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Dollarama is a Canadian
dollar store A variety store (also five and dime (historic), pound shop, or dollar store) is a retail store that sells general merchandise, such as apparel, automotive parts, dry goods, toys, hardware, home furnishings, and a selection of groceries. It u ...
retail Retail is the sale of goods and Service (economics), services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturing, manufacturers, dire ...
chain headquartered in
Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...
. Since 2009 it is Canada's largest retailer of items for five dollars or less. Dollarama has over 1400 stores and has a presence in every province of Canada; Ontario has the most stores.


History


Rossy S Inc.

The first all-dollar store was founded in Montreal in 1910 by Salim Rassy, a Lebanese immigrant, whose name became Rossy. His son George took over the retailer in 1937 and led the company until his death in 1973 when grandson Larry Rossy assumed leadership of it when it had 20 stores.


Dollarama

The discount retailer grew to 44 stores by 1992 which until then operated under the name Rossy S Inc. (not to be confused with Rossy Michael, a similar chain founded in 1949 by another son of Salim Rassy). That year, Larry Rossy opened the first Dollarama at the shopping centre "Les promenades du St-Laurent" in Matane. By the late 1990s, Dollarama had become by far the primary source of revenue for the Rossy family. As such, the Rossy S chain was discontinued by the turn of the new millennium, with all of its stores either closed or converted into Dollarama locations. After converting all the locations to the dollar store concept, Larry Rossy continued to open new stores reaching 1,000 stores in 2015. In November 2004, 80 percent of the chain was sold for $850 million US, to a
private equity fund A private equity fund (abbreviated as PE fund) is a collective investment scheme used for making investments in various equity (and to a lesser extent debt) securities according to one of the investment strategies associated with private equity ...
,
Bain Capital Bain Capital is an American private investment firm based in Boston. It specializes in private equity, venture capital, credit, public equity, impact investing, life sciences, and real estate. Bain Capital invests across a range of industry se ...
, of
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...
.


Post IPO

Dollarama's
initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...
took place on October 9, 2009. In 2013, Dollarama was planning to expand its market to
Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...
, and made an eight-year agreement to share its business expertise and provide sourcing services to Dollar City, a Salvadoran chain of
dollar store A variety store (also five and dime (historic), pound shop, or dollar store) is a retail store that sells general merchandise, such as apparel, automotive parts, dry goods, toys, hardware, home furnishings, and a selection of groceries. It u ...
s in
Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...
and
Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the ...
. In 2016, Dollarama established a partnership with the Marco G. R. Enterprise, resulting in the sponsorship of the first edition of the Formula Windsor Championship. In 2018, Dollarama recalled over 50,000 children's toys due to dangerous levels of
phthalates Phthalates (, ), or phthalate esters, are esters of phthalic acid. They are mainly used as plasticizers, i.e., substances added to plastics to increase their flexibility, transparency, durability, and longevity. They are used primarily to soften ...
. The number of stores in October 2021 was 539 in Ontario, 379 in Québec, 134 in Alberta, 111 in British Columbia, 42 in New Brunswick, 41 in Manitoba, 40 in Nova Scotia, 40 in Saskatchewan, 25 in Newfoundland and Labrador, and 5 in Prince Edward Island. The company announced that it would open 700 new locations across Canada (including a few replacements for some of the Great Canadian Dollar Store locations) in the aforementioned provinces as well as their first store in the
Yukon Territory Yukon (; ; formerly called Yukon Territory and also referred to as the Yukon) is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the second-least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 43,964 as ...
.


Business practices

Many items are priced at $1.00 or less, and initially almost all items were priced as such. In early 2009, Dollarama began to introduce items priced up to $2.00 (including $1.25 and $1.50 price points). Due to the positive response from consumers to the multi-price point strategy, the stores introduced items at $2.50 and $3.00 in August 2012. It again increased price points to include $3.50 and $4.00 items in August 2016. In 2022, Dollarama announced that its maximum price point would be increasing to $5.00. This price level increase allowed the chain to acquire products from a greater variety of sources, including closeout sales. Adjustments may eventually happen to all prices. Dollarama has always had a No Return and No Exchange Policy. Once an item is bought, it cannot be returned or exchanged. Payment in Dollarama stores was once by
cash In economics, cash is money in the physical form of currency, such as banknotes and coins. In bookkeeping and financial accounting, cash is current assets comprising currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-im ...
only, until
Interac Interac is a Canadian interbank network that links financial institutions and other enterprises for the purpose of exchanging electronic financial transactions. Interac serves as the Canadian debit card system and the predominant funds transf ...
debit card A debit card, also known as a check card or bank card is a payment card that can be used in place of cash to make purchases. The term '' plastic card'' includes the above and as an identity document. These are similar to a credit card, but ...
s were added as a payment option beginning in 2008.
Gift cards A gift card also known as gift certificate in North America, or gift voucher or gift token in the UK is a prepaid stored-value money card, usually issued by a retailer or bank, to be used as an alternative to cash for purchases within a parti ...
began to be offered in 2011. As of 2015, all Dollarama stores also support contact-less Interac Flash payments. In March 2017, Dollarama announced that
credit cards A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the ...
would be offered as a payment option at all stores by the end of summer 2018. Customers will be able to pay with Visa, Mastercard, and
American Express American Express Company (Amex) is an American multinational corporation, multinational corporation specialized in payment card industry, payment card services headquartered at 200 Vesey Street in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Lower Man ...
, following a successful pilot program. Many Dollarama stores were opened in place of former locations of the now defunct BiWay, which closed after a series of dubious financial transactions involving a new owner of the parent operation. Dollarama launched its online store on January 21, 2019 where it will sell many of its products in bulk. Only 1000 of the roughly 4000 products offered in Dollarama stores will be sold online, namely items that are easily purchased in bulk. Most large scale modern dollar stores sourced products from their inception from China beginning in the mid-1990s when they appeared on the retail landscape. This was the same time when Chinese companies entered the market and were allowed to manufacture for Western countries. Dollarama started branding sourced products starting in the very early 2000s. Such brands include the store's line of stationery branded as Studio, and plastic storage containers under the name Plastico. For a long period of time the public did not know that these were created brands by Dollarama. This would only have been known if customers scrutinized the labels. Such practices were not new: private labels were created as a far back as the early 1930s in Canada by Canadian Tire with Motomaster products, and most retail stores followed. An extremely large percentage of Dollarama products are privately sourced. In mid-2009 it rolled out its own store brand, "D". Unlike small dollar/discount stores, it sources most of its products directly from manufacturers, rather than from local unknown distributors.


See also

* A Buck or Two *
Dollar Tree Dollar Tree, Inc. is an American multi-price-point chain of discount variety stores. Headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia, it is a ''Fortune'' 500 company and operates 15,115 stores throughout the 48 contiguous U.S. states and Canada. Its s ...
* Great Canadian Dollar Store * Your Dollar Store with More


References


External links


Official website

CNW: Dollarama
press releases {{Morningstar National Bank Québec Index Companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange Franchises Variety stores Discount stores of Canada Companies based in Montreal Private equity portfolio companies Bain Capital companies S&P/TSX 60 Retail companies established in 1992 1992 establishments in Quebec Canadian brands Office supply companies of Canada