I was, initially, very impressed with Dollar Retail Store Service (DRSS). Slowly, I became less enchanted with them.
They pushed hard to get me funding from "Seed Capital"...which is getting approved for 9+ credit cards (at 0% for one year, at that time you just "go to a bank" and get a business loan. Ah, that does not work due to income to debt ratio...trust me on this.) You then "liquidate" those credit cards for maximum credit allowed, put your cash into a checking account and DRSS immediately takes it's share off the top! You get what is leftover to TRY and build your business.
The 3 day training was a complete joke. The "trainer" was out and a gal came in who said (regarding the register training) "I've never done this before, but we'll figure it out together", handing us a copy of a manual. The "intructors" were very poorly trained, pompous, slightly greasy and did not know the first thing about actually teaching (I am an instructor, myself). Not to mention, the registers to train on did not work! It was by far the worst "training" I have ever attended!
The build out "manager" spent most of the time telling eveyone how great he was...as he ruined the framing around our windows, mis-cut slat board, and bragged. You hire your friends or strangers to help with the buildout. The "product" supplied is cheap, and a year later, I could not even sell some of the junk! Not even for 25 cents (let alone a dollar)! Some of the product actually fell apart while opening the packaging.
The product I got with my store is from their own supply company! It is by far, the worst product I have ever experienced...and I was stuck with it. As the store owner, I was not even asked what I wanted in the first order...which should be according to where your shop is located and who it serves. It was just a bunch of random stuff. A generic bundle of mostly, very low grade products.
I would never use this company again. They are heartless and they lie - smiling all the while. As I said...beware. This company is morally bankrupt, with a few "men" (hardly) at the top of the pile...making BIG, BIG BUCKS. I know this, one of their staff had a very chatty way about her.
These men on the top of the pile - well, they really are enjoying my money and the money of many, many others who worked hard, earned and saved (sometimes for years)...only to be completely conned, closing their stores and filing banruptcy. DRSS ruins dreams and lives...I beg you, do not do business with DRSS, you will be sorry.
I wanted to open my own business so I invested in a company called Discount Retail Store Services as I believed they were a reputable company because they had opened many stores I had seen posted on their website. They provide financing through Seed Capital, their partner. I was initially misled to believe that the financing would be in a form a loan from SCapital or a bank. I had to pay SCapital $3995. SCapital began applying for credit cards in my name from their location in Las Vegas, NV. They also told me to apply for certain credit cards and exactly what to say to the creditors to get them. I assumed while doing this that the cards would be used towards working capital needed to operate my business outside of my loan. After signing my lease for my location, SCapital instructed me to liquidate the credit cards. I asked them about the loan & was told that I would be doing credit card liquidation. I then asked them what impact liquidating the credit cards would have on my credit score. I was told that it would only drop a few points. I wanted to back out then due to the fact of discovering my financing to pay DRSS was coming from credit cards; however; DRSS told me I would lose the money I invested since they found me a location, so I felt trapped & I had no choice but to proceed with their liquidation process. My credit score dropped from 760 to 450. SCapital & DRSS told me to put the money from the credit card liquidation into a bank account until they informed me on what steps to take next. I was then told to get a cashier’s check & send the money to them. I never received the actual loan. DRSS & SCapital mislead me & their procedure felt very irresponsible; however; feeling that they were the professionals, I believed that they knew what they were doing. I could have easily applied for my own bank loan with my upstanding credit score. SCapital applied for 9 credit cards in my name on the behalf of DRSS to pay themselves from them, build my store out & left me with high debt and no way out. When I tried to apply for a loan after I opened my store for working capital, I was immediately denied. No one would approve me. My debt to income ratio was off the charts! All I had to survive was my personal money I had saved up. That money had to cover two overheads, home & business. My store was not making any profit at all.
This has ruined my life. My store closed quickly. I’m ashamed I fell for such a scheme. Past employees I have spoken too have stated to me that the majority of stores, (90%); DRSS opened has failed due to credit card scheme as well as horrible merchandise. I was told by my attorney that, just by the concept itself, I was doomed before my store even opened. I just want DRSS & SCapital to be exposed so this doesn’t happen to anyone else. DRSS & SCapital’s target audience are good standing credit worthy individuals with money in the bank. Then they come along apply for several credit cards to get their money off the top & victimize you for their sole benefit. Even if your credit is fair, they'll have you to get your score up so they can bust it back down. Also, after I opened my store I was given several paid referrals to speak with other potential clients. I was then asked by DRSS a couple of months after speaking with referrals and the exact words were “please do not tell the clients about the credit card thing because you’re scaring them away”. I know that the truth hurts! Needless to say, I asked to be taken off the referral list if I couldn't be honest with their clients & they glady removed me. I only wish someone was there to make “honest statements” to me about DRSS prior to making my decision. I certainly would have run away as well. The “majority” of the videos on their website of clients businesses are closed. If you do not believe me then try to contact the businesses for yourself. DRSS, your company should be closed down. If you do business with this company you will regret it!!!
Warning: Let me start by saying, if you are considering opening up a retail store, please, I repeat please do not use Discount Retail Store Services nor their financing. There is a 95% chance your store will not survive 6 months.
Discount Retail Store Services, they are very smart, nice, and deceptive all at the same time. If you have great credit or at least enough credit to get them paid; thats all they are concerned with. They will use every sales pitch to sucker you in to open your own store, knowing that you won't have enough operating capital to keep your doors open 3 months (so sad).
They are scamming you from the very first moment you speak with them. Yes, I must say that they deliver well when it comes to building you out a beautiful store, but other than that don't believe all the other hype. Especially the long term support and training is a joke, the initial training is a joke. Trust me if you have the desire to open a retail store, you can get better training on youtube and reading articles on google.
Anyway, I went through them to open my retail store. At the beginning I do remember being pressured by R**h in the finance department to use their financing; they called and emailed seems like me everyday until I decided to go ahead an use their financing, which is a third party company named Seed Capital. They charge you around $3k - 5k to open up multiple lines of credit (credit cards) in your name; they also have you to falsefy and lie about your current income to secure higher credit limits; which was a Red Flag, but I ignored it because I trusted that these people, and considered them to be experts because of the amount of stores they have opened in the past, and I felt that they had my best interest at hand; boy was I wrong. Once you receive these multiple credit cards; they have you to liquidate about 95% of the credit on them, by using the cash advance checks in order for you to pay Discount Retail Store Services.
