Dollar stores are the only retail business still opening many stores by a huge margin, while most others are closing. This is because people are broke. The following is an extremely rough and simplified IDEA. Feel free to trash me/it, or be constructive and build on these thoughts and highdeas.
Dollar stores are cheap items at cheap or the very cheapest prices. What group do dollar stores predominately serve?
In the wealthiest of circles I'm sure they majority are not shopping at a dollar store. They serve the poorer of the population.
One way to have more money when you make a low wage, is to spend less to survive, thus dollar stores thrive.
If you manage to spend less and keep your same lifestyle, that means your quality of life just went up. Nice. But for the class below those people, they shop at these stores out of necessity not to up their standard of living but to sustain it.
The fact of the matter is this group here, is the most likely to have limited or no access to the traditional banking system and bank accounts. Plenty of these people are also on a fixed income. Anything that can make their dollar go further is tremendous from that point of view.
Crypto is said to be able to "bank the unbanked" by some of the best in the business.
This group is part of the unbanked, and it's not overseas. It's right here in North America "The West".
How do you make crypto beneficial for the customer and also for the owner?
CUSTOMER
- Wants cheaper prices.
- Wants ease of access.
- Wants variety of services and products.
[What services could this group need, that crypto can solve? Short term loans, cheap cell phone plans paid with crypto, crypto to cash and cash to crypto service/Crypto ATM etc.]
OWNER
- Wants profit
- Wants long term income, long low burn not a quick bright flash
- Wants repeat customers
- Wants automation as much as possible since it means more profit because of less wages (auto checkouts etc.)
Meet in the middle?
Start a dollar store in a lower income but somewhat safe area. Accept crypto (maybe exclusively!). Offer a rewards program tied to their crypto addresses to entice people to shop there. Have a crypto ATM in the store that supports many coins and direct people to the best online resources to learn about crypto (they will when they have an incentive to do it. Ie., cheaper prices if they learn what crypto is)
Offering straight up cheaper prices for using crypto is key to success with this idea. I think 9 percent less would mean success, although difficult. The cheapest way to pay and also most rewarding, should be your own coin or any GOOD LEGIT coin you can benefit from them holding and using, as a way to get paid yourself to get costs down even more. Since that particular crypto gets real items at a good price, it has inherent value. Maybe use a grassroots future proof coin like maxcoin as your max-discount coin!
Say you are generally cheaper by 9% average. Your coin on the market would get price slightly higher than what your saving so people aren't selling at a loss, because they could buy items instead. (So I guess say 8% cheaper vs USD is what people might say "Hey, I'll sell my coins for that much"? Am I thinking wrong here?)
The only way to be able to sell the products at a lower price than everyone else is to get them cheaper than they do (will not happen due to the economies of scale), or to lower your cost of operation. That just MIGHT be possible with crypto.
For example, a cheap but good blockchain-rfid setup, self checkout terminals, a security system that records, and accepting crypto, which itself is automatically verifiable money, no human needed. One person could run this operation.
A downside is tagging every single item so they are rfid activated. But you just prep everything in a locked backroom, never bring non tagged items onto floor. The tagging is also your inventory system and security as they will set off the door alarms if not deactivated. As each item gets scanned, it could get paid for immediately and individually (if using a Lightning node for example to avoid fees). Then then rfid gets deactivated through a pad on the table. At that point it's able to go through the alarms. Any disputes of "I paid and the alarm went off still" are blockchain verifiable :). Is there a cheap sticker based rfid system available? These need to be cheeeaaaaappp for this all to work.