Are Dollar Stores The True Retail Disrupters?

Lost in all the news this past week about Amazon’s massive Prime Day results, Walmart WMT +0.38%’s multi-pronged effort to stay competitive and assorted Chinese e-commerce shenanigans was perhaps the single most important statement about the current state of American retailing. Dollar Tree DLTR +0.01%, parent company to both its namesake stores and Family Dollar, announced it had just opened its 15,000th store. That would be remarkable unto itself if it weren’t for the fact that in reaching that total, Dollar Tree only equals the approximate number of stores operated by its main rival in the small-box discount category, Dollar General DG -0.14% Think about that: 30,000 stores between just two retail chains. And that doesn’t include all the dollar-wannabes like 99¢ Only Stores, Dollarama , Five Below, Jack’s and on and on.And by the time you finish reading this, one or two additional stores might have opened.