The United States is home to Dollar Tree Stores, Inc., the corporation that’s been in operation since 1986 that is responsible for overseeing the operations of nearly 15,000 Dollar Tree stores far and wide across the country. You may not know that Dollar Tree successfully raked in some $22.2 billion in total revenue for the fiscal year of 2017, making it a formidable force among the domestic consumer goods retail industry.
Dollar General is also popular here in the United States. Operated by the corporate entity of Dollar General Corporation, an 80-year-old business, this business welcomed some $25.6 billion in total revenue for the fiscal year of 2018.
Unless you live in rural areas throughout the United States, you may not be familiar with the agressive expansion of Dollar General retail stores across rural areas of the country. Rural areas, unfortunately, are economically unable to support fully-fledged grocery stores or big-box retailers like Walmart.
Traditionally, people in these rural areas have been forced to take lengthy trips to grocers to secure groceries and other common consumer goods.
Within the past several years, Dollar General has invested heavily in the spread of countless new stores across these rural areas. Although, as mentioned above, they’re not able to support fully-fledged grocery stores, they are, on the other hand, suitable enough for maintaining the welfare of Dollar General retail outlets.
Because of this competition from Dollar General, Dollar Tree outlets have been forced to find some other ways to find, obtain, build, and defend competitive advantages.
One way of doing so is through Dollar Tree’s relatively recent addition of over-the-counter drugs as inventory within all such stores across the nation.
Unfortunately for Dollar Tree, the company was just recently tapped on its proverbial shoulder by the United States Food and Drug Administration to stop selling such items. According to silive.com, the FDA has made this decision because these items are “potentially unsafe,” FDA spokespeople have shared with the American public.
News is just now surfacing about this issue, though the FDA actually sent a letter to the parent company of Family Dollar and Dollar Tree retail outlets about the potential harms faced to American consumers as the result of stocking over-the-counter drugs manufactured overseas.
The Food and Drug Administration has warned consumers to stay away from over-the-counter drugs branded as Assured Brand and from all the skincare products that Dollar Tree currently offers.
Dil Bole Oberoi
