One Buck at a Time by Macon Brock

Author:Macon Brock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography and Autobiography
Publisher: John F. Blair, Publisher

A Chinese factory worker paints a regiment of polyresin figurines. Finishing each finely detailed knickknack required many such artisans but cost pennies, making polyresin one of Dollar Tree’s early successes.

Bryan Bagwell, standing at right, inspects the work at a Chinese factory cranking out figurines bound for Dollar Tree stores. That’s Kay Waters just behind him and Benny Huen, our longtime trading agent, at far left.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF BRYAN BAGWELL

The cooled figurines were placed on a table, along which were seated eight men and women, each armed with a single color of paint and a variety of paintbrushes. The figurines, which came out of the molds a bright white, passed from one painter to the next, each applying a color—first an overall brown wash on the bear, then dark green on the books, then red trim on the books and on the bear’s necktie, and so on.

It was fast, intricate work. In the half-hour of our visit, finished figurines—which were incredibly detailed in their construction and their paint jobs, with the look and feel of something found in a high-end gift shop—were placed a dozen to a tray at the table’s end, and the stack of those trays rose to chest height.

At least nine people had touched each figurine, and that didn’t count the folks making the molds or injecting them with polyresin. For all that labor, and for all that quality, the price the factory quoted us for each “Bear on Books” was thirty-three cents.

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