Dollarama Inc. is a Canadian dollar store retail chain headquartered in Montreal. Since 2009, it has been Canada's largest retailer of items for four dollars or less. Dollarama has over 1000 stores and has a presence in every province of Canada; Ontario has the most stores.
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History
The first Dollarama store was opened at the shopping centre "Les promenades du St-Laurent" in Matane. Lawrence Rossy was head of the then-parent company of Dollarama, the now-defunct Rossy S Inc. discount store chain (not to be confused with Rossy Michael, another discount chain). He founded the privately held chain in 1992 and created a profitable business that became very successful. By the late 1990s, Dollarama had become by far the primary source of revenue for the Rossy family. As such, the Rossy S division was closed with all of its stores either closed or converted into Dollarama stores.
In November 2004, 80 percent of the chain was sold for $850 million US, to a private equity fund, Bain Capital, of Boston, Massachusetts.
In 2013, Dollarama was planning to expand its market to Latin America, and made an eight-year agreement to share its business expertise and provide sourcing services to Dollar City, a Salvadoran chain of dollar stores in Central America and Colombia in 2017.
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
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 subsequently introduced items at $2.50 and $3.00 in August 2012. They again increased price points to include $3.50 and $4.00 items in August 2016. This price level increase allowed the chain to acquire products from a greater variety of sources, including closeout sales. and adjustments may eventually happen to all prices.
Payment in Dollarama stores was once by cash only, until Interac debit cards were added as a payment option beginning in 2008. Gift cards began to be offered in 2011. As of 2015, all Dollarama stores additionally support contactless Interac Flash payments. In March 2017, Dollarama announced that credit cards 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, following a successful pilot program.
Many of the Dollarama stores are located where there once were BiWay stores, a defunct Canadian discount retail chain, which closed after a series of dubious financial transactions involving a new owner of the parent operation.
Amongst Canadian dollar store chains, Dollarama has pioneered by sourcing customized products from manufacturers, evidenced by the numerous in-store items which have Dollarama's name printed on the product labels. In mid-2009 it joined other retail chains in rolling out its own store brand, "D". Unlike most dollar/discount stores, it sources products directly from manufacturers, rather than local distributors.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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