THE TRUTH ABOUT DOLLAR STORE SERVICES-DRSS-DISCOUNT PARTY STORES –MAIL BOX CENTERS
We were let go from the company about November of 2014. We waited till our unemployment was finished before giving out this information. We will be 100% truthful even thou it will show that we are also low life. Even when we knew the truth about DRSS we stayed and lied to clients about the most important details because we were told to follow policy.
Let’s start in the dollar store division. We were told to tell prospects that they would get 20%-25% discount on all the products they bought from their connections. At 1st we all thought this was true. I have opened about 35 dollar stores and my friend has open about 20 dollar stores or mail box store combined. These discounts are 100% false.
Merchandise is the most important part of the store. If you cannot get great products at a reasonable price then you’re out of business fast.
From our research our clients tell us that about half of the dollar store products sit on the shelves after the store opens and the items that do sell will cost about 85 cents each plus freight. Freight is included on all opening orders and then may be negotiable. The company tells you the average cost of merchandise is about 54-55 cents. This may be true on the opening order because your store is filled with mostly junk and some good selling brand names. They even say on their web site that they save you 20%-25% on merchandise. THINK ABOUT IT-YOU’RE BUYING MERCHANDISE CHEAPER THAT DOLLAR TREE??--IN THEIR PARTY DIVISION THEY SAY YOU ARE BUYING PRODUCT 35% CHEAPER THAT PARTY CITY??-YOU HAVE TO BE INSANE TO BELIEVE ALL OF THIS .DRSS even records all conversations and they know their reps all spilling this garbage.
Reference’s-HERE IS A BIG JOKE-reps are told only to use new stores as references because they are still excited about opening a new business. As of late 2014 DRSS had opened about 3200 stores but only had about 425 opened at that time. We had to change our cell numbers because too many of our clients were calling and begging for help. GOD couldn’t help these store owners.
They tell you that your dollar store location should generate about $185 per square foot per year in business. Even if that was true and it is not, you can’t keep the doors opened when your markup is about 15%.-20%.
FINANCE-If you use their suggested financing you will be getting as many as 8-20 credit cards and told not to cash them until you get instructions from them to liquidate the cards so you can pay DRSS and your new landlord. The next month your FICO score just dropped to about 500 not the 700 plus you had. Your credit is now almost worthless. If you pay cash or use your 401 you can say bye to your money. I CAN PROVIDE YOU OF MANY STORE OWNERS THAT CAN TELL YOU THE SAME OR JUST READ THE COMPLAINTS LISTED ON RIP OFF REPORTS. The credit cards may give you a grace period of no interest and your DRSS finance rep will convince you that you will make enough profit in that time to pay off the credit cards before your free interest rate is up. No store has ever ACCOMPLISHED THIS FEAT. Think about this. If you get $70,000-$100,000 on credit cards and your free interest is for about 1 year, your payment will be about $6,000-$8000 per month to pay them off before your 15%-20% interest rate starts. Only a few stores can even sell that amount of merchandise a month. Maybe if your store was over 5000 feet you may sell that much. Most store are only 1000ft -2000ft in size. There lucky, very lucky to even last one year. READ THE RIP OFF REPORTS.
They will tell you that a store will average $185 per foot each year. Let’s take a small store, maybe 1000 square feet. At these low numbers you should generate $185,000 in business your 1st year. Your average mark may be about 25% if you are very lucky and you won’t be. This should generate about $46,000 per year in profit. If your rent is only $2000 per month and your loan payment is just $5000 per month that alone comes to $84,000 paid out in the 1st year not counting insurance, utilities, pay roll and so much more. The numbers don’t lie. You take in $46,000 gross profit and payout at least $84,000 in the 1st year. You’re short about $38,000 plus all the other overhead each month. Your next step will be close the store and probably file bankruptcy later in the year. The larger the store the larger your loss will be.
I opened up my Dollar Store in October 2012. I went to the 3 day training in Las Vegas and they went over all the discount vendor pricing and the .55 cents monthly goal you need to maintain to be successful as a dollar store owner.
They had all the spreadsheets for you to keep track of your inventory and your daily sales. You also get access to their website so you can get the list of their vendors that give the special pricing discount of 20-25% to the JW store owners. Sounds really legit.
They also took us to a Dollar Store in Las Vegas that had been open for 4 months for a tour, talk to the owner and ask questions. We did notice that his shelves were a little bare but he told us he was waiting for a shipment. They closed 6 months later.
I had 3 other new store owners in the training with me and we all kept in touch and 6 months later all of us were in the same boat sinking fast. We are all closed but they moved into a smaller store and changed it to a dollar plus and is still struggling from closing the Dollar Store.
