返回   华枫论坛 > ◆主题论坛◆ > 创业者俱乐部



发表新主题 回复
 
只看楼主 主题工具
旧 Dec 17th, 2008, 17:49     #1
1888-business
小生意精
级别:1 | 在线时长:7小时 | 升级还需:5小时
 
1888-business 的头像
 
注册日期: Sep 2005
帖子: 44
1888-business is on a distinguished road
Exclamation 多伦多星报关于血汗便利店的一篇文章

可惜只有原文>>http://www.thestar.com/News/Ontario/article/553525

ECONOMIC CRUNCH
TheStar.com | Ontario | Tough times for 'Mom and Pop' corner storesTough times for 'Mom and Pop' corner stores

RICK MADONIK/TORONTO STAR
Almaz Nebai, a refugee from Eritrea, is trying to make a go of this Dundas St. W. convenience store that she bought in April.

New rules on cigarette sales hurting even the scrappiest of variety store operators, who already work long hours and see tiny profit margins
Dec 14, 2008 04:30 AM

LESLEY CIARULA TAYLOR
IMMIGRATION REPORTER

The clock with the lavender plastic rim on the back wall of H&H Convenience is an hour and 18 minutes fast. This means nothing to Almaz Nebai. She tells time by the front door.
Starting at 4:30 p.m., it opens every few minutes. That lasts three hours. After that, every 20 minutes or so for another hour, then it tapers off until midnight.
A young Hispanic woman wants her regular small pack of Podium cigarettes, the cheapest at $6 with tax. A man in Docksiders and khakis buys two cans of Arizona tea and stuffs them into a backpack. An Asian woman in heels pulls money from her Louis Vuitton wallet to pay for two packs of DuMaurier. A middle-aged man wants a small Peter Jackson Light with his two cans of Arizona.
"If I get a dollar from the cigarettes, I'm happy," says Nebai.
"With Arizona, there's not much profit, a few cents, but my customers love it. It's good for you."
Times are tough all over, but "not much profit," that might as well be the theme song for Ontario's convenience stores, which have been struggling to get by since the province banned the open display of cigarettes last summer. Between 45 and 65 per cent of corner store profits came from cigarette sales; since such "power walls" were banned that's been cut by 30 to 50 per cent.
Dave Bryans, president of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association, expects a third of Ontario's 10,000 convenience stores will be out of business in five years unless the province curbs illegal tobacco sales and starts letting proven, reliable stores sell beer and wine.
But, for now, shopkeepers like Nebai, earning just pennies per hour, make do selling what they can.
Cigarettes, snacks and drinks pay the bills, but not all of them. Since she bought the business in April and moved into the flat at the back, she's been hunting for deals at Costco and Cash and Carry, clicking through Internet sites to find better suppliers. Rent is $1,600 a month.
A woman at Cash and Carry sent Nebai to Imperial Tobacco, so she gets some brands delivered. The rest she buys every morning, before she opens, whatever she is low on. Podium, made in Caledonia by Lanwest Manufacturing for sale off-reserve, comes from Costco.
With a diploma in accounting from Algonquin College in Ottawa and marketing courses from Seneca, Nebai has plans for this corner north of the Dundas West subway station. There's a Slovenian deli next door, a Jehovah's Witness temple down the street. Budget, Price Chopper and Shoppers are nearby. Houses on the streets behind her sell for just under a half-million. The store was Lee-Bee's West Indian Grocery for years before a couple tried it as a variety store, then gave up and sold to Nebai. She inherited candles, ceramic frogs, hair extensions and shelves of Christmas decorations with the hardware, Pringles, canned spaghetti sauce and kitchen stuff.
Around 11 one morning, she grinds Van Houtte beans for a fresh pot, splits a pack of Hostess cupcakes on two napkins and settles down to talk.
"I loved Ottawa, but when I came here, I loved Toronto, too. It was my first time driving on a highway when I came here from Ottawa."
"I found this place online for a reasonable price. It's a really good location, the main customer is from the subway, people back and forth in the morning and evening. During the day, they come from the neighbourhood. There are a lot of East Bloc people living around here. Everyone is very nice, very nice. It was a struggle at first. I was sometimes shocked that nobody was here, but it's picking up, slowly."
She and a friend left Asmara, the once-lovely Italianate capital of Eritrea, in 1985, when the 30-year civil war with Ethiopia was at its most brutal, walking for 11 days into Sudan. She was 25. "It was a terrible time. We were hiding from Ethiopian soldiers and Eritrean fighters. But the land around us as we walked was beautiful and we made a promise, my friend and I, that we would come back. She went to Sweden. She called me a few years ago to ask, `Remember the promise?' But she is dead now, of cancer."
There's not much room for sentimentality. A woman in a hijab and long skirt with no time to waste floats in looking for a toy for her son, who is 4 today. She leaves with Spider-Man and a long-distance calling card.
"I am so happy here," Nebai says. "There is hope for the future. I'm always thinking, planning the strategy."
She's been asking the Ontario Lottery Corporation for a terminal and might just get one this month. If she gets approved and there is a machine available, the security deposit runs from $2,000 to up to $6,000 for a full-scale Lotto Centre.
A key-cutting service, cellphone cards, movie rentals, maybe stamps although a store not far away already sells them and Canada Post picks its spots based on postal code. If she buys 60 DVD movies, a company will throw in another 1,000 but she needs a $100 Film Exchange Retail Licence to rent them. Her cut from the ATM machine is half the $1.50 service fee; if she buys it for $2,500, her cut is 85 per cent.
"I tried bread but I had to eat it myself. Perishables are a waste of time – people go to Price Chopper."
She tours the shelves, rating each item. "Bathroom goods are well-demanded. The house materials are really working well."
She brought a Zippo lighter display cabinet up from the basement and added cigarette cases to the stock because customers asked for them. If she gets the lottery machine, if she gets the cell phone card business (a $1,500 down payment, then $14 a month), if she can buy the ATM machine, if she can rent DVDs, if she builds up enough loyal customers, she might make it.
The store opens at 9 a.m., closes at midnight. "Sometimes, it can be like a prison." Then she smiles. "I didn't marry, I tried to. Now I like not answering to someone."
Her sister and two brothers, one with a master's in engineering and another with a degree in economics, wanted her to move to Germany to reunite the family, but she prefers Canada. After a refugee camp in Sudan, she had gone to England for surgery on her leg, gnarled with polio. A United Church in Ottawa sponsored her as a refugee.
"It is amazing. I never thought that I would live in Canada. We studied it in geography in school – lots of snow! – and now I've become a Canadian. I feel at home here. Everyone is from far away."

