While many retailers are shuttering storefronts, Dollar General plans to swim against the tide with its strong business model strokes. The company will launch a new store brand, Popshelf, aimed at higher income shoppers.
While some items will sell for above Dollar General’s one buck standard, customers will not find any bank account-breaking price points. Popshelf store openings will start off slowly, but new locations are planned for its targeted suburban demographic. The dollar store concept has been one of the retail’s few brick-and-mortar hits in recent years, and Dollar General believes it can ride the wave of another winning retail brand.
The following excerpt from a Wall St. Journal article reports more on the topic:
Dollar General Corp., the rapidly growing discount chain with over 16,300 stores dotting the rural American landscape, wants to attract more high-income shoppers looking to splurge.
The company plans to open a new brand of stores called Popshelf that mostly sells things shoppers don’t need but might want, such as party supplies, home decor or beauty products.
Stores will be in the suburbs of larger cities, with two planned for the Nashville, Tenn., area in the next few weeks and 30 by the end of next year. Items will be priced low, mostly under $5, but designed to appeal to women from households that earn as much as $125,000 a year.
Dollar General expects even cash-strapped shoppers to like the idea of “treating themselves without the guilt associated with overspending,” said Emily Taylor, Dollar General’s executive vice president and chief merchandising officer. Executives started working on the new chain about two years ago, but the company isn’t changing course because of the pandemic, Ms. Taylor said.
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group