In an August conference call with analysts, Dollar Tree’s chief executive, Michael Witynski, recounted how one of the shipping vessels the company had chartered was denied entry to a Chinese port after a crew member tested positive for the virus. While just about every retailer is dealing with shipping and distribution problems, the dollar stores may have difficulty passing on the increased costs to price-sensitive customers.ĭollar Tree said it expected as much as $200 million in additional freight costs this year. “This is another case of the pandemic laying bare the underlying vulnerabilities in how we’ve set up our economy,” said Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an advocacy group that is critical of many large corporate retailers. Beadling are quitting in protest and a single coronavirus case on a container ship can cause a two-month delay in getting Chinese-made merchandise to the United States. “It means these issues may be permanent,” said Scott Mushkin, a founder and an analyst at R5 Capital, a research and consulting firm focused on retail.īut dollar stores are not as well equipped for the surreal economy of today, when workers like Ms. The move has broad significance beyond the discount retail industry, analysts say, because it signals that a company that has built its brand on selling $1 merchandise feels the need to shift its model to account for higher wages and an unreliable supply line from Asia. Just this week, Dollar Tree, which also operates Family Dollar stores, said it would start selling more products above $1. They include burned-out workers, pressure to increase wages, supply chain problems and a growing number of cities and towns that are rejecting new dollar stores because, they say, the business model harms their communities. Sales are slowing and some measures of profit are shrinking as the industry struggles with a confluence of challenges. Dollar stores, which pay among the lowest wages in the retail industry and often operate in areas where there is little competition, are stumbling in the later stages of the pandemic. Some wonder whether the same can be said for the unbridled success of dollar stores and their business model, which has benefited from the prevalence of poverty and disinvestment in the inner cities and rural America. She sent her assistant manager a text saying she had quit and then blocked her co-workers’ numbers so they couldn’t call back and persuade her to stay. “I was so tired I couldn’t find words,” she said. to be back at the store for an inventory check. Beadling closed up the Dollar General at 10, got home at 11:30 and then left her house at 4 a.m.
She had pleaded with her managers to allow the store’s part-time workers to have more hours, but to no avail. Beadling had spent long stretches this summer as one of only a few workers in the store, tending to the register and trying to help shoppers. But that was a tough sell when Walmart was offering $16 an hour and her store was paying $12. Beadling, 54, had tried to hire more help. The manager of the Dollar General store in Wells, Maine, Ms. Sandra Beadling was fed up with the 70-hour workweeks, the delivery trucks running days behind schedule, and the wear and tear on her knees from all the stooping to restock the bottom shelves.