Cheap flip-flops. Cans of expired soup. Scraggly plastic flowers. Knockoff T-shirts made in China. And best of all—they’re only $1!
Those words may conjure visions of dollar stores past, but the reality today is quite different. Think wide, clean aisles, 20 cooler doors stocked with an array of packaged beverages, beer and home meal replacements, and even competitively priced cigarettes. Sounds a lot like a convenience store, doesn’t it?
And with the largest chains—Family Dollar, Dollar General, Dollar Tree and 99 Cents Only—growing at a combined rate of more than 1,000 sites per year, they’ve got the convenience channel surrounded.
“In reality, they are now direct competition,” says John West, vice president of retail marketing for Alon Brands, dba 7-Eleven, Odessa, Texas. The company’s home state has the highest number of dollar stores in the United States; Alon has identified 137 of them (mainly Family Dollar and Dollar General) within a three-quarter-mile radius of its more than 300 sites.
“They’re definitely trying to set themselves up as somewhat of a convenience store,” says West, citing the stores’ expanding assortment of candy, snacks and dry grocery, as well as the addition of coolers, cigarettes and beer.
“They have changed dramatically, and if you don’t go take a look at what they’re doing, you may find yourself wondering where a chunk of your business has gone,” says Fran Duskiewicz, senior executive vice president for Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppes Inc., Canastota, N.Y. About three-quarters of Nice N Easy’s 82 sites have a dollar store within a 5-mile radius—some even across the street.
“I think they’ve done a really good job,” he says, “especially in tough financial times, of carving out a place where you can get a number of things and not have to pay a whole awful lot.”
“The business has shifted pretty dramatically in the last 10 years from being a general-merchandise store with some in-and-out food … to becoming much more of a consumables, food-driven, weekly shopping kind of environment,” says Neil Stern, senior partner with Chicago-based retail consultancy McMillanDoolittle LLP. “The addition of food, addition and expansion of coolers and freezers, and now addition of tobacco, beer and wine in some stores puts them in much more of a grocery and c-store world than they used to be.”
The two biggest players—Dollar General Corp. and Family Dollar Stores Inc.—have moved the most aggressively into the convenience space, with the latter charging
into tobacco, a category that c-stores not only dominate but which many operators also depend upon for 42% of their in-store sales and 22% of their margin, according to NACS figures. Indeed, the word “convenience” has almost become a mantra for the chains, which see it as the key to luring shoppers from their retail competition.
“For us, convenience is about being in neighborhoods where our customers live,” says Josh Braverman, spokesman for Family Dollar, Matthews, N.C., which has more than 7,300 sites in 45 states. “Oftentimes, our destination is where customers can walk to; we’re in convenient locations, and we don’t charge a premium for that convenience.
“If you think about the model for a drug store or a convenience store, they really do charge a little bit more for being in those neighborhoods.”
This convenience extends to the availability of parking near the store’s front door. “It’s really about that convenient shopping trip, both from location and ease of shopping,” says Braverman. (Dollar General declined an interview because the company is in a “quiet period.”)
And there’s plenty of evidence that dollar stores’ convenient approach is winning over customers. According to Chicago-based SymphonyIRI Group, the average purchase occasions per household at dollar stores jumped 6% in the 52 weeks ending April 15, 2012—compared to a 0.4% increase for c-stores. Meanwhile, dollar stores’ penetration has grown 1.3 points—the greatest increase among the major retail channels, with two-thirds of Americans now shopping the sites.
And their customer base is widening. The core dollar-store consumer has a household income of less than $40,000 and overindexes for household assistance. “In some areas where we’ve lost [electronic benefit sales] … I would wager those have moved over to a dollar store near us,” says Duskiewicz. But while dollar stores may be winning more trips from these customers, higher-income households are among their fastest-growing segments.
In the end, it is a battle being fought among dollar store, c-store, supermarket, drug store and big box on the essence of convenience. It is not enough anymore to simply offer a convenient location; rather, the successful retailer will merge a convenient location with pricing and assortment that encourage a one-stop shop.
“Just because we call ourselves convenience stores doesn’t mean we own convenience,” says Duskiewicz. “The shopper defines convenience. If a shopper finds convenience in a drug or dollar store and that suits their purpose, well, that’s where they’re going.”
