Family Dollar Project

Bus121 Intro to Business

Mrs. Jones-Manigo

By: James McRae

Introduction

I chose to use Family Dollar as my company of interest. I’ve shopped at this store for most of my life for personal items, medical appliances, and even for my pets. I’m familiar and comfortable with this company which is why I chose it specifically. It’s a well-known company convenient for the area where I reside.

In 1958 a 21 year old entrepreneur with an interest in merchandizing became intrigued with the idea of operating a low-overhead, self-service retail store. Leon Levine believed he could offer his customers a variety of high quality, good value merchandise for under $2, because he had grown up in his family’s retail store, he understood value, quality, and customer satisfaction. In November 1959, Leon Levine opened the first Family Dollar store in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was on his way to becoming a retail legend. Right from the start, he had a well-developed philosophy of what Family Dollar would be and how it would operate, a philosophy from which he and his management team have never strayed. The concept is a simple one, “The customers are the boss”, and you need to keep them happy. He created a general floor plan that he used in each of his stores that allowed customers to easily shop their most preferred products in any Family Dollar store. With the stores uniformity laid out and stocked, store managers were able to focus on providing good service. This concept for self-serve, cash-and-carry neighborhood discount store in to low middle income residential areas proved so successful that today Family Dollar is a chain with over 8,000 stores from Maine to California. The particular type of ownership of this business is a publicly trading corporation. This business is listed as FDO (NYSE) on the stock exchange. Currently as of today the company’s stock price is 78.61 0.28(0.36%). A threat the business might have in today’s environment is local competition. Other Dollar store’s such as Dollar Tree and Dollar General offers substantial problems opening their stores near or close by any Family Dollar establishment decreasing their profits. I think continuing to open future businesses in the low income areas will be of great assistance for the company. Also enhancing the food/grocery section for more variety and an increase of availability for better customer satisfaction.

References
Family Dollar Stores, (2015), Retrieved from: corporate.familydollar.com/pages/aboutus.aspx
Family Dollar Stores Inc., (2015) NYSE:FDO, Retrieved from: http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/fdo