99 Cents Only Stores

In t And the reason for that is, on April 4th they announced they will be closing all of their stores and liquidating the company. The liquidation started the next day, and it even includes the buildings if they own them. If you're not familiar with the 99 cents only stores, they're a discount retailer similar to places They have locations in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Texas, but about half of those 371 locations are in California. The reasons that the company has given for why they're shutting down are things Back in 2011 they were purchased via a leveraged buyout for $1. 6 billion, and if you don't know what a leveraged buyout is, that basically means that the money that they were purchased for that $1. 6 billion was new debt that was tacked on to any debt the company already had. Almost exactly five years ago I did a video covering 99 cents only stores because a lot of that debt from the leveraged buyout was going to start coming up to be due at the time, and I felt As a matter of fact, the last year that the 99 cents only stores were profitable was in 2015. W I think really what killed them is being enc I mentioned earlier that these stores are similar to places I don't Now there isn't much left on the shelves here, but what is here is stuff that you definitely wouldn't find at any other discount store What I find interesting about store liquidation sales is that you can start to see the years of built up grime and stuff that's usually I know that looks pretty bad, but even at fancy grocery stores when you just peel back a few layers they look I have been in some areas where all of the grocery stores have closed up and the only place nearby to get things So the loss of these stores is going to be pretty awful for some neighborhoods. Most of those neighborhoods also probably have a Family Dollar or Dollar General, but Besides the halfway decent grocery selection they do carry all the other stuff that you expect a discount store to carry From what I understand, Ayres Management and the CPP Investment Board who are the current owners of the company that screwed t Some neighborhoods are going to lose their only grocery store, but hey at least the owners of the company will still be able to distribute knockoff GI Joes to other discount retailers or if not knockoff some of the smallest GI Joes you've ever seen. I always do What I did see here though is an emergency exit with boxes cluttered in front of it. Why do all discount store chains feel the need to do there's plenty of room for these boxes of wrapping paper over by the greeting card. You can see there are plenty of room. Why do you have to clutter stuff up near the emergency exit? Although that isn't nearly as heinous as an example of it as what I've seen at Family Dollar and Dollar General. Somet T But I did notice they aren't discounting things as heavily yet and from the cart'sole over it looks The more time I spend in these particular stores the more I get a sense of an 80's grocery store aesthetic to them and I actually quite enjoy that so it does b There is another location not too far from t So far I've been talking about what's currently going on with the 99 cents only stores but it is probably worth going over a little bit of their The founder of the company Dave Gold opened the first 99 cents only store in Los Angeles, California in 1982 but In the 1960's he owned a liquor store in Los Angeles, California and he started experimenting with selling bottles of wine at 99 cents. He noticed that as he priced t I noticed the fresh produce section of they do have fresh Kiwis here though. It's kind of interesting to see that'somet Do you see what I mean about it feeling kind of Those frozen and deli signs using that font with those colors just feels very 1980's to me. Seeing thrifty ice cream makes it feel I used to see t Here's a closer look at some of t You can see they have regular milk, oat milk, soy milk, they've got yogurt, they've got actual juice. It's not all just the kind of crappy junk food that you would find at Dollar General and Family Dollar a lot of times. Some of that there is actually cheese. Although they do have the pasteurized cheese product as well. They're currently only doing a 5% discount on food right now but a lot of t So Imagine once the discount gets down far enough all of the company did mention that they plan on wrapping up the liquidation process by June. So Imagine in a few more weeks these shelves will be a lot more barren. As I was walking down this aisle I noticed that there were a ton of heli I know if I had worked here in my younger days being the other employees would have figured out how to make some blow dart guns to get those balloons to come down. Even though all 371 locations are closing there may be a glimmer of hope for the 99 cents only stores. A few days after they filed for bankruptcy a man named Mark J. Miller who is the CEO of Pick and Save Bargains and a former president of Big Lots announced that he had a group of investors together that were ready to try and acquire the California locations w If they're successful they plan to reopen the California locations about 90 days after the liquidation sale ends. They say that'll give them enough time to restock and do some cleanup and renovations. If they are successful I hope they're also able to If you haven't been able to tell throughout the video that I'm a little bit salty about all of these stores closing I am and it's because of the leveraged buyout situation. I don'they get purchased through these leveraged buyouts, they're saddled with a ton of debt and then one or two missteps dooms the company whereas a financially healthy company would be able to recover. These kind of buyouts don't do anybody any good except for the handful of executives at these investment firms who make a bunch of money from them, run the company into the ground and then just discard them and move on to the next one Obviously, the 99 cents only stores aren'the nicest stores in the world but I think they're much better than their competitors And t Family Dollar just recently announced that they plan on closing thousands of stores over the next few years. That's a story for another video though. Hopefully that new investor group is successful in keeping the California stores alive because at least that means some neighborhoods won't lose the only place nearby to purchase real food. Food deserts are a problem and I t But what are your thoughts on the 99 cents only stores? Is it a store chain that you shop at and is it a place that you're sad to see go? Let me know down in the comments below. As always everyone,