After you successfully go through the financing, you move on to Real Estate, in which they are suppose to help you find a great location for your business to succeed. All of the locations they provided me were in high crime and run down areas and I totally disapproved. Now I see why they suggested these sites, landlords in those areas are more eager to rent and this would speed you through their process quicker and they get paid. Well I was not going to fall for that, so they had to work a little harder. After I narrowed down 3 locations I approved of, they reached out to the landlords; as you know landlords are very slow with following up and negotiations. Out of the 3 spaces I approved only 1 landlord had followed up in a reasonable amount of time; and St**e at DRSS pitched to me this is a great location, "this is what we call a power shopping center" "the demographics are through the roof" "you will do very good here". So I trusted their judgement, because #1 im paying them almost 100k and number #2, I felt like they had my best interest at hand. So I signed a contract for that space, as a matter of fact it was a 5 yr contract, I was very concerned about this lease, but DRSS assured me that this was a good lease and that I would do great in this location.
So after I finished the Real Estate phase, I went on to Operations, where they actually do the store blueprint, layout, and buildout. This process was horrible, due to the fact renovations on my retail space were not completed on scheduled time, and all of my merchandise was being shipped. I would actually have to blame my landlord for this issue, because he was in charge of renovations; but DRSS were the ones communicating with him on my behalf.
The store buildout went well. The supervisor did a great job with getting the store completed in 5 days.
So here is where the classic bait and switch come in at: Your store is up and running now and DRSS has received their pay and they literally leave you out to crash and burn. Like i mentioned earlier their ongoing support and training is horrible, its a joke. Their empolyess dont have a clue about running a successful retail business.
After several months of ripping and running; going through the process of opening your store; now you have a little down time because customers are not coming in your store, inspite of all the advertising, social media campaigns, coupons, word of mouth, etc; you can't do nothing but sit back, analyze and count up the real cost. This is the point when the $hit hits the fan. So about 3 months after being open and having and optimistic mindset that things would get better; I started researching how much it would cost me to open another store in the future, if I did it on my own. I started pricing store fixtures, merchandise, and etc that I had in my store; I could have fainted after I found out this stuff is dirt cheap. Another thing I started to do was price the inventory that was in my store to see what it added up too. According to my contract with DRSS, I was supposed to have $20k worth of merchandise at wholesale price in my store; hmm I was having a hard time trying to even get to $20k at retail after pricing over 90% of my inventory. Take in mind, yes I had been open for about 3 months; but my sales were through the floor, horrible, less than $7k for that time frame.
I then started to research this company and reach out to other business owners. I soon learned that over 90% of the stores on their website are out of business and the owners had to file bankruptcy. The few that are still open are struggling to stay open just to keep from going bankrupt. All of the business owners I have talked with have similar stories about DRSS.
DRSS does not have your best interest at hand; they will try to get much money as possible out of you as they can. For instance; they receive a commission off of your lease from your retail space, they use your good credit to get paid upfront, they invite you to Vegas to visit their office for bull$hit training.
I have so much more I could say, but I just want to warn anyone who wants to open a retail store to do it on your own. You can do it 75% cheaper than DRSS can and save a lot of money for operating expenses until your store traffic picks up. Talk with other business owners, if you are not their direct competition, they should be willing to give you good advice; hire you a good business attorney before you sign a retail space lease, make sure the lease favors you as the business owner. Take your time and don't rush into being a business owner; its a huge responsibility and will a lot of your time and energy.
DRSS store concepts do not work, I dont care how smart you are or how business savvy you are. DRSS store concepts do not and will not work; you will end up in Bankruptcy in less than 1 year of your store opening. Unfortunately, I had to close my doors after only being in business for 6 months.
DRSS prey on people with good credit who have a desire to open their own business. They make it sound like you need them to do this; all at the same time they are knowing that you will fail. The failure rate using DRSS is very high due to the large amout they scam you out of using your credit, i mean they max your credit outt. You have no room to borrow funds down the road because your debt to equity ratio will be to high. DRSS doesn't care though, why? Because they have gotten all of their fees up front and could care less if you succeed or not. The amout you will be paying on your lease and the lines of credit per month, and other operating expenses will leave you dry each month, as a matter of fact my store never even got to the point of breaking even. I was using personal savings to keep the business going, while also trying to live and take care of my personal life. Within a few months my personal funds were drying up; and the store was showing no signs of improvement, in spite of all my efforts to keep it afloat. My sales were so horrible, if I didn't have any expenses; it still would not have been worth operating the business. I believe they lead me to a location that was not the ideal location for the type of business I had; also the demographic of people in that community were not friendly to minority owned businesses (I learned that after the fact). DRSS main goal is to get you in the quickest location as possible, to keep the ball rolling and them getting paid.
I have so much more, but I will stop here. You have been warned, PLEASE BEWARE!!!! Do not use DRSS.
I do live in a very small town here in Pennsylvania. I was working with Discount Retail store services to open a store. First they request a $500 refundable deposit which I paid. Secondly, they requested $5000 refundable deposit which I again paid. They clearly stated in our conversation if they are not able to find a place suitable enough for my business, I will be entitled to 100% refund of my deposit, no strings attached. I gave their real estate department more than a month to work on that finding a suitable location for the store. They themselves soon realized competition in my town was very high and they couldn’t really find an ideal location for my store. They tried to convince me to do the party store instead. They still were not able to find a convenient and strategic location. When I withdrew from the project and asked for my refunds, their General manager Mr Garrett assured me the refunds have been processed and that I should allow at least one week for the refunds to post to my bank.
Two weeks later no refunds had posted. Contacted Mr Garrett several times both by phone and email. Also contacted Mr Adam, the marketing director but none of them would get back to me. Finally, I was able to get a hold of their VP Mr J.D. Gray who insisted all credit cards obtained through third party must be cancelled prior to any refunds being issued. Note: I actually paid the funding company close to $3500 to obtain the credit, it was not a service offered by Discount retail store services or the funding company for free. Cancelling the cards actually compromises my ability to obtain further credit to start my business either now or in the near future because so much credit line has already been applied for recently.
This is the most dishonest company you will ever deal with. They make their money by accepting deposits from poor folks they will never be able to help. I have told them I will pursue every means possible to get my money back, and I mean it, I will do exactly that, I will stop at nothing until the money is paid in full: $5,500.00. And not only that, I will be a strong advocate for consumers out there wanting to start a dollar or party store – Discount retail store services is not your friend, they will eat your money, ruin your dreams, destroy your credit and render you completely helpless. To Discount Retail Store Services, you cannot make your money by preying on hard working individuals whose only goal is start a small business, help sustain their families and contribute to their respective communities.