The Expanding Basket
The recession and its stumbling recovery have provided some of the fuel for dollar stores’ fire, giving a jump-start to longer-term initiatives such as adding refrigerated and frozen food, remodeling stores and expanding assortment.
“The recession in late 2007 and early 2008 was in a lot of ways the best thing that could have happened to them,” says Mike Paglia, a senior analyst for Kantar Retail, a consultancy based in Cambridge, Mass. “Retailers in that space had already started scratching the surface in those areas but hadn’t gained traction. … Now, all of a sudden, people who have lost jobs or their income is uncertain are very value-conscious. Suddenly these stores are getting a second look: This is actually a nice store and you can get a pretty large portion of your basket at this store.”
For Family Dollar and Dollar General, expanding the basket and consumer base with frequently purchased items is the chief aim behind an expansion of consumables.
“It’s really about: How do I increase the frequency of trips?” says Stern. “The way to do that is to be more relevant in more of those categories.”
Family Dollar first installed cooler doors in 2005, starting with five. While the average site has eight cooler doors, stores are
now being opened with 15 to 20, as space permits. Beyond refrigerated staples such as milk and eggs, the cooler-door expansion “is really about providing full meal solutions,” says Braverman, pointing out that a new contract with McLane Co. will enable the chain to expand the product lineup even more. “We will be able to offer more protein-type items in those coolers—so frozen chicken and steak—to really become a destination where folks can get more of those full meal solutions in our store.”
From 2007 to 2011, Family Dollar saw dollars per trip grow 38% and trips per shopper jump 18%. Food sales—including candy, grocery, refrigerated, frozen, beverage and snacks—rose 18% from 2010 to 2011 and now provide 23% of Family Dollar sales.
Dollar General’s Market format takes this chase of consumables even further. The stores’ 20,000-square-foot space is able to generate an average of $4 million to $5 million per unit—compared to $1.4 million for a typical 9,000-square-foot Dollar General—with a large produce section and expanded grocery offer.
Paglia was impressed by the format, which right now numbers only 60 sites; the company has plans to add 25 more in 2012. “If Dollar General ever decided to ramp up openings on these at a pace we know they can do, it could impact the landscape pretty significantly,” he says.
While drawing shoppers in with food items, Family Dollar and Dollar General are also expanding their health and beauty care (HBC) assortment as basket builders, through both name-brand items and private label.
“Some of the [HBC] and non-edible grocery items are margin builders for them,” Paglia says. “By carrying consumables, particularly food items, they are margin-dilutive items.”
At the same time that the dollar offer is evolving, so is the consumer base. George E. Brown II, senior account executive for New York-based Meyers Research Center (MRC), which conducts consumer research in various retail channels, says that since the firm started tracking dollar stores in 2003, consumer perception has significantly shifted with the chains’ upgraded offer.
Early shoppers described visits as “fun,” likening them to a treasure hunt, with product popping in and out of assortment. Since then, maturing relationships between major dollar retailers and brand-name manufacturers have enabled the chains to establish a more consistent offer.
“They became a destination for many categories,” says Meyer. “Some of those are c-store key categories, such as food, snack and beverages.” As a result of these improvements, the dollar-store demographic is steadily growing older, more female and wealthier.
Meyer says dollar-store trips tend to be planned, smaller fill-in occasions, with an average spend of $10 from four to five items across all categories. Baskets including snack, food and beverage tend to total on the lower side of that figure and typically are purchased by lower-income, younger, more frequent shoppers. “Older shoppers who are gravitating to dollar stores are buying household products; they might buy a few more items, but they also pick up impulse items at the same time,” he says.
Braverman describes Family Dollar’s core customer as a female head of household making $40,000 or less, living paycheck to paycheck. But now, “we’ve seen a new customer come in and check us out
and really like what’s she’s seen: That’s higher income, $40,000 to $70,000,” he says. “That mid- to higher-income customer is looking to save and realizing she can get a lot of the same name brands she can get at the grocery store and big box.”
In a second-quarter 2011 earnings call, Dollar General CEO Richard Dreiling observed that the company’s core customer still made up 59% of its shoppers and 83% of its sales. However, the fastest-growing segments are those trading down to the dollar channel, and those “trading in.”