下面的数据很有意思:

CORNER ECONOMICS
The classic mom-and-pop independent corner store in Ontario brings in from $30,000 to $50,000 a year.
For two people working 12-hour days seven days a week, that's from 49 to 81 cents an hour between them.
Dave Bryans, president of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association, and Hugh Large, an industry consultant and commentator who lives in Ballantrae, Ont., paint this picture of Ontario convenience stores:
• 75,000 people work in them.
• 85 per cent of the operators are immigrants.
• From 45 to 65 per cent of their profit was from cigarette sales, which have a low profit margin. Since the display wall went, that's dropped by 30 to 50 per cent.
• Snacks and drinks are the second biggest category. Snacks carry the highest profit margin. Water and energy drinks are expanding the most dramatically and now each represent 20 per cent of drinks sold.
• 70 per cent of sales are snack and candy impulse buys.
• Nearly half of the cigarettes sold in Ontario and a quarter of those bought by teenagers are illegal. The highest teen contraband rates, from 40 to 45 per cent, are in Mississauga, Aurora, Newmarket and Pickering.
• 90 per cent of stores check for age ID for cigarette sales.
• More than half of the stores are chains and they're the most likely to survive, with stores such as Rabba that are the most diversified in the best position. Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., which operates Couche-Tard, Provi-Soir, Dépanneur 7, Mac's Convenience Stores and Beckers Milk, is the largest chain in Canada. Seven-Eleven has 500 stores from B.C. to Ontario. There are more than 150 Hasty Markets in the province.
• Lottery tickets are 10 to 12 per cent of business, with a low profit margin. Convenience stores in Ontario sell 1.4 billion tickets a year.
• ATMs are a small percentage of business; the commission on phone calls is also small.
• Shoppers Drug Mart, Tim Hortons and the combined store-and-gas-station are the biggest competitors, followed by 24-hour supermarkets.
• The benchmark for survival is 500 to 1,000 people living within a 1.6-kilometre radius.
• Groceries, often taking the biggest share of space and once a mainstay, are now the least profitable or sellable items.
• Healthier and grab-and-go foods are increasingly popular but slow to be stocked.
- Lesley Ciarula Taylor
1888-business 当前离线  
回复时引用此帖
感谢 1888-business
此篇文章之用户:
云儿飘飘 (Dec 19th, 2008)
旧 Dec 17th, 2008, 23:44   只看该作者   #2
forger
Senior Member
级别:18 | 在线时长:398小时 | 升级还需:39小时级别:18 | 在线时长:398小时 | 升级还需:39小时级别:18 | 在线时长:398小时 | 升级还需:39小时级别:18 | 在线时长:398小时 | 升级还需:39小时级别:18 | 在线时长:398小时 | 升级还需:39小时级别:18 | 在线时长:398小时 | 升级还需:39小时
 