Watch out and over the contract before you sign it. Make them itemize all of the things they buy for you.
you can say DRSS is a scam but I would say it’s unethical. They are in it for the money but not for helping people. Their line of vendors are real companies that have been around for years. We went through them as well. If you go on there website and look up D&R $1 Plus. I think you will find it. Anyways, their vendors will offer minimum order value. If you meet it, then you don’t have to pay freight. Of course, owners will do it just to save the freight cost. Dollar store services will encourage you to do so. However, the end result is that you will over spend it and you will end up with higher loan.
Another problem is that for people who can’t have liquid cash to pay for the set up and products in the beginning. Dollar store services will tell you to go through Seed Capital. Everyone else including myself thought Seed Capital would apply for business loan with the banks on our behalf…as if they have magic or negotiation power. The company had me fill out a paper and requires $5000 down. I paid and the company came back with a recommendation that suggested me to apply with a bunch of credit card. I assume everyone that goes through Dollar Store Services ends up with a bunch of credit card. These credit cards have high interest rate but you have one year free of interest.
They will have you go out there and look at the properties, take pictures, and send it back to them. Dollar Store Services said that the employees would search for properties for you. The company means they will search properties from their office with air condition and let you do the hard work. Once they find it, they will tell you to transfer the money to your bank account to pay them even when you’re not even sure to get the space yet. Now you have no choice but to go long with it.
They will use that money to buy products for you and the products suck. Most of them don’t even sell. After a couple of months we open up our store. We changed everything. Also, we raise prices on most of our items as well. If you factor in rent and other operation cost, selling items at 1 dollar is not going to help your store much. You will end up closing the store within 6 months. For us, it was very fortunate. Lets get back to the story. After they deliver everything like get your lease done, shipped the merchandise, your store is set up, they will give you a stack of invoices, which you will have no idea how much they spent on the products, fixtures, and build out team.
Most of the items they ordered on your behalf and priced at 1 dollar for you.. those are not even 1 dollar. They under price it and over spent your money. For instance chef craft, we found out that chef craft products are high quality and American made products. cost margin for them is .65-85 cent. How can you survive at .15 profit?
The cash register Dollar Store services give you is manual. You can’t keep track how much you have in inventory. Owners can easily overspend. That’s what happened to us. Also, the way to calculate the margin,they taught you, is also wrong for this kind of business.
We are in the process of liquidation and I hope you don’t make the same mistake as I and other owners did. The best is to open up a small drink place or ice cream business. But do your due diligence people.
We paid this company over $100,000 in cash for this business. They assured us we could not fail and they would be with us there every step of the way to be sure that did not happen. The only thing they were there for is to take our money then set us up as quickly as possible and then when I called for help, they won't even return my calls. No one I worked with is still there and no one will help us now. They were supposed to help us purchase items for our store and we ended up with excessive amounts of things that we cannot sell even at a flea market! We have 5,000 shirt hangers and 500 pants hangers! Who needs 5,000 hangers? We have hangers boxed up that will never be used. We got over 80 of the same style shirts that we cannot sell. We did not have any experience opening a clothing store. We opened in June, which, I learned is pretty late in the season to be selling summer clothes, but they stocked us completely with summer clothing. So, when fall came around, we had used all of our inventory money to buy summer clothing we couldn't sell and had no money for winter inventory. They never did get our store set up like they said they would and we were never able to pay the rent and had to close after 7 months. At that point, I couldn't get anyone to take my calls at DRSS. I still can't. They took all the money we had and now we have nothing except inventory we can't well and store fixtures that are worth nothing sitting in a storage unit we have to pay rent on each month. They ripped us off!
Do NOT get involved with this company. They do not care if your business FAILS, All they care about is their bottom line......Getting their money.
Your store will be funded from unsecured money from credit cards, which they charge you $5,000.00 because they found the credit cards for you, plus the credit cards will be in your own personal name instead of your business name which makes bankruptcy personal and you risk losing your OWN peronal property.
I had eight {8} credit cards to fund a dollar store, everything was a $1.00. It is NOT even possible to pay that much debt back with an income from a dollar store.
I NEVER heard from any of the big wigs in Las Vegas after getting my store. The only person that called was the person who wanted me to order more inventory.
DRSS negotiated my lease which was for two years which I did not know should have been for only ONE year.
I have to file BANKRUPTCY now due to all the debt from the credit cards and to get out of a two year lease. I am in risk of losing my OWN personal property....Because the credit cards are in MY name and not in a business name.
Discount Retail Store Services tell you that you can start a clothing store with quality clothes for under $10. They tell you that is is only 89,900 to open up a turn key franchise. They do all the work and then give you the keys. That my friends is incorrect. The clothes are not great quality and they are not under $10.00. They do provide you with services of fixing your debt to create more debt but they set you up for failure. Out of the $89,900 you only get 20,000 of inventory and $5,000 on the furniture, signate, some capital and fixtures. The rest goes to them. They do find you places but the demographic surveys are out of date. You still have to meet and pick a place. You still have to do all of the constructions and pay for it yourself. You still have to do all of the marketing and pay for it yourself. The companies they send to you to fix your credit and provide you with the funds, take a percentage of the money the get for you. For example if they get you 80,000 worth of credit cards they take 1 to 3 percent of it. They get you credit lines as well and again take a percentage of it.
You should not do business with them if you do not have the $89,000 in your bank account. The amount of debt they will put you in, you will be claiming bankrupcy after a few months. They tell you the store can produce money but then tell you a different story once you sign the purchasing agreement. A women's clothing store with all of the competition online will only produce $1000 to $4000 a week if you have traffic. Again if you have traffic and there are at least 4 to 6 months out of the year you will not have a lot of traffic. It could produce the higher end if of course the clothes had the quality they stated and they do not have another boutique selling the same clothes around the corner. The jewelry and hand bags fall apart. The clothing falls apart before you even wear it.
I had to hirer a stitcher to repair the clothes as they came in. The cost of the clothes are high so in order for you to make any money you must price high but the clothes are not worth the price. Once you start seeing more returns then sales, you know there is an issue with sizing and quality. They do not want you to follow labor laws. They tell you, that payroll should be minimul which means you yourself working and not paying yourself. Yes this is what a all mom and pop store do, but when you want to bring quality clothes at a reasonalbe price and survive you must think like a business person and brand yourself. You must have great hours and in order to do this, you must hire help. Even family needs to take a break for lunch. They expect you not to give them breaks and break all labor laws. In order for payroll to be minumal you must pay under $10.00, that is great in some states, when you can hire teenager to run your store but what if you work a day job and need an adult to run your store?