Your build out is overpriced. I had so much leftover slat walls, shelving and hooks taking up space in my storage just like all the other store owners I talked too. Then you get the keys to your brand new store and a stack of invoices of all the merchandise purchased for your store.
When you have time to go through all of it you notice that it’s so lopsided. All the great pet supplies, chemicals, HBA and food are over .80 cents and the merchandise under .40 cents is junk.
So now you open your doors and what sells is all your high end items so now any profit you made you have to replenish with the low profit margin of .20 cents on the dollar. Customers start noticing your shelves are a little light and you just tell them you are waiting for a shipment.
Now when go to order your items with these vendors you must have at least $1000.00 order for a full pallet or the item is no longer in stock (which happens a lot).
The JW discount is just pennies off the listed price. JW now has their own merchandise but it’s a lot of junk and no chemicals, paper products or food just a lot of nothing.
Of course they have a rep assigned to you to help with your ordering but they can only help so much and then they try to get you to buy dollar plus items. Many times they send me specials but most of it is dollar plus items. I would e-mail them or call and tell them don’t send me anything unless I can profit from it in a Dollar Store
I couldn’t believe that an employee of DRSS was brave enough to come forward. I was talking to a store owner and we couldn’t believe that John LaFronz can sleep at night knowing that he left a lot of families filing bankruptcy.
I tried very hard to keep my store going but after 2 years it was too hard to keep up. I had to put additional money out of my pocket and raise prices but once you open up as a Dollar Store it’s difficult to change to a Dollar Plus because your customers can go to Dollar Tree.
I am in the process of filing bankruptcy now and I paid cash to DRSS so I am out over 100,000.00, I wished I would’ve used their financing so I wouldn’t of had to pay back all that money and I would still have money in the bank.
Bottom line STAY AWAY you don’t get 20% to 25% discount from the JW vendors, shipping is costly if you are not careful. Your high turnover items are only your chemicals, food, HBA and paper products that you will NEVER get for under 79 cents.
You are looking at 3 to 6 months max and then the downward spiral starts.
If I can get one person to read this and not make the same mistake I feel like I have succeeded.
Anyone can contact me and I have all my documentation to support what I am saying and DRSS does not have any documentation to support all the success stories that have been talking about.
Dollar Store Services Reviews
THE TRUTH ABOUT DOLLAR STORE SERVICES-DRSS-DISCOUNT PARTY STORES –MAIL BOX CENTERS
We were let go from the company about November of 2014. We waited till our unemployment was finished before giving out this information. We will be 100% truthful even thou it will show that we are also low life. Even when we knew the truth about DRSS we stayed and lied to clients about the most important details because we were told to follow policy.
Let’s start in the dollar store division. We were told to tell prospects that they would get 20%-25% discount on all the products they bought from their connections. At 1st we all thought this was true. I have opened about 35 dollar stores and my friend has open about 20 dollar stores or mail box store combined. These discounts are 100% false.
Merchandise is the most important part of the store. If you cannot get great products at a reasonable price then you’re out of business fast.
From our research our clients tell us that about half of the dollar store products sit on the shelves after the store opens and the items that do sell will cost about 85 cents each plus freight. Freight is included on all opening orders and then may be negotiable. The company tells you the average cost of merchandise is about 54-55 cents. This may be true on the opening order because your store is filled with mostly junk and some good selling brand names. They even say on their web site that they save you 20%-25% on merchandise. THINK ABOUT IT-YOU’RE BUYING MERCHANDISE CHEAPER THAT DOLLAR TREE??--IN THEIR PARTY DIVISION THEY SAY YOU ARE BUYING PRODUCT 35% CHEAPER THAT PARTY CITY??-YOU HAVE TO BE INSANE TO BELIEVE ALL OF THIS .DRSS even records all conversations and they know their reps all spilling this garbage.
Reference’s-HERE IS A BIG JOKE-reps are told only to use new stores as references because they are still excited about opening a new business. As of late 2014 DRSS had opened about 3200 stores but only had about 425 opened at that time. We had to change our cell numbers because too many of our clients were calling and begging for help. GOD couldn’t help these store owners.
They tell you that your dollar store location should generate about $185 per square foot per year in business. Even if that was true and it is not, you can’t keep the doors opened when your markup is about 15%.-20%.