“We believe we are seeing another category of new customers who are trading in and who are choosing to come to our stores because they like not only our pricing, but also the shopping experience and the product offerings they are finding in Dollar General,” he said. “We believe these trade-ins reflect a new consumerism, which values frugality and smart shopping.”
Paglia of Kantar says dollar stores are performing a balancing act—one not so different from the c-store channel: Keep the core lower-income customer with dollar-priced merchandise while
drawing higher-income shoppers with an updated store, better assortment and brand names. This is why, for example, Dollar General has been increasing the number of its $1 items in its stores—a balance check, if you will, in the midst of cooler expansions and the introduction of tobacco and beer.
Tobacco Alley
Traditionally, “core value” dollar stores such as Family Dollar and Dollar General are engineered to be very low productivity boxes, averaging sales per square foot of about $150 for a store about 7,000 square feet. Compare that to an average of $547 for c-stores, according to the NACS State of the Industry Report of 2011 Data. Sales per store average $1.2 million to $1.5 million a year, according to the companies’ latest earnings reports.
“They’re not trying to drive productivity, which sounds strange in the retail world, but their model is built on a low cost, and simplicity of operations,” Stern says. Historically, these chains would rather open a new store than drive greater productivity from the stores.
At the same time, the chains’ drive to grow trip frequency and basket size has pushed them into categories that introduce a considerable degree of complexity. Family Dollar is rolling out a 4-foot tobacco set to 6,000 sites by end of 2012. In a second-quarter 2012 earnings call, its CEO, Howard Levine, explained that the company chose tobacco as a major business for several reasons.
“First, it only takes 4 feet of space behind the checkout, so it was relatively easy to find space,” he said. He also cited Family Dollar’s new distribution deal with McLane Co. and the shorter and less expensive licensing process for tobacco, which enables the chain to add it to more sites compared to beer or wine. “And lastly, we believe tobacco is a larger opportunity because it is more frequently purchased and drives substantially more trips than beer and wine—in fact, 16 trips vs. 10 trips,” he said. (While Dollar General has not announced sales of tobacco, it has been testing the category in Nevada since late 2011.)
According to Family Dollar’s own research, its shoppers overindex with tobacco products—more than one-third of heavy Family Dollar customers smoke, compared to the national average of less than 20%—and these smokers make more trips. Also, 60% of baskets that include cigarettes have additional items in the basket, which averages $17 compared to $13 without cigarettes. “When you back tobacco out of that basket, the remaining basket is 8% higher than our original basket,” says Levine.
Lou Maiellano, partner in TAZ Marketing & Consulting Group, a tobacco retail consultancy based in Sevierville, Tenn., says Family Dollar’s entry into the category is a “no-brainer.” “It’s always been a part of the business that they were just missing,” he says. “This is all pure plus sell, just an add-on.” He describes the offer as “basic,” with a mix of premium brands such as Marlboro, Newport and Camel, and value brands such as Pyramid and Maverick. The OTP selection is limited to a few shelves of cigars.
While the fixture itself—a high-profile metal cabinet with locked glass doors, typically situated behind the counter—doesn’t always scream convenience, Maiellano says that is not necessarily a negative: “Am I going in expecting convenience? I don’t think you are. …You know if you want a pack of cigarettes, you have to go up to the counter and have someone get them for you.”
None of the retailers interviewed for this story sees Family Dollar’s tobacco offer as a short-term threat. Duskiewicz likens it to a drug-store offer and says that in New York, where Nice N Easy is based, pricing is dictated by a state minimum. West of Alon similarly considers it “very weak” and has no plans to change his chain’s approach to tobacco.
Maiellano considers Family Dollar’s tobacco offer a “work in progress,” with a fair number of OTP SKUs but no moist smokeless tobacco. Prices are competitive but not necessarily the lowest. The stores also do not sell cartons of cigarettes. In the long term, once the offer is communicated properly, he believes “the pie will just be re-sorted” among c-stores, dollar stores, drug stores, tobacco shops and
supermarkets.
He does urge c-store retailers to make sure they stay on top of their tobacco categories and pursue opportunities to drive customers to their store; this will become more important as dollar stores learn and perfect the offer. “Their stores in the future when this category begins to grow will end up growing into that business,” Maiellano says.