If the clothing had the quality they stated then possilbly a clothing store can survive, but make sure you have smaller sized women and teenagers in the area. They do not have correct women's sizes or plus sizes. All of the clothes run very small. The wholesale mall they set you up in also has credit card fraud. Once you do multiple purchase, you will start seeing other charges on your credit card that do not apply to clothes. The vendors you do direct purchasing from, will take a deposit and then not send you the product. Still waiting for one vendor to send me either my deposti or my product. It has been 6 weeks.
Do not do business with them, as a clothing store of any kind. They are better off sticking with cheap products sold at $1.00 stores.
I am a 12 year United States Navy veteran, and I had the dream of owning a business. As many people the idea of having a piece of mind and financial independence was very attractive to me. Discount retail store services (DRSS) definitely ruined that positive perspective of entrepreneurship for me and many others. I started working with DRSS when I was a contractor in Afghanistan in 2013 and was totally preyed on because of my credit score “760”. They make money off good hard working citizens who reached a point of their lives where they have money in the bank and possess excellent credit. You have to have at least a FICO score of 730 to even do business with DRSS. I was misled and lied to in order to fulfill somebody’s financial greed. I was informed that they did everything in-house and had great relationships with different financial intuitions for me to get funding. They said to me “we work for you and we are on your side” , but actually they were destroying me from within .
I was told that they would get me a business loan and even help establish my business credit. With their “in and out” mentality I was passed down to the finance department and then passed to Seed Capital. I was informed by “the professionals” that Seed Capital would be securing funding for me, but I had to pay Seed Capital $4,000 to start the process. I was misguided to believe I was getting a business loan and lines of business credit. After I started working with Seed Capital they started to apply for 10 different credit cards. So when I asked why so many ,I was told it was for working capital . I thought that was very strange ,but maybe it was good to have that on reserve. After being rushed to find a location to secure, I was still waiting to hear something about the actual business loan . There was no business loan, the credit cards were your loan. There was no business lines of credit, it was all personal credit. I had already signed a lease for the building and felt deliberately misled to continue. It felt tremendously irresponsible, and that was not a typical practice of a person with a 760 credit score. I asked DRSS what would this do to my credit and was told it would drop about 30 points. My credit score dropped to a 520. If I would have known about this I would have never agreed to this mismanaging of funds. When my store opened my credit was so exhausted I could not get any type of loan for working capital. There wasn't any “REAL” support from DRSS. They put me so much in debt before I even open there was no chance for true success. I struggled for 6 months and had to close my store for good. Later I had to file bankruptcy because of the tremendous hole I was thrown into. I lost everything I worked for my whole life in 6 months. It is 50 people all over the country who have done business with DRSS and we all share the same story. Meanwhile DRSS is laughing on their way to the bank. BEWARE!!!!
In 2013, a man named Roger introduced me to the dollar store concept. He represented the company DRSS ( Dollar Store Retail Services ). He pointed out that this was not a franchise, but, a business opportunity. He also stated that he and his son were going to open a store themselves. He told me that they had a great net income of 20% to 22% after expences.
I was contacted by Paul Beck, an employee of Dollar Store Services, and we discussed the advantages of being an owner of one of their dollar stores. During our conversation, I asked the gentleman what kind of revenue I could expect to generate, and he told me the stores average $160 to $190 per square foot ( I have the email to prove it ). I was opening a 3000 square foot store, so I took the numbers he gave me, and I split it in the middle, at $175 per sqaure foot, and that totals $525,000 dollars per year ( Over a half million dollars per years ), or $43,750.00 per month.
I did my due diligence, and figured my total rent, wages, taxes, electrical, insurance and all the costs associated with running the store, including replacing product for one year, and after all expences, we should have had a net income of approximately $116,250.00 for my wife and myself. After signing our contracts, Roger told me that he decided to back out of his deal. Now this worried me but, I had already signed my life away to the biggest scam I have ever encountered.
John LaFronze, another employee or DRSS, told me that the average cost of product was .55 cents. When DRSS built out our store, based on the manifest, John was correct, but, a huge portion of the product they put in our store was junk, that had a cost of .10 to .25 cents, and never sold an item. The product that did sell though, had an average cost of .65 to .89 cents, then you had to add .04 to .06 cents or more per item for shipping. If you bought a product for .75 cents, and added .5 cents for shipping, your cost would be .80 cents. My bills were about $13,000.00 per month, which means, at .20 cents profit per item, I would have to sell 65,000 items per month just to pay the bills, and that does not include replacing product or wages for my wife and I.
I was working a 100 per week, and my wife was working 70 to 80 hours per week, 7 days per week, and only had two days off in 15 months. They were Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and wre never took a paycheck for the 15 months we were open. Because we were digging the hole deeper, trying to keep the Dollar Store open, we ended up losing our 6 rental properties, and almost lost our auto repair business too. I have contacted about 40 other people that opened a Dollar Store through Dollar Store Services, and they have all either gone out of business, or are closing.
Ironically, the flagship store they used to show off their business opportunity, went out of business about two or three months after we opened our store. The name of the store was Dollar BEE, located at 7475 S. Eastern Ave., Las vegas, NV. 89123. The phone number was (702) 678-6011, but, it is currently disconnected, and the store has been closed for several years now. Kari Bourn, who was our class instructor, kept hyping up the dollar BEE store, stating how the owner opened and paid off his investment in the first year, but, yet he closed down within two years. Kari drove us to his Dollar BEE store to show off how well he was doing, and when we got there, the store was almost empty, and the cashier stated that the owner had gotten a job at a casino. About three months later, he was closed.
I have spoken to so many people that have opened a Dollar Store through DRSS, and the gone out of buiisness, that it would sicken you. I also have a list of about 30 people, with phone numbers and addresses that I have traced around the country, and not one is still in business. One young lady I found, had inherited A $100,000 dollars from her grandmother, And DRSS talked her into buying aDollar Stroe, and she was out of business within 3 months. She had to file bankruptcy. If you would like to talk to me and want more information, feel free to call me at 707-372-8088 (cell), and I would be happy to enlighten you with all of the details of how this RIPOFF works. Best of luck to you in all of your endeavors.
This company are scam artists! They sold me on a dollar store being a profitable business. I was skeptical at first as I was wondering how a small dollar store can do well with so much competition. I then went onto getting the funding and then to real estate. I was doing a 1000 sf store. They found me multiple spaces which were very close to competition. I was skeptical but they were the professionals and sold me on the space. Ended up signing the lease after listening to drss. I know have multiple credit cards and rent I cannot afford to pay. No business as the customers are going to the big dollar stores a few miles away. Stay away from this company!
