How it started
Early history
"99 Cents Only Stores" dates back to the 1960s when its founder, Dave Gold, inherited a liquor store at Grand Central Market, in downtown Los Angeles, and experimented with selling bottles of wine at a fixed price-point of 99 cents. The test was successful, and Dave realized that selling everything in the store for 99 cents would make his business stand out.
"Whenever I'd put wine or cheese on sale for $1.02 or 98 cents, it never sold out," Gold said in a 2001 interview with The Los Angeles Times. "When I put a 99 cent sign on anything, it was gone in no time. I realized it was a magic number."
On August 13, 1982, Dave and Sherry Gold opened the first 99 Cents Only Store at 6921 La Tijera Boulevard, in Inglewood, California near Los Angeles International Airport. To celebrate the grand opening, Dave decided to sell television sets for only 99 cents to the first 13 families. More than 300 people showed up in line, catching the attention of more than 10 TV outlets covering the store’s first day. Inspired by the first grand opening, new stores began offering 99-cents deals for televisions and other products.
In 1996, when the company went public, Dave Gold insisted that the offering price end in 99 cents. "We weren't even sure that the FTC would allow it," said Jeff Holmes, whose firm managed the IPO.
2000s
From Wikipedia’s article on 99 Cents Only Stores, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3