More Beer
Another complex category—alcohol—has also entered dollar stores’ retail equation. At Dollar General, beer had been rolled out to 3,900 stores or about 40% of the chain, with a goal of reaching 5,000 by the end of the year. “When beer is in the basket, those stores have a 1% additional comp, so we’re real pleased with what we’re seeing,” said Dreiling during an earnings call. The company has also launched a private-brand wine and plans to begin sales of spirits. (Family Dollar is currently testing beer, with no timeline for completion.)
Joe Vonder Haar, beverage industry consultant and managing partner in iSEE Store Innovations LLC, St. Louis, says beer is a natural way for dollar stores to build the basket. “They’ve looked at their core consumer; it’s not a matter of bringing new consumers in, but just converting existing consumers in their stores who are already there,” he says.
After visits to St. Louis-area Dollar General stores, Vonder Haar describes the beer offer—two cooler doors and two shelves of warm packs—as a “very limited assortment,” composed mainly of premium and subpremium beer. Smaller packs are also the focus, with 18-packs the maximum pack size. Based on the assortment, he suspects that the 12-pack of Bud Light cans is the No. 1 SKU. This compares to c-stores, where Bud Light 12-, 18- or 24-packs are typically the top-selling SKU, depending on the current promotional strategy of the brewer.
Also notable: The dollar stores sell no single-serve beer, from which c-stores generate nearly one-half of their beer sales, and which also provides the highest margin. “The sweet spot for convenience is the ‘for me, for now’ occasion,” Vonder Haar says. “There’s only a small piece that [dollar stores] are going after. It is fill-in, not necessarily for immediate consumption.”
It serves as a nice add-on that builds the basket for their customer, says Vonder Haar. The prices on the multipacks are competitive, he says, although not the lowest in town.
In the short term, Vonder Haar says dollar stores pose a greater competitive threat to drug stores, whose beer sales also tend to be fill-in, impulse-type occasions: “In the longer term, if they go after better merchandising … and go after smaller, single-serve pack sizes, because of their consumer profile, I think the biggest threat is in a convenience store.”
Vonder Haar recommends c-stores focus on their strengths: variety, price competitiveness and promotions. He highlights monthly promotions popular with beer wholesalers, such as tickets off a local baseball game or a sweepstakes. “That’s an area that the dollar category is just not used to participating in,” he says.
“If you have [a Family Dollar or Dollar General] in your neighborhood, pay attention,” says Vonder Haar. “Don’t give them a chance to out-execute you, because consumers are creatures of habit. Once you have a loyal customer, you want to keep them; you don’t want to give them any opportunity to change buying patterns.”
The Convenient Response
Beyond playing defense as dollar stores grow into tobacco and beer, c-stores can be aggressive by targeting the convenience-value equation.
“There is some magic, frankly, in $1 merchandise,” says Stern, who points out that Target’s One Spot dollar section positioned at the front of its stores successfully re-creates some of the excitement.
Paglia says he has not yet seen a competitive response he would classify as “a dollar-store killer.” Some grocers have come close, he says, such as Kroger, which has an area of the store dedicated to value, with a different look and competitive pricing.
Beyond this literal approach, Stern says retailers can consider simple merchandising techniques. Supermarket chains, for example, have embraced 10-for-$10 promotions that meet the $1 price point. “You’re really not taking margin hits, just communicating value in a different way,” he says. (For more on Alon Brands’ effort to create an effective value center, see “Alon’s Dollar Killer,” p. 100.)
Another tactic is to match price with package size and occasion. A retailer requesting anonymity, who oversaw an ambitious dollar program at a large regional c-store chain, says one takeaway from the two-year experiment is the need to consider how each product can deliver convenience and value.
Consider, for example, hemorrhoid cream. At the time of the dollar program, the retailer was able to buy a massive quantity of large tubes of hemorrhoid cream at a discount and sell them for $5.99, a price competitive with that of Walmart. “The problem is, the person who needs a gigantic tube of hemorrhoid cream isn’t coming to a c-store to buy it,” he says.
It’s better to have offered a trial size or smaller $1 or $1.99 offer. “Just having a great deal on an item isn’t enough,” he says. “It’s a great deal on what the customer
wants. And that requires a great deal more thought and follow-through to figure out how to make the concept successful. That’s what dollar stores have done well: They’ve figured out what the customer wants and how to get it to them at a package size that’s at an appealing price point.”