Discount Retail Store Services Reviews
I was, initially, very impressed with Dollar Retail Store Service (DRSS). Slowly, I became less enchanted with them.
They pushed hard to get me funding from "Seed Capital"...which is getting approved for 9+ credit cards (at 0% for one year, at that time you just "go to a bank" and get a business loan. Ah, that does not work due to income to debt ratio...trust me on this.) You then "liquidate" those credit cards for maximum credit allowed, put your cash into a checking account and DRSS immediately takes it's share off the top! You get what is leftover to TRY and build your business.
The 3 day training was a complete joke. The "trainer" was out and a gal came in who said (regarding the register training) "I've never done this before, but we'll figure it out together", handing us a copy of a manual. The "intructors" were very poorly trained, pompous, slightly greasy and did not know the first thing about actually teaching (I am an instructor, myself). Not to mention, the registers to train on did not work! It was by far the worst "training" I have ever attended!
The build out "manager" spent most of the time telling eveyone how great he was...as he ruined the framing around our windows, mis-cut slat board, and bragged. You hire your friends or strangers to help with the buildout. The "product" supplied is cheap, and a year later, I could not even sell some of the junk! Not even for 25 cents (let alone a dollar)! Some of the product actually fell apart while opening the packaging.
The product I got with my store is from their own supply company! It is by far, the worst product I have ever experienced...and I was stuck with it. As the store owner, I was not even asked what I wanted in the first order...which should be according to where your shop is located and who it serves. It was just a bunch of random stuff. A generic bundle of mostly, very low grade products.
I would never use this company again. They are heartless and they lie - smiling all the while. As I said...beware. This company is morally bankrupt, with a few "men" (hardly) at the top of the pile...making BIG, BIG BUCKS. I know this, one of their staff had a very chatty way about her.
These men on the top of the pile - well, they really are enjoying my money and the money of many, many others who worked hard, earned and saved (sometimes for years)...only to be completely conned, closing their stores and filing banruptcy. DRSS ruins dreams and lives...I beg you, do not do business with DRSS, you will be sorry.
I wanted to open my own business so I invested in a company called Discount Retail Store Services as I believed they were a reputable company because they had opened many stores I had seen posted on their website. They provide financing through Seed Capital, their partner. I was initially misled to believe that the financing would be in a form a loan from SCapital or a bank. I had to pay SCapital $3995. SCapital began applying for credit cards in my name from their location in Las Vegas, NV. They also told me to apply for certain credit cards and exactly what to say to the creditors to get them. I assumed while doing this that the cards would be used towards working capital needed to operate my business outside of my loan. After signing my lease for my location, SCapital instructed me to liquidate the credit cards. I asked them about the loan & was told that I would be doing credit card liquidation. I then asked them what impact liquidating the credit cards would have on my credit score. I was told that it would only drop a few points. I wanted to back out then due to the fact of discovering my financing to pay DRSS was coming from credit cards; however; DRSS told me I would lose the money I invested since they found me a location, so I felt trapped & I had no choice but to proceed with their liquidation process. My credit score dropped from 760 to 450. SCapital & DRSS told me to put the money from the credit card liquidation into a bank account until they informed me on what steps to take next. I was then told to get a cashier’s check & send the money to them. I never received the actual loan. DRSS & SCapital mislead me & their procedure felt very irresponsible; however; feeling that they were the professionals, I believed that they knew what they were doing. I could have easily applied for my own bank loan with my upstanding credit score. SCapital applied for 9 credit cards in my name on the behalf of DRSS to pay themselves from them, build my store out & left me with high debt and no way out. When I tried to apply for a loan after I opened my store for working capital, I was immediately denied. No one would approve me. My debt to income ratio was off the charts! All I had to survive was my personal money I had saved up. That money had to cover two overheads, home & business. My store was not making any profit at all.
This has ruined my life. My store closed quickly. I’m ashamed I fell for such a scheme. Past employees I have spoken too have stated to me that the majority of stores, (90%); DRSS opened has failed due to credit card scheme as well as horrible merchandise. I was told by my attorney that, just by the concept itself, I was doomed before my store even opened. I just want DRSS & SCapital to be exposed so this doesn’t happen to anyone else. DRSS & SCapital’s target audience are good standing credit worthy individuals with money in the bank. Then they come along apply for several credit cards to get their money off the top & victimize you for their sole benefit. Even if your credit is fair, they'll have you to get your score up so they can bust it back down. Also, after I opened my store I was given several paid referrals to speak with other potential clients. I was then asked by DRSS a couple of months after speaking with referrals and the exact words were “please do not tell the clients about the credit card thing because you’re scaring them away”. I know that the truth hurts! Needless to say, I asked to be taken off the referral list if I couldn't be honest with their clients & they glady removed me. I only wish someone was there to make “honest statements” to me about DRSS prior to making my decision. I certainly would have run away as well. The “majority” of the videos on their website of clients businesses are closed. If you do not believe me then try to contact the businesses for yourself. DRSS, your company should be closed down. If you do business with this company you will regret it!!!
Warning: Let me start by saying, if you are considering opening up a retail store, please, I repeat please do not use Discount Retail Store Services nor their financing. There is a 95% chance your store will not survive 6 months.
Discount Retail Store Services, they are very smart, nice, and deceptive all at the same time. If you have great credit or at least enough credit to get them paid; thats all they are concerned with. They will use every sales pitch to sucker you in to open your own store, knowing that you won't have enough operating capital to keep your doors open 3 months (so sad).
They are scamming you from the very first moment you speak with them. Yes, I must say that they deliver well when it comes to building you out a beautiful store, but other than that don't believe all the other hype. Especially the long term support and training is a joke, the initial training is a joke. Trust me if you have the desire to open a retail store, you can get better training on youtube and reading articles on google.
Anyway, I went through them to open my retail store. At the beginning I do remember being pressured by R**h in the finance department to use their financing; they called and emailed seems like me everyday until I decided to go ahead an use their financing, which is a third party company named Seed Capital. They charge you around $3k - 5k to open up multiple lines of credit (credit cards) in your name; they also have you to falsefy and lie about your current income to secure higher credit limits; which was a Red Flag, but I ignored it because I trusted that these people, and considered them to be experts because of the amount of stores they have opened in the past, and I felt that they had my best interest at hand; boy was I wrong. Once you receive these multiple credit cards; they have you to liquidate about 95% of the credit on them, by using the cash advance checks in order for you to pay Discount Retail Store Services.
