Judgmenl posted... Dollar Tree regularly sells things for over a dollar.
No, they don't. Family Dollar and Dollar General do, but Dollar Tree truly has nothing above $1. (Well, until now.)
But this was going to happen eventually. Dollar Tree as a company is kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. Inflation goes up over time. What's worth a dollar today will be worth two dollars in a decade. For any other retailer, this isn't a big problem since they can just slowly raise prices. But Dollar Tree can't. It's their whole brand identity, it's built right into the name and plastered on signs all over the store.
So as production costs go up, they have to reduce the sizes of products instead of raising the price. Lots of Dollar Tree products have been reduced in size or quantity over the years. Alkaline batteries used to come in a 4-pack, now they're a 2-pack. Bleach recently went from 96oz to 64oz. But eventually you can't reduce the size any more. Do we start selling bleach in tablespoons? How do you sell less than one battery?
That's why they're stuck. When so many products cost more than a dollar to produce and they can't reduce the size any further, then they either have to stop carrying hundreds of products (which hurts their business) or they have to throw away their brand identity (which hurts their business.)
They've clearly chosen option B, but they're doing in a way to minimize damage to their brand, by labeling everything over a dollar as part of "Dollar Tree Plus" rather than just "Dollar Tree." Yeah, it's a marketing gimmick that probably won't work very well (for proof, just see everyone shouting "Dollar Tree isn't a dollar anymore!") but it's the
least bad option they have.
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