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In the wake of the Dollar Tree/Family Dollar merger, Dollar General looks like it wants to play, too. The budget-priced company wants to open 13,000 new stores by 2018 with 40% to 45% in rural or satellite-city locations. Although only about 30% of its stores are currently in urban areas, CEO Todd J. Vasos hopes to make it a "bigger piece" as the company grows. For the past 18 months, a Dollar General team has been scouting out urban locations. The company is working on "smaller-box prototypes," where costs are low and sales still run 18% to 20% profitability before it makes its way into the urban sphere. "We're building stores today in areas we would never have looked at five, eight or 10 years ago, but the economy has changed a lot of areas over the last decade," Todd says. [SN]
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