Each generation has had a store that was so popular during its time, however, time goes on and things have changed. Stores shut down, mostly due to financial issues this can also result in a time when the stores no longer meet with their current time and they no longer get more service. Some stores do stay mostly due to the community struggling or the current environment showing no care for what store is there. As of 2024 in April we are now going through the first-ever shutdown that is semi-big, depending on the individual and that store is the 99-cent store. The 99-cent store has faced some controversy around when COVID-19 and inflation were kicking in.
The first 99-cent store was opened on August 13, 1982, where everything that was there was a dollar. Upon the grand opening, the first 13 families could buy a television set for 99 cents, and about 300 people were waiting to get in. Now in 2024 that is almost impossible with the controversy that rises against the 99-cent store. It started when COVID made the supplies of almost everything go down, and an easy way to get supplies was at the 99-cent store. After COVID took over everything inflation hit, so it could match with the supply and demand, however, inflation can’t affect the 99-cent store cause it’s the brand name to keep everything a dollar. The only way you can make products at a constant dollar is to pay it yourself, cause suppliers aren’t with the dollar brand only the store is, so the store has to pay suppliers more to keep the products a dollar. With more money they are spending, sadly they could not match with inflations and prices went over a dollar by 30 to 70 cents. Even with the price changing not many people were buying their products, which meant that if they couldn’t make money then unfortunately they had to shut down.
joey zanotti from Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
With the 99-cent store, they couldn’t match the economy prices, which caused them to shut down, the prices were out of date, but other stores were also shut down, due to their out-of-times. Blockbuster is a store known for selling what is called a VHS and it’s a box that contains recording taping that you put in a VCR that plays that recording tape along a TV. It eventually went out of business, since later on we got what is called a DVD, which is a circular disk that is played through a DVD player. After DVD we eventually got streaming services like Netflix, and to think after 3 generations of TV including cable, there is no more room for VHS in the world anymore. Thankfully there is still one Blockbuster in Oregon, Bend that is still up to this day, it remains up by the city of Bend. Also recently they’ve been starting to close Chuck e Cheese an arcade, and entertainment center meant for kids to play games and win prizes. They slowly started closing stores permanently mostly because after COVID they weren’t getting much business anymore.
With what’s left of the 99-cent store right now with the current prices and the economic growth, we now reach a point where 99 cents no longer meet with the time. It’s not just the 99-cent store closing as well it’s every other dollar-type store that is considered an “off-brand” version of the 99-cent store. The stores involved with the shutdown are Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, and Dollar General all for the same reason as the 99-cent store. For all those stores now they no longer connect with us, but we have a different alternative. There is a store called 5 below where you could get anything around 5 or less dollars; it is the closest to the 99-cent store.
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