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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California-based 99 Cents Solely Shops mentioned Friday it can shut all 371 of its retailers, ending the chain’s 42-year run of promoting an assortment of bargain-basement merchandise.
The corporate has shops throughout California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas that may start will promoting off their merchandise, in addition to fixtures, furnishings and tools.
Interim CEO Mike Simoncic mentioned in an announcement that the retailer has struggled for years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, modifications in client demand, inflation and rising ranges of product “shrink” — a measure that encompasses losses from worker theft, shoplifting, harm, administrative errors and extra.
“This was a particularly tough resolution and isn’t the end result we anticipated or hoped to realize,” mentioned Simoncic, who can be stepping down. “Sadly, the final a number of years have offered important and lasting challenges within the retail surroundings.”
The shuttering of 99 Cents Solely Shops comes after fellow low cost retailer Greenback Tree final month mentioned it was closing 1,000 shops.
99 Cents Solely Shops was based in 1982 by Dave Gold, who opened its first retailer in Los Angeles on the age of fifty, in accordance with his 2013 obituary within the Los Angeles Occasions. Gold, who had been working at a liquor retailer owned by his father, discovered that marking down surplus gadgets to 99 cents prompted them to promote out “very quickly,” fueling his want to launch a brand new spin on the greenback retailer.
“I spotted it was a magic quantity,” he informed the Occasions. “I believed, wouldn’t or not it’s enjoyable to have a retailer the place every little thing was good high quality and every little thing was 99 cents?”
Disregarding doubting family and friends members, Gold cast forward. His thought caught on shortly, even in middle-class and upscale neighborhoods, permitting the corporate to go public on the New York Inventory Trade in 1996. It was later bought for roughly $1.6 billion in 2011.
Gold turned a multimillionaire however lived modestly. His household informed the Occasions he lived in the identical middle-class dwelling for almost 5 many years together with his spouse of 55 years and drove the identical Toyota Prius he bought in 2000.
Whereas the chain initially bought most gadgets priced at 99 cents, in latest many years that turned untenable, though the corporate stored its trademarked identify.
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