The Cincinnati Post reports that Procter & Gamble is "ardently courting" dollar store retailers because of statistics that show two-thirds of Americans do some of their shopping there.
About 11 percent of the goods sold at Dollar General, for example, came from P&G - worth about $517 million in sales for P&G. And Dollar general is growing at a rate of about 13 percent per year.
Family Dollar, which is second only to Dollar General in the category and is growing at a rate of 14 percent annually, says that six percent of its goods came from P&G, worth more than $180 million in sales.
While these numbers pale in comparison to what P&G does at Wal-Mart - $7.8 billion last year alone - the Post< notes that the dollar store category is growing at an even faster rate than Wal-Mart, and therefore is deserving of attention.
"It's definitely a place of growth," P&G spokesman Doug Shelton tells the Post. "It's not a place where we've focused in the past, but we plan to give it more attention in the coming years. There are some unmet needs in that category of customer and we'd like to meet some of those needs."
About 11 percent of the goods sold at Dollar General, for example, came from P&G - worth about $517 million in sales for P&G. And Dollar general is growing at a rate of about 13 percent per year.
Family Dollar, which is second only to Dollar General in the category and is growing at a rate of 14 percent annually, says that six percent of its goods came from P&G, worth more than $180 million in sales.
While these numbers pale in comparison to what P&G does at Wal-Mart - $7.8 billion last year alone - the Post< notes that the dollar store category is growing at an even faster rate than Wal-Mart, and therefore is deserving of attention.
"It's definitely a place of growth," P&G spokesman Doug Shelton tells the Post. "It's not a place where we've focused in the past, but we plan to give it more attention in the coming years. There are some unmet needs in that category of customer and we'd like to meet some of those needs."
- KC's View:
- We would guess that the only real problem with this category is the possibility that it will drive down margins. But in the current environment, that may be the cost of doing business.