After you successfully go through the financing, you move on to Real Estate, in which they are suppose to help you find a great location for your business to succeed. All of the locations they provided me were in high crime and run down areas and I totally disapproved. Now I see why they suggested these sites, landlords in those areas are more eager to rent and this would speed you through their process quicker and they get paid. Well I was not going to fall for that, so they had to work a little harder. After I narrowed down 3 locations I approved of, they reached out to the landlords; as you know landlords are very slow with following up and negotiations. Out of the 3 spaces I approved only 1 landlord had followed up in a reasonable amount of time; and St**e at DRSS pitched to me this is a great location, "this is what we call a power shopping center" "the demographics are through the roof" "you will do very good here". So I trusted their judgement, because #1 im paying them almost 100k and number #2, I felt like they had my best interest at hand. So I signed a contract for that space, as a matter of fact it was a 5 yr contract, I was very concerned about this lease, but DRSS assured me that this was a good lease and that I would do great in this location.
So after I finished the Real Estate phase, I went on to Operations, where they actually do the store blueprint, layout, and buildout. This process was horrible, due to the fact renovations on my retail space were not completed on scheduled time, and all of my merchandise was being shipped. I would actually have to blame my landlord for this issue, because he was in charge of renovations; but DRSS were the ones communicating with him on my behalf.
The store buildout went well. The supervisor did a great job with getting the store completed in 5 days.
So here is where the classic bait and switch come in at: Your store is up and running now and DRSS has received their pay and they literally leave you out to crash and burn. Like i mentioned earlier their ongoing support and training is horrible, its a joke. Their empolyess dont have a clue about running a successful retail business.
After several months of ripping and running; going through the process of opening your store; now you have a little down time because customers are not coming in your store, inspite of all the advertising, social media campaigns, coupons, word of mouth, etc; you can't do nothing but sit back, analyze and count up the real cost. This is the point when the $hit hits the fan. So about 3 months after being open and having and optimistic mindset that things would get better; I started researching how much it would cost me to open another store in the future, if I did it on my own. I started pricing store fixtures, merchandise, and etc that I had in my store; I could have fainted after I found out this stuff is dirt cheap. Another thing I started to do was price the inventory that was in my store to see what it added up too. According to my contract with DRSS, I was supposed to have $20k worth of merchandise at wholesale price in my store; hmm I was having a hard time trying to even get to $20k at retail after pricing over 90% of my inventory. Take in mind, yes I had been open for about 3 months; but my sales were through the floor, horrible, less than $7k for that time frame.
I then started to research this company and reach out to other business owners. I soon learned that over 90% of the stores on their website are out of business and the owners had to file bankruptcy. The few that are still open are struggling to stay open just to keep from going bankrupt. All of the business owners I have talked with have similar stories about DRSS.
DRSS does not have your best interest at hand; they will try to get much money as possible out of you as they can. For instance; they receive a commission off of your lease from your retail space, they use your good credit to get paid upfront, they invite you to Vegas to visit their office for bull$hit training.
I have so much more I could say, but I just want to warn anyone who wants to open a retail store to do it on your own. You can do it 75% cheaper than DRSS can and save a lot of money for operating expenses until your store traffic picks up. Talk with other business owners, if you are not their direct competition, they should be willing to give you good advice; hire you a good business attorney before you sign a retail space lease, make sure the lease favors you as the business owner. Take your time and don't rush into being a business owner; its a huge responsibility and will a lot of your time and energy.
DRSS store concepts do not work, I dont care how smart you are or how business savvy you are. DRSS store concepts do not and will not work; you will end up in Bankruptcy in less than 1 year of your store opening. Unfortunately, I had to close my doors after only being in business for 6 months.
DRSS prey on people with good credit who have a desire to open their own business. They make it sound like you need them to do this; all at the same time they are knowing that you will fail. The failure rate using DRSS is very high due to the large amout they scam you out of using your credit, i mean they max your credit outt. You have no room to borrow funds down the road because your debt to equity ratio will be to high. DRSS doesn't care though, why? Because they have gotten all of their fees up front and could care less if you succeed or not. The amout you will be paying on your lease and the lines of credit per month, and other operating expenses will leave you dry each month, as a matter of fact my store never even got to the point of breaking even. I was using personal savings to keep the business going, while also trying to live and take care of my personal life. Within a few months my personal funds were drying up; and the store was showing no signs of improvement, in spite of all my efforts to keep it afloat. My sales were so horrible, if I didn't have any expenses; it still would not have been worth operating the business. I believe they lead me to a location that was not the ideal location for the type of business I had; also the demographic of people in that community were not friendly to minority owned businesses (I learned that after the fact). DRSS main goal is to get you in the quickest location as possible, to keep the ball rolling and them getting paid.
I have so much more, but I will stop here. You have been warned, PLEASE BEWARE!!!! Do not use DRSS.
I do live in a very small town here in Pennsylvania. I was working with Discount Retail store services to open a store. First they request a $500 refundable deposit which I paid. Secondly, they requested $5000 refundable deposit which I again paid. They clearly stated in our conversation if they are not able to find a place suitable enough for my business, I will be entitled to 100% refund of my deposit, no strings attached. I gave their real estate department more than a month to work on that finding a suitable location for the store. They themselves soon realized competition in my town was very high and they couldn’t really find an ideal location for my store. They tried to convince me to do the party store instead. They still were not able to find a convenient and strategic location. When I withdrew from the project and asked for my refunds, their General manager Mr Garrett assured me the refunds have been processed and that I should allow at least one week for the refunds to post to my bank.
Two weeks later no refunds had posted. Contacted Mr Garrett several times both by phone and email. Also contacted Mr Adam, the marketing director but none of them would get back to me. Finally, I was able to get a hold of their VP Mr J.D. Gray who insisted all credit cards obtained through third party must be cancelled prior to any refunds being issued. Note: I actually paid the funding company close to $3500 to obtain the credit, it was not a service offered by Discount retail store services or the funding company for free. Cancelling the cards actually compromises my ability to obtain further credit to start my business either now or in the near future because so much credit line has already been applied for recently.
This is the most dishonest company you will ever deal with. They make their money by accepting deposits from poor folks they will never be able to help. I have told them I will pursue every means possible to get my money back, and I mean it, I will do exactly that, I will stop at nothing until the money is paid in full: $5,500.00. And not only that, I will be a strong advocate for consumers out there wanting to start a dollar or party store – Discount retail store services is not your friend, they will eat your money, ruin your dreams, destroy your credit and render you completely helpless. To Discount Retail Store Services, you cannot make your money by preying on hard working individuals whose only goal is start a small business, help sustain their families and contribute to their respective communities.