So, for example, to be able to sell it for only $1, a dollar store would sell a 12-ounce box of dog biscuits instead of a 64-ounce package. It’s an approach that appeals directly to that core dollar consumer, often living paycheck to paycheck.
“If you go to Walmart and Target, here’s a 30-pack of toilet paper that’s $7,” says Stern. “That’s a great value if you can afford to spend $7 of your food dollars on toilet paper, but a lot of people can’t. The core appeal of Dollar General and Family Dollar is they’re going to give an option that costs $1.50, and if you only have $25 to spend this week, that’s the right value at the time.”
There are already hints of this in the grocery category; for example, consider single-serve bowls of ready-to-eat cereal as an alternative to a 15-ounce box.
“The opportunity in a lot of grocery and HBC segments is to really tailor to more of a dollar-store program, where people can say, ‘Hey, I got a really good deal today,’ ” he says.
Room for Growth
In a January 2011 white paper, Ann Natunewicz, manager of retail research for Colliers International, a commercial real-estate services firm based in San Jose, Calif., revealed dollar stores had reached an incredible milestone: At that point, the four major dollar chains had surpassed the store count of the three national drug-store chains by nearly 2,000 locations.
For 2012, Family Dollar plans to add 450 to 500 sites and is entering California, Oregon, Washington and Montana, with a net store growth target of 5% to 7%. Dollar General plans to add 625 new sites, including 50 in California.
And as far as the dollar chains are concerned, they are far from the saturation point. Dollar General CEO Dreiling said in a conference call that research shows 8,000 existing opportunities to expand in the 40 states where it does business.
“There’s another 3,000 to 3,500 opportunities in the states we’re not in,” he said. “So there are 11,000 opportunities to grab out there.” In addition, because of Dollar General’s smaller trade area, stores can be placed closer together. “Remember, one of the driving pieces of this model is not only the value equation the customer gets, but the convenience angle as well.”
Of course, this growth is not happening in a vacuum; some analysts have suggested that the dollar channel will lose steam as the economic recovery picks up. Another possible brake hinges on whether they can move effectively from their base—small to midsize towns and rural markets—and effectively penetrate bigger and more sophisticated markets.
“The biggest issue for them is they have a very simple model that’s worked,” says Stern. “But now when they want to expand geographically, or drive more business out of the box they have, they find business opportunities, but they require more complexity.”
This includes higher build-out costs for the new refrigerators and freezers, different service models to handle selling age-restricted products, and different labor models and increased supply-chain complexity to accommodate more perishables. “All of those things that enable them to grow and get more sales are also inherently tougher to handle,” he says.
The competition is getting wiser to the threat as well. Increasingly, supermarkets are asking landlords to block dollar stores in their lease agreements because of their expanding mix of consumables.
“Look statistically at what Family Dollar has been doing, and the amount of food and consumables they’re selling is increasing, so they’re essentially a food store,” says Stern. “Ten to 15 years ago when a lease was signed, dollar stores were more variety or general merchandise stores. If supermarkets hadn’t built it into their leases, they certainly would now.”
Stern believes all retail channels need to take notice. “When someone opens up a $1 million store down the block from you, no one worries about it,” he says. “The issue with dollar stores is that they’re opening 1,000 of those $1 million stores a year. That’s where it’s interesting: It’s the sheer numbers of them that make them a threat to everybody.”
It’s this vigilance that, in the end, may prove to put the biggest brake on dollar-store growth. For years, dollar stores have flown under the radar of big boxes, supermarkets and c-stores.
“As dollar stores become more prominent, it’s another side to that sword,” says Paglia. “Their competitors will figure them out and will try to differentiate and get back the competitive advantage. It’s going to be a constant challenge to dollar stores to remain relevant and competitive. That’s also the price you pay when you want to take over the world.”
Refrigerated and Frozen Food
The offer: The average Family Dollar site has eight cooler doors, and stores are now opening with 15 to 20, as space permits. Beyond staples such as milk and eggs, the chain is introducing full meal solutions, including frozen chicken and steak.
Most new Dollar General Plus stores have 16 cooler doors. The 20,000-square-foot Dollar General Market concept serves as a small grocery store, with half dedicated to food and beverage and half to grocery and general merchandise.
