When Macon F. Brock Jr. and his partners pitched their idea to open a chain of dollar stores to developers at a shopping mall convention in the mid-1980s, they got a cold reception.
“It’s bound to be junk, and we don’t want a junk store cluttering up our shiny new mall,” he was told, according to his autobiography, “One Buck at a Time” (written with Earl Swift and published in February).
But over time the stores turned into Dollar Tree, the retailing juggernaut with more than 14,000 outlets in the United States and Canada.
Mr. Brock, who was the company’s chief executive from 1993 to 2003 and chairman until September, died on Saturday at his home in Virginia Beach. He was 75.
Continue reading the main storyHis family said the cause was pulmonary fibrosis.
His wife, Joan Perry Brock, who worked for years in the company’s payroll department, traveled with him “all over the whole world looking for product, places you wouldn’t even think of,” she said in a phone interview.
But when they mentioned their price points, many potential suppliers were befuddled.
“A lot of time we would have the doors slammed in our face,” she said.
Macon Foscue Brock Jr. was born in Norfolk, Va., on April 11, 1942, to M. Foscue Brock, a doctor, and Clara Prichard Brock, a homemaker. He graduated from Granby High School in 1960 and studied Latin at Randolph-Macon College, where he and his wife would become the largest donors in the college’s history.
Mr. Brock also served as a Marine captain in the Vietnam War and later as a Naval Intelligence officer.
After he began working with his father-in-law, Kenneth Perry, who ran a variety store in Norfolk. Mr. Brock and his brother-in-law, J. Douglas Perry, helped transform the business into K & K Toys, a chain of toy stores operating in 15 states.
The business thrived until the emergence of Toys “R” Us, the big-box store that threatened smaller stores like K & K.
“To make a long story short, they crushed us,” Mr. Brock wrote in his autobiography.
Another problem was the advent of video games, particularly since gaming companies like Nintendo favored larger toy chains.
As this was unfolding, Mr. Brock, his brother-in-law and another K & K executive, H. Ray Compton, started a side venture in 1986, opening dollar stores, under the name Only $1.00, in five locations.
They had been inspired by a similar chain called Everything’s a Dollar. Mr. Brock, who had been traveling to Asia for the toy business and had a nose for merchandising, believed he could improve on the idea.
“We ripped off what they wanted to be. Not what they were,” he wrote, adding, “We hoped to occupy the same role in the dollar business that Henry Ford had in the car business.”
Everything’s a Dollar was not the country’s only other dollar store, but the company did sue Only $1.00, forcing it to change the name of stores in overlapping markets to Dollar Tree. The name eventually stuck.
In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1964, Mr. Brock is survived by his daughters, Kathryn Everett and Christy Miele; his son, Macon Brock III; his sisters, Pat Robertson and Sally White; and six grandchildren.
Ms. Brock said she had initially been skeptical of her husband’s plan to open dollar stores.
“I thought everything for a dollar sounded like a crazy idea, because how many things could you buy for a dollar?” she said in the interview. “How could you fill up all the space? At the beginning it was closeouts, but as the stores grew in number, you couldn’t fill them up with closeouts.”
The two eventually began scouring the world for deals. They bought brooms from Italy, votive candles and table linens from India and Tupperware-like containers from Argentina.
“Can you imagine buying brooms in Italy, having them shipped to the United States, and still having them sell for a dollar?” Ms. Brock said. “But after a while, because of our size, we were in the driver’s seat.”
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