A few months short of its 42nd birthday, the California-based sundries-and-more chain 99 Cents Only is going to die. An Orange County columnist for the Los Angeles Times delivers this fond obituary while visiting a store in Santa Ana that I used to patronize, and captures much of the appeal. He doesn’t mention the long-running, whimsical weekly newspaper ads (often joking on the 99 rubric) that helped set this retailer apart from the other “dollar stores”–now hulking national rivals–that grew around it, but he’s right about the distinction. As so often in business, the flavor came from the founder, instinctive merchandiser Dave Gold, whom I profiled in Forbes in 1998. His company earlier became a listed–and later quite hot–stock, and disheveled Dave briefly appeared on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. Even frugal Mr. Gold could overreach, however, and the company made an ill-fated expansion into Texas from which the stock never recovered. As the founder neared his death in 2013, the company was sold to private equity. What killed it a decade later–inflation? thievery? competition? California’s business climate?–will be debated. Dave was a Democrat so I doubt he’d blame the politics. “99” still had a loyal customer base, as this ode suggests. Maybe too much of the joy had gone out of its act.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-09/column-99-cent-only-stores-closing
Tim W. Ferguson 