The purpose: It’s all about increasing basket size and trip frequency. Consider that since installing coolers, Family Dollar has seen dollars per trip grow 38% and trips per shopper jump 18%. Beer and Wine
The offer: At Dollar General, the goal is to roll beer out to 5,000 sites. The company also plans to begin sales of spirits. Family Dollar is testing beer, with no timeline for completion. Its set features two cooler doors, and two shelves of warm packs are dedicated to a limited assortment of premium and subpremium beer. Smaller packs are also the focus, with 12-packs the maximum pack size, and no singles. In addition to beer, Dollar General is selling private-label wine.
The purpose: Serves as a nice addition that builds the basket. Acts as an impulse or add-on purchase, similar to that of the drug-store occasion. Wine is a piece of the home-meal-replacement objective. Tobacco
The offer: Family Dollar is rolling out tobacco sets to 6,000 sites by the end of 2012. The stores’ 4-foot, locked metal cabinet is typically placed behind a counter. Contains a limited assortment of premium brands such as Marlboro, Newport and Camel, and value brands such as Pyramid and Maverick—all packs. The OTP selection is limited to cigars.
The purpose: Family Dollar’s core customer overindexes for smoking. Serves as a trip driver and basket builder: Sixty percent of baskets with cigarettes also include other items.
Alon’s Dollar Killer
Like many c-store retailers, Alon Brands has dabbled with dollar-store merchandise. In 2006, it created a short-lived value grocery section. While the value for customers was there—product was priced competitively to dollar stores—it was only because Alon had purchased the items in bulk to earn and pass along a lower price. However, there was just too much product to sell.
“We had 48 cans of tomato soup sitting on the shelf,” says John West, vice president of retail marketing for Alon Brands, dba 7-Eleven, Odessa, Texas. “We did get a price break and were able to pass along the savings, but the cost of goods and the cash flow were not where it should be. That wasn’t what our customers were actually going to the dollar stores for.”
Here’s where Alon’s latest stab at dollar stores differs. While West considers dollar stores’ current tobacco and beer offer not an actionable threat, calling it “very weak,” he believes Alon has an opportunity to compete head-on in the health and beauty care (HBC) and grocery category.
His team identified 40 to 50 HBC and grocery items in local dollar stores that appear to be the top-moving SKUs. Then they teamed with Alon’s distributor, Core-Mark International, to set up a 20-foot set of paper, soap and HBC that they could sell at value prices, such as a 54-ounce bottle of name-brand detergent at two for $4. After a two- to three-week test in El Paso, the store sold through its entire stock—without advertising or signage highlighting the offer.
Alon’s key to making the program worth the investment is its ability to buy the product in lower quantities from Core-Mark but still get a low price. “The value is now we’re sourcing at a very low cost of goods that still have proper quality, but we’re able to price it very near what dollar stores are, and we can buy it per unit,” says West. “If we only want six units of this item, we can get six items, whereas before maybe we had to buy 24 or 48.”
The company has since rolled out the program to six sites in El Paso, and is finalizing the plan-o-gram so that all 100 sites in El Paso and Albuquerque will have a value center, ranging from 8 to 20 feet, depending on the size of the store. “As [the set] gets a little smaller, we put in the fastest-moving items, and as it gets a little larger, we can put in some of the slower-moving products,” says West. “We’re going to be watching that scan data very, very closely and seeing what we need to adjust, and adjust it on a per-store basis.”
Over late summer, Alon added ceiling and shelf signage to highlight the center, and the company plans to begin promoting it once the program is fully rolled out.
Another area where Alon is tackling dollar competition head-on is novelties. Through a program with Core-Mark, Alon added a 36-SKU spinner rack of inexpensive toys ($1.79 each or two for $3) that has proved very successful, with one-third of stores selling out of product the first week, and most stores emptying the rack within two weeks. The company plans to change the SKU mix by season, with water guns for spring and summer, for example, and trucks and dolls for the Christmas season. Total general merchandise sales bounced up 23% year over year thanks to the new offer.
“C-stores have a good variety, but a variety built around quick snacking,” says West. “Most everything bought in our stores is consumed in the first one to two hours. Value stores really do have a large variety of housewares, personal goods such as socks, HBC, etc. It is a lot of variety. … In their minds, possibly in their customers’ minds, it’s another reason to shop at those stores. We want to show we can do similar things, but more along items they’re looking for on an everyday basis.”
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.