World-wide, they hide in plain sight. Whether $.99, 1 pound, 100 yen or whatever, there are few villages in the world which don't have at least one (and there are about half a dozen or more within a ten-minute walk from where I live. On numerous occasions, they have leapt to the assistance, both at home and abroad. While there are chains of them large enough to be publicly traded in multiple countries, the vast majority of them tend to be ethnic Chinese owned (or in the case of the Philippines, supplied by Chinese offering credit to the largely Moslem proprietors).

That said, rather than fill this post with cheap anecdotes, I would rather look at the vast logistical organization required by what are likely hundreds of thousands of these small shops. The shops are not owned by MBAs. Someone had to decide what stock each should carry, provide credit and startup assistance. The size of the industry is likely measured in hundreds of billions of dollars.

And now have come the tariff war between the US and China. While the news is full of the results of Temo, Alibaba and Shein having their exports to the States being slaughtered by the tariffs, and the effects on "average" Americans, not a single story has been on the news about the impact when these stores who even more Americans habitually pick up items from. Pretty soon, the small items we all depend on - sponges, brooms, TV cables, extension cards - darn near everything - is going to be impacted, as well as an entire class of stores quietly slipping under water along with their ma and pop entrepreneurs.

Jeff