Mainebiz

V O L . X X I V N O. I I JA N UA R Y 2 2 , 2 0 1 8 16 H usson University's Brien Walton likes visiting dollar stores for research purposes. "I fi nd them fascinating," says Walton, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship. "Being a student of retail trends and pricing and mer- chandising and sourcing, sometimes I'll go into stores and see where they're getting their products from, which countries are stocking these stores, and looking at trends in prod- uct quality." His conclusion? "Just because it's cheap doesn't mean it is cheaply made, and sometimes they're able to get an overstocked item and sell it at a discount," he says. " at's why some people go there, not just people with low incomes but a lot of people as well from the middle and upper middle classes." at's one explanation for the mass appeal of dollar stores, the generic term for hard-discount chains led by Dollar General Corp. (NYSE: DG), P H O T O / F R E D F I E L D I T S O LU T I O N S TO P O W E R YO U R G R O W T H I T S N E . C O M / B C • 8 8 8 - 2 6 4 - 7 8 5 2 We're a 330-bed hospital, with more than 26 subspecialties, inpatient and outpatient services, diagnostic imaging, and 24-hour emergency department. So our data needs are large and critical, demanding extreme reliability and redundancy. ITS has the #1 team in the country for IBM product support, an uber-SAN expert, and one of the nation's leaders in Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM). Their response is much faster than ordinary tech support, who have to follow protocols like suggesting, 'first run X utility.' —Tom Fairfield, Director of Technical Services at Catholic Medical Center, Manchester, NH "They make my job easier every day." " " I T S M E E T S A H O S P I TA L' S S TA N DA R D S F O R I B M E N T E R P R I S E S Y S T E M , S A N , & B AC K U P / R E C O V E R Y " I T S P U T S T H E ' VA L U E ' I N VA L U E - A D D E D R E S E L L E R ." Dollar Tree Inc. NASDAQ: DTLR Headquarters: Charlotte, N.C. Founded: 1986, acquired Family Dollar in July 2015 Sales (fiscal 2016): $20.7 billion Employees: 175,000-plus Stores: 14,744 Dollar Tree, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree Canada stores (as of Oct. 28, 2017) 7,000 SKUs per store Stores are typically 8,000 to 10,000 square feet of selling space 24 distribution centers In Maine: 100 stores (38 Dollar Tree and 62 Family Dollar), typically 10–15 employees per store F O C U S Dialing for dollars Dollar stores zero in on Maine Brien Walton, assistant professor of entrepreneurship at Husson University, says dollar stores appeal to customers from a range of incomes. He's pictured outside a Dollar Tree store in Bangor.

• Cover