Family Dollar 2009 Annual Report Download - page 11

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Manage Risk
In the current economic environment, our customers face rising unemployment and a decline in average
hours worked. As a result of these and other factors, our customers remain focused on basic consumable needs
and continue to limit their discretionary spending. Reflecting the uncertainty in the current environment, we
remain focused on managing our inventory risk. We are investing in key traffic-driving categories while
constraining purchases in more discretionary categories.
We continue to make investments in our multi-year process improvement initiative called Project
Accelerate. Focused on category management, price optimization, merchandise financial planning, assortment
planning and space planning, this initiative is intended to help us improve and optimize our merchandising and
supply chain processes. Our goal is to improve the shopping experience of our customers, the productivity of our
inventory and the efficiency of our supply chain. The Project Accelerate initiative is helping us manage inventory
risk and react quickly to the changing environment.
Build Great Teams
We believe that our long-term success is dependent on our ability to create strong employee teams that can
adjust and respond quickly to ever-changing operating conditions. We continue to invest in this effort and in
building a stronger Family Dollar culture. Utilizing an expanded library of computer-based training applications,
we are creating career paths for talented, ambitious team members who want to make a larger contribution. We
are strengthening our succession planning and leadership development programs, and, to support our focus on
driving results and continuous improvement, we are improving our performance management programs.
We continue to make great strides in stabilizing our workforce, especially in our stores, where the benefit of
experienced store teams has the greatest impact. Our current store manager, assistant manager and cashier
retention are at historically high levels. A more experienced workforce allows us to offer stronger merchandise
presentations, maintain better in-store standards, and improve the customer shopping experience. We believe our
focus on employee retention also is having a positive impact on inventory shrinkage and workers’ compensation
and general liability claims.
Store Operations
We operate more than 6,600 stores in 44 states. All of our stores are managed and operated by us. A store
manager manages each store and is responsible for hiring and training store employees, managing the financial
performance of the store, and providing quality customer service. The store manager reports to a district manager
or area operations manager. A district manager or area operations manager is typically responsible for 15 to 25
stores. During fiscal 2009, no single store accounted for more than one-quarter of one percent of sales.
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