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I've
been a frequent visitor to Ollie's stores for a long
time as we have five of them located in Florida's
Tampa Bay area where we are located. As a domain
investor and developer, the first thing I noticed about the
chain was their prominently featured web address - Ollies.us
- that is printed on the millions of flyers and
newspaper ads they produce each year as well as on Help
Wanted banners posted on the new retail buildings they
expand into every month.
It
is interesting to note that the company also owns Ollies.com,
but if you go there you get an error page that tells you to go
to Ollies.us. Whatever Ollie's is doing, they are
doing it right. The public company (NASDAQ: OLLI) rang up
$868 million in sales in the first half of the year.
With the Christmas season still ahead they will easily
surpass $1.7 billion for the year and likely flirt
with the $2 billion mark. Their EBITDA has grown 44%
over the past two years.
Ollie's
was founded in 1982 in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. The late
President and CEO, Mark Butler, co-founded the
the company based on the idea that “everyone in America
loves a bargain.” From the start, Ollie's set
themselves apart as an
extreme value retailer of brand name merchandise at
drastically reduced prices, under their slogan “Good
Stuff Cheap!”
Ollie's
customers
take advantage of deals on housewares, food, books
and stationery, bed and bath, floor
coverings, toys and hardware packed
into warehouse
style stores that average approximately 32,500 square
feet. With that formula, Ollie's has posted consistently
strong financial returns across all vintages, geographic
regions, population densities, demographic groups and, real
estate formats.
With
this track record of proven success, Ollie's is on
track to eventually double the number of stores they
currently have to 950. I'll continue dropping in to
see what's new in their constantly changing inventory and
will continue to appreciate the attention they bring to America's
Internet Address - .US!
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