ready to strike out on his own, and he opened the first Family Dollar store in Charlotte. His target customer was the lower middle-income family who could not afford fancy name brands and was not a slave to high fashion, but did need good clothing and durable shoes. The Family Dollar store proved popular among value shoppers, and soon new outlets were opened. By the early 1970s, the company had gone public and had opened its 100th store in Brevard, North Carolina. Although it was not the first in the self-service, discount variety field, Family Dollar secured a leading spot. One difficulty in targeting lower income consumers was that they were often the first hit during bad economic weather--whether due to inflation or recession--and were quickly forced to cut back on spending. Thus, whereas Family Dollar expanded and achieved record sales in the early 1970s, the mid-1970s presented a particular challenge. Clustered in the southern states, the chain was hard hit by fallout from the traumatized textile industry in 1974. Many of Family Dollar's customers in that region were textile workers; many others worked in the tobacco and furniture industries, and were similarly hard hit. Family Dollar saw its profits fall by as much as 50 percent in 1974 and 1975, which was especially shocking given the company's growth rate in the years before; earnings in the early 1970s had shot up 24 percent annually, on average. Family Dollar was operating about 400 outlets in eight states, all in the South, by 1980. Most of the sales gains over the next few years were from additional stores. In 1979, Family Dollar acquired 40 Top Dollar stores from Sav-A-Stop. That same year, it also opened 36 new units of its own, putting it ahead of its own expansion schedule. Family Dollar's draw at the time was its bargain-priced goods--such items as toys, automotive equipment, and school supplies--all displayed within 6,000 to 8,000 square feet of store. Much of the company's merchandise had come from vendors or suppliers who had overbought, so the company's savings on those underpriced goods could be passed on to its customers. Another winning strategy was to gather up manufacturer's overruns. Size and strategy helped as well. When Procter & Gamble refused to give Levine a deal on Pampers disposable diapers, figuring he would have to stock them anyway, Levine stocked more Kleenex disposable diapers, as well as a Family Dollar brand, and soon Pampers became less necessary. Another ingredient in Family Dollar's success was its efficient distribution system, handled entirely out of Charlotte, from which the company was able to make bulk deliveries to its stores. In 1980, the size of the distribution center was doubled so that the company could take further advantage of discounts on single, bulk deliveries, as well as open new stores without concern about stock shortages. Although Family Dollar was branching out geographically at this time, with 70 to 80 outlets in Georgia, it was still primarily a Carolina chain. Soon, the company began investigating further opportunities in Alabama, Tennessee, the Virginias, Florida, Kentucky, and Mississippi. Because the company had no long-te