{"id":7179,"date":"2016-06-20T15:02:01","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T15:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom.chainstoreguide.com\/?p=7179"},"modified":"2016-06-20T15:02:01","modified_gmt":"2016-06-20T15:02:01","slug":"five-below-and-rising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/2016\/06\/five-below-and-rising\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Below \u2013 and Rising"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your eleven-year-old and almost every Wall Street analyst have something in common. They both love Five Below, the fast-growing discount retailer that \u201coffers extreme-value on thousands of trend-right products for teens and pre-teens\u201d (in their own words).<\/p>\n

David Schlessinger and Tom Vellios started the company in 2002, taking it public in 2012. Prior to Five Below, Schlessinger was founder and Vellios CEO of Zany Brainy, a retailer specializing in educational toys for children and pre-teens. The Zany Brainy concept went bust 2001, and Schlessinger and Vellios ditched educational toys for the cheap-stuff market.<\/p>\n

In an uneven and often challenging environment that has the backs of many retailers against the wall, Five Below\u2019s stock price hit a 52-week high this month upon release of its first-quarter earnings. The company reported a 25% net sales increase (4.9% comp store) for the previous four quarters and a 19% increase in store count. The company plans to add a total of 85 new stores in 2016 to a 2015 base of 439.<\/p>\n

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\"Five<\/p>\n

Source: Chain Store Guide Database of Discount Stores and Specialty Retailers<\/em><\/p>\n

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The Five Below playbook reads like a mashup of strategic plans from the dollar-store and fast-fashion segments, two additional retail bright spots. The former relies on older consumers for success while the latter targets Millennials and Generation Z.<\/p>\n

\u2714\u00a0 Price: <\/strong>Merchandise priced between $1 and $5 brings the dollar-store experience to the younger set working with allowance-level funds.<\/p>\n

\u2714\u00a0 Disposable product: <\/strong>As with dollar stores and purveyors of fast fashion, we\u2019re not talking about heirloom-quality purchases here, rather something, anything, to enjoy this weekend (and maybe the next). Fun, low-price, disposable product keeps the kids coming back for more.<\/p>\n

\u2714\u00a0 Selection: <\/strong>Assuming the role of the Forever 21 in the general merchandise space and responding to its audience\u2019s demand for the new and the now, Five Below provides shoppers with a constantly changing selection.<\/p>\n

\u2714\u00a0 Brands: <\/strong>Markedly unimportant to this demographic in the apparel space, on-trend brands like Star Wars, Hello Kitty, Marvel and Shopkins at the above-mentioned price points are a competitive advantage, especially as compared to knock-off and off-brand offerings in toys and games at other deep discounters.<\/p>\n

In addition to these factors, Five Below benefits from its ability to attract consumers above and beyond its target market owing to a general attraction to the dollar-store experience and the ever-increasing tendency for older adults to identify with childhood\/teenage interests and products (think Star Wars and Hello Kitty).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your eleven-year-old and almost every Wall Street analyst have something in common. They both love Five Below, the fast-growing discount retailer that \u201coffers extreme-value on thousands of trend-right products for teens and pre-teens\u201d (in their own words). David Schlessinger and Tom Vellios started the company in 2002, taking it public in 2012. Prior to Five… Continue reading Five Below \u2013 and Rising<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"post-template-no-sidebar.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-7179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discount-specialty","tag-csg-exclusive","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}