Hollar Adds Private Labels To Dollar Shopping Boom

Consumers are warming up to the idea of buying luxury goods through online retailers but, not until recently, could the same be said for dollar-store shopping. Hollar, a startup focused on bringing the dollar-store concept online, helped start the trend, and now, it’s hoping to accelerate it with a big move.

TechCrunch reported that Hollar, the creation of The Honest Company CEO Brian Lee and former Honest Vice President David Yeom, isn’t just content to bring the world of low-cost retail to the digital world; it wants to sell its own private-label goods, too. Every item listed on the site clocks in at under $5, which makes the act of manufacturing, listing and shipping its own private-label products no small feat, even if the price points are.

Yeom is bullish on Hollar’s prospects, though, with a great deal of confidence coming from the applicability of traditional dollar-store inventory to the behavior of online shopping.

“It’s amazing an industry this big is not very talked about,” Yeom told TechCrunch. “It definitely suffers from some perception and stigma … but 80 million people shop at these places. When you talk about massive scale, that’s what this industry is all about.”

Part of Hollar’s plan is to liaise with many of the suppliers that stock the shelves in the extant brick-and-mortar stores across the country. However, with its private-label business, Hollar is planning on monitoring the quality of the items as strictly as possible.

“We want to create a long-term, high-scale business that this industry deserves and is lacking,” Yeom said. “[Selling low-quality goods] just isn’t worth it.”