Watch out and over the contract before you sign it. Make them itemize all of the things they buy for you.
you can say DRSS is a scam but I would say it’s unethical. They are in it for the money but not for helping people. Their line of vendors are real companies that have been around for years. We went through them as well. If you go on there website and look up D&R $1 Plus. I think you will find it. Anyways, their vendors will offer minimum order value. If you meet it, then you don’t have to pay freight. Of course, owners will do it just to save the freight cost. Dollar store services will encourage you to do so. However, the end result is that you will over spend it and you will end up with higher loan.
Another problem is that for people who can’t have liquid cash to pay for the set up and products in the beginning. Dollar store services will tell you to go through Seed Capital. Everyone else including myself thought Seed Capital would apply for business loan with the banks on our behalf…as if they have magic or negotiation power. The company had me fill out a paper and requires $5000 down. I paid and the company came back with a recommendation that suggested me to apply with a bunch of credit card. I assume everyone that goes through Dollar Store Services ends up with a bunch of credit card. These credit cards have high interest rate but you have one year free of interest.
They will have you go out there and look at the properties, take pictures, and send it back to them. Dollar Store Services said that the employees would search for properties for you. The company means they will search properties from their office with air condition and let you do the hard work. Once they find it, they will tell you to transfer the money to your bank account to pay them even when you’re not even sure to get the space yet. Now you have no choice but to go long with it.
They will use that money to buy products for you and the products suck. Most of them don’t even sell. After a couple of months we open up our store. We changed everything. Also, we raise prices on most of our items as well. If you factor in rent and other operation cost, selling items at 1 dollar is not going to help your store much. You will end up closing the store within 6 months. For us, it was very fortunate. Lets get back to the story. After they deliver everything like get your lease done, shipped the merchandise, your store is set up, they will give you a stack of invoices, which you will have no idea how much they spent on the products, fixtures, and build out team.
Most of the items they ordered on your behalf and priced at 1 dollar for you.. those are not even 1 dollar. They under price it and over spent your money. For instance chef craft, we found out that chef craft products are high quality and American made products. cost margin for them is .65-85 cent. How can you survive at .15 profit?
The cash register Dollar Store services give you is manual. You can’t keep track how much you have in inventory. Owners can easily overspend. That’s what happened to us. Also, the way to calculate the margin,they taught you, is also wrong for this kind of business.
We are in the process of liquidation and I hope you don’t make the same mistake as I and other owners did. The best is to open up a small drink place or ice cream business. But do your due diligence people.
We paid this company over $100,000 in cash for this business. They assured us we could not fail and they would be with us there every step of the way to be sure that did not happen. The only thing they were there for is to take our money then set us up as quickly as possible and then when I called for help, they won't even return my calls. No one I worked with is still there and no one will help us now. They were supposed to help us purchase items for our store and we ended up with excessive amounts of things that we cannot sell even at a flea market! We have 5,000 shirt hangers and 500 pants hangers! Who needs 5,000 hangers? We have hangers boxed up that will never be used. We got over 80 of the same style shirts that we cannot sell. We did not have any experience opening a clothing store. We opened in June, which, I learned is pretty late in the season to be selling summer clothes, but they stocked us completely with summer clothing. So, when fall came around, we had used all of our inventory money to buy summer clothing we couldn't sell and had no money for winter inventory. They never did get our store set up like they said they would and we were never able to pay the rent and had to close after 7 months. At that point, I couldn't get anyone to take my calls at DRSS. I still can't. They took all the money we had and now we have nothing except inventory we can't well and store fixtures that are worth nothing sitting in a storage unit we have to pay rent on each month. They ripped us off!
Do NOT get involved with this company. They do not care if your business FAILS, All they care about is their bottom line......Getting their money.
Your store will be funded from unsecured money from credit cards, which they charge you $5,000.00 because they found the credit cards for you, plus the credit cards will be in your own personal name instead of your business name which makes bankruptcy personal and you risk losing your OWN peronal property.
I had eight {8} credit cards to fund a dollar store, everything was a $1.00. It is NOT even possible to pay that much debt back with an income from a dollar store.
I NEVER heard from any of the big wigs in Las Vegas after getting my store. The only person that called was the person who wanted me to order more inventory.
DRSS negotiated my lease which was for two years which I did not know should have been for only ONE year.
I have to file BANKRUPTCY now due to all the debt from the credit cards and to get out of a two year lease. I am in risk of losing my OWN personal property....Because the credit cards are in MY name and not in a business name.
Discount Retail Store Services tell you that you can start a clothing store with quality clothes for under $10. They tell you that is is only 89,900 to open up a turn key franchise. They do all the work and then give you the keys. That my friends is incorrect. The clothes are not great quality and they are not under $10.00. They do provide you with services of fixing your debt to create more debt but they set you up for failure. Out of the $89,900 you only get 20,000 of inventory and $5,000 on the furniture, signate, some capital and fixtures. The rest goes to them. They do find you places but the demographic surveys are out of date. You still have to meet and pick a place. You still have to do all of the constructions and pay for it yourself. You still have to do all of the marketing and pay for it yourself. The companies they send to you to fix your credit and provide you with the funds, take a percentage of the money the get for you. For example if they get you 80,000 worth of credit cards they take 1 to 3 percent of it. They get you credit lines as well and again take a percentage of it.
You should not do business with them if you do not have the $89,000 in your bank account. The amount of debt they will put you in, you will be claiming bankrupcy after a few months. They tell you the store can produce money but then tell you a different story once you sign the purchasing agreement. A women's clothing store with all of the competition online will only produce $1000 to $4000 a week if you have traffic. Again if you have traffic and there are at least 4 to 6 months out of the year you will not have a lot of traffic. It could produce the higher end if of course the clothes had the quality they stated and they do not have another boutique selling the same clothes around the corner. The jewelry and hand bags fall apart. The clothing falls apart before you even wear it.
I had to hirer a stitcher to repair the clothes as they came in. The cost of the clothes are high so in order for you to make any money you must price high but the clothes are not worth the price. Once you start seeing more returns then sales, you know there is an issue with sizing and quality. They do not want you to follow labor laws. They tell you, that payroll should be minimul which means you yourself working and not paying yourself. Yes this is what a all mom and pop store do, but when you want to bring quality clothes at a reasonalbe price and survive you must think like a business person and brand yourself. You must have great hours and in order to do this, you must hire help. Even family needs to take a break for lunch. They expect you not to give them breaks and break all labor laws. In order for payroll to be minumal you must pay under $10.00, that is great in some states, when you can hire teenager to run your store but what if you work a day job and need an adult to run your store?