注册日期: Mar 2006
帖子: 617
声望: 22768
forger has a reputation beyond reputeforger has a reputation beyond reputeforger has a reputation beyond reputeforger has a reputation beyond reputeforger has a reputation beyond reputeforger has a reputation beyond reputeforger has a reputation beyond reputeforger has a reputation beyond reputeforger has a reputation beyond reputeforger has a reputation beyond reputeforger has a reputation beyond repute
默认 好事做到底

拜托翻译一下。
forger 当前离线  
回复时引用此帖
旧 Dec 18th, 2008, 00:58   只看该作者   #3
笑熬漿糊
级别:79 | 在线时长:6716小时 | 升级还需:4小时级别:79 | 在线时长:6716小时 | 升级还需:4小时级别:79 | 在线时长:6716小时 | 升级还需:4小时级别:79 | 在线时长:6716小时 | 升级还需:4小时级别:79 | 在线时长:6716小时 | 升级还需:4小时级别:79 | 在线时长:6716小时 | 升级还需:4小时级别:79 | 在线时长:6716小时 | 升级还需:4小时
 
笑熬漿糊 的头像
 
注册日期: Nov 2005
住址: Edmonton
帖子: 33,333
积分:36
精华:10
声望: 146144934
笑熬漿糊 has a reputation beyond repute笑熬漿糊 has a reputation beyond repute笑熬漿糊 has a reputation beyond repute笑熬漿糊 has a reputation beyond repute笑熬漿糊 has a reputation beyond repute笑熬漿糊 has a reputation beyond repute笑熬漿糊 has a reputation beyond repute笑熬漿糊 has a reputation beyond repute笑熬漿糊 has a reputation beyond repute笑熬漿糊 has a reputation beyond repute笑熬漿糊 has a reputation beyond repute
Talking

引用:
作者: forger 查看帖子
拜托翻译一下。
就是所有的这样小便利店都在惨淡经营中。

俺无非夏天多去买点雪冰;冬天去不管买啥都不要零。

擎傲世之龍碼 從混沌中明清澈
笑熬漿糊 当前离线  
回复时引用此帖
发表新主题 回复

主题工具

发帖规则
不可以发表新主题
不可以发表回复
不可以上传附件
不可以编辑自己的帖子

启用 BB 代码
论坛启用 表情符号
论坛启用 [IMG] 代码
论坛禁用 HTML 代码



所有时间均为格林尼治时间 -4。现在的时间是 08:30

请尊重文章原创者,转帖请注明来源及原作者。
凡是本站用户自行发布的任何信息,皆不代表本站的立场,
华枫网站不确保各类信息的正确性和可靠性,也不承担由此而导致的任何直接或间接损失以及任何法律责任。

Copyright © 1999-2024 Chinasmile