FINANCE-If you use their suggested financing you will be getting as many as 8-20 credit cards and told not to cash them until you get instructions from them to liquidate the cards so you can pay DRSS and your new landlord. The next month your FICO score just dropped to about 500 not the 700 plus you had. Your credit is now almost worthless. If you pay cash or use your 401 you can say bye to your money. I CAN PROVIDE YOU OF MANY STORE OWNERS THAT CAN TELL YOU THE SAME OR JUST READ THE COMPLAINTS LISTED ON RIP OFF REPORTS. The credit cards may give you a grace period of no interest and your DRSS finance rep will convince you that you will make enough profit in that time to pay off the credit cards before your free interest rate is up. No store has ever ACCOMPLISHED THIS FEAT. Think about this. If you get $70,000-$100,000 on credit cards and your free interest is for about 1 year, your payment will be about $6,000-$8000 per month to pay them off before your 15%-20% interest rate starts. Only a few stores can even sell that amount of merchandise a month. Maybe if your store was over 5000 feet you may sell that much. Most store are only 1000ft -2000ft in size. There lucky, very lucky to even last one year. READ THE RIP OFF REPORTS.
They will tell you that a store will average $185 per foot each year. Let’s take a small store, maybe 1000 square feet. At these low numbers you should generate $185,000 in business your 1st year. Your average mark may be about 25% if you are very lucky and you won’t be. This should generate about $46,000 per year in profit. If your rent is only $2000 per month and your loan payment is just $5000 per month that alone comes to $84,000 paid out in the 1st year not counting insurance, utilities, pay roll and so much more. The numbers don’t lie. You take in $46,000 gross profit and payout at least $84,000 in the 1st year. You’re short about $38,000 plus all the other overhead each month. Your next step will be close the store and probably file bankruptcy later in the year. The larger the store the larger your loss will be.
I opened up my Dollar Store in October 2012. I went to the 3 day training in Las Vegas and they went over all the discount vendor pricing and the .55 cents monthly goal you need to maintain to be successful as a dollar store owner.
They had all the spreadsheets for you to keep track of your inventory and your daily sales. You also get access to their website so you can get the list of their vendors that give the special pricing discount of 20-25% to the JW store owners. Sounds really legit.
They also took us to a Dollar Store in Las Vegas that had been open for 4 months for a tour, talk to the owner and ask questions. We did notice that his shelves were a little bare but he told us he was waiting for a shipment. They closed 6 months later.
I had 3 other new store owners in the training with me and we all kept in touch and 6 months later all of us were in the same boat sinking fast. We are all closed but they moved into a smaller store and changed it to a dollar plus and is still struggling from closing the Dollar Store.
Your build out is overpriced. I had so much leftover slat walls, shelving and hooks taking up space in my storage just like all the other store owners I talked too. Then you get the keys to your brand new store and a stack of invoices of all the merchandise purchased for your store.
When you have time to go through all of it you notice that it’s so lopsided. All the great pet supplies, chemicals, HBA and food are over .80 cents and the merchandise under .40 cents is junk.
So now you open your doors and what sells is all your high end items so now any profit you made you have to replenish with the low profit margin of .20 cents on the dollar. Customers start noticing your shelves are a little light and you just tell them you are waiting for a shipment.
Now when go to order your items with these vendors you must have at least $1000.00 order for a full pallet or the item is no longer in stock (which happens a lot).
The JW discount is just pennies off the listed price. JW now has their own merchandise but it’s a lot of junk and no chemicals, paper products or food just a lot of nothing.
Of course they have a rep assigned to you to help with your ordering but they can only help so much and then they try to get you to buy dollar plus items. Many times they send me specials but most of it is dollar plus items. I would e-mail them or call and tell them don’t send me anything unless I can profit from it in a Dollar Store
I couldn’t believe that an employee of DRSS was brave enough to come forward. I was talking to a store owner and we couldn’t believe that John LaFronz can sleep at night knowing that he left a lot of families filing bankruptcy.
I tried very hard to keep my store going but after 2 years it was too hard to keep up. I had to put additional money out of my pocket and raise prices but once you open up as a Dollar Store it’s difficult to change to a Dollar Plus because your customers can go to Dollar Tree.
I am in the process of filing bankruptcy now and I paid cash to DRSS so I am out over 100,000.00, I wished I would’ve used their financing so I wouldn’t of had to pay back all that money and I would still have money in the bank.
Bottom line STAY AWAY you don’t get 20% to 25% discount from the JW vendors, shipping is costly if you are not careful. Your high turnover items are only your chemicals, food, HBA and paper products that you will NEVER get for under 79 cents.
You are looking at 3 to 6 months max and then the downward spiral starts.
If I can get one person to read this and not make the same mistake I feel like I have succeeded.
Anyone can contact me and I have all my documentation to support what I am saying and DRSS does not have any documentation to support all the success stories that have been talking about.