If the clothing had the quality they stated then possilbly a clothing store can survive, but make sure you have smaller sized women and teenagers in the area. They do not have correct women's sizes or plus sizes. All of the clothes run very small. The wholesale mall they set you up in also has credit card fraud. Once you do multiple purchase, you will start seeing other charges on your credit card that do not apply to clothes. The vendors you do direct purchasing from, will take a deposit and then not send you the product. Still waiting for one vendor to send me either my deposti or my product. It has been 6 weeks.
Do not do business with them, as a clothing store of any kind. They are better off sticking with cheap products sold at $1.00 stores.
I am a 12 year United States Navy veteran, and I had the dream of owning a business. As many people the idea of having a piece of mind and financial independence was very attractive to me. Discount retail store services (DRSS) definitely ruined that positive perspective of entrepreneurship for me and many others. I started working with DRSS when I was a contractor in Afghanistan in 2013 and was totally preyed on because of my credit score “760”. They make money off good hard working citizens who reached a point of their lives where they have money in the bank and possess excellent credit. You have to have at least a FICO score of 730 to even do business with DRSS. I was misled and lied to in order to fulfill somebody’s financial greed. I was informed that they did everything in-house and had great relationships with different financial intuitions for me to get funding. They said to me “we work for you and we are on your side” , but actually they were destroying me from within .
I was told that they would get me a business loan and even help establish my business credit. With their “in and out” mentality I was passed down to the finance department and then passed to Seed Capital. I was informed by “the professionals” that Seed Capital would be securing funding for me, but I had to pay Seed Capital $4,000 to start the process. I was misguided to believe I was getting a business loan and lines of business credit. After I started working with Seed Capital they started to apply for 10 different credit cards. So when I asked why so many ,I was told it was for working capital . I thought that was very strange ,but maybe it was good to have that on reserve. After being rushed to find a location to secure, I was still waiting to hear something about the actual business loan . There was no business loan, the credit cards were your loan. There was no business lines of credit, it was all personal credit. I had already signed a lease for the building and felt deliberately misled to continue. It felt tremendously irresponsible, and that was not a typical practice of a person with a 760 credit score. I asked DRSS what would this do to my credit and was told it would drop about 30 points. My credit score dropped to a 520. If I would have known about this I would have never agreed to this mismanaging of funds. When my store opened my credit was so exhausted I could not get any type of loan for working capital. There wasn't any “REAL” support from DRSS. They put me so much in debt before I even open there was no chance for true success. I struggled for 6 months and had to close my store for good. Later I had to file bankruptcy because of the tremendous hole I was thrown into. I lost everything I worked for my whole life in 6 months. It is 50 people all over the country who have done business with DRSS and we all share the same story. Meanwhile DRSS is laughing on their way to the bank. BEWARE!!!!
In 2013, a man named Roger introduced me to the dollar store concept. He represented the company DRSS ( Dollar Store Retail Services ). He pointed out that this was not a franchise, but, a business opportunity. He also stated that he and his son were going to open a store themselves. He told me that they had a great net income of 20% to 22% after expences.
I was contacted by Paul Beck, an employee of Dollar Store Services, and we discussed the advantages of being an owner of one of their dollar stores. During our conversation, I asked the gentleman what kind of revenue I could expect to generate, and he told me the stores average $160 to $190 per square foot ( I have the email to prove it ). I was opening a 3000 square foot store, so I took the numbers he gave me, and I split it in the middle, at $175 per sqaure foot, and that totals $525,000 dollars per year ( Over a half million dollars per years ), or $43,750.00 per month.
I did my due diligence, and figured my total rent, wages, taxes, electrical, insurance and all the costs associated with running the store, including replacing product for one year, and after all expences, we should have had a net income of approximately $116,250.00 for my wife and myself. After signing our contracts, Roger told me that he decided to back out of his deal. Now this worried me but, I had already signed my life away to the biggest scam I have ever encountered.
John LaFronze, another employee or DRSS, told me that the average cost of product was .55 cents. When DRSS built out our store, based on the manifest, John was correct, but, a huge portion of the product they put in our store was junk, that had a cost of .10 to .25 cents, and never sold an item. The product that did sell though, had an average cost of .65 to .89 cents, then you had to add .04 to .06 cents or more per item for shipping. If you bought a product for .75 cents, and added .5 cents for shipping, your cost would be .80 cents. My bills were about $13,000.00 per month, which means, at .20 cents profit per item, I would have to sell 65,000 items per month just to pay the bills, and that does not include replacing product or wages for my wife and I.
I was working a 100 per week, and my wife was working 70 to 80 hours per week, 7 days per week, and only had two days off in 15 months. They were Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and wre never took a paycheck for the 15 months we were open. Because we were digging the hole deeper, trying to keep the Dollar Store open, we ended up losing our 6 rental properties, and almost lost our auto repair business too. I have contacted about 40 other people that opened a Dollar Store through Dollar Store Services, and they have all either gone out of business, or are closing.
Ironically, the flagship store they used to show off their business opportunity, went out of business about two or three months after we opened our store. The name of the store was Dollar BEE, located at 7475 S. Eastern Ave., Las vegas, NV. 89123. The phone number was (702) 678-6011, but, it is currently disconnected, and the store has been closed for several years now. Kari Bourn, who was our class instructor, kept hyping up the dollar BEE store, stating how the owner opened and paid off his investment in the first year, but, yet he closed down within two years. Kari drove us to his Dollar BEE store to show off how well he was doing, and when we got there, the store was almost empty, and the cashier stated that the owner had gotten a job at a casino. About three months later, he was closed.
I have spoken to so many people that have opened a Dollar Store through DRSS, and the gone out of buiisness, that it would sicken you. I also have a list of about 30 people, with phone numbers and addresses that I have traced around the country, and not one is still in business. One young lady I found, had inherited A $100,000 dollars from her grandmother, And DRSS talked her into buying aDollar Stroe, and she was out of business within 3 months. She had to file bankruptcy. If you would like to talk to me and want more information, feel free to call me at 707-372-8088 (cell), and I would be happy to enlighten you with all of the details of how this RIPOFF works. Best of luck to you in all of your endeavors.
This company are scam artists! They sold me on a dollar store being a profitable business. I was skeptical at first as I was wondering how a small dollar store can do well with so much competition. I then went onto getting the funding and then to real estate. I was doing a 1000 sf store. They found me multiple spaces which were very close to competition. I was skeptical but they were the professionals and sold me on the space. Ended up signing the lease after listening to drss. I know have multiple credit cards and rent I cannot afford to pay. No business as the customers are going to the big dollar stores a few miles away. Stay away from this company!