Leon Levine, who built Family Dollar into a discount retail giant catering to America’s lower-income and middle-class shoppers, has died at 85. The Leon Levine Foundation, the philanthropic organization Levine later founded, confirmed in an online statement he died on April 5. No cause was listed. Levine, a college dropout, was one of several retail founders who ushered in a boom of stores selling low-cost goods.
Fresh oil spots on the pavement meant the locals drove older cars and didn’t have much money for repairs, the Charlotte Observer reported in 2004. Levine’s Family Dollar bucked a trend in retail at the time toward building large stores in the fast-growing suburbs. Instead, the company opted for locations the size of convenience stores close to shoppers’ homes.