Variety store

A variety store (also pound shop, dollar store, and other names) is a retail store that sells a wide range of inexpensive household goods.

Variety stores often have product lines including food and drink, personal hygiene products, small home and garden tools, office supplies, decorations, electronics, garden plants, toys, pet supplies, remaindered books, recorded media, and motor and bike consumables. Larger stores may sell frozen foods and fresh produce.

Variety stores arose in the early 20th century, with Woolworth's model to reduce store overheads by simplifying the duties of sales clerks. They may now be found all over the world.

A variety store often sells all goods at a single price, in which case it may be called a price-point retailer. The name of the store often reflects this, and in different markets it may be called a dollar store, pound shop, euro store and so on.

Economics

Some items are offered at a considerable discount over other retailers, whereas others are at much the same price point as conventional retail establishments. There are two ways variety stores make a profit:

108 Shop

108 Shop is a Thai chain of franchise convenience stores, with locations nationwide. Sun 108 is the operator of 108 Shop convenience stores and is a subsidiary of Saha Group.

References

100-yen shop

100-yen shops (百円ショップ, hyaku-en shoppu) are common Japanese shops in the vein of American dollar stores. Stocking a variety of items from clothing to stationery, housewares to food, each item is priced at precisely 100 yen. Some examples are Daiso, Seria and Cando. A recent variation of the 100-yen shops are 99-yen shops. Daiei also operates 88-yen stores. Some shops, such as SHOP99, specialize in certain items, such as groceries or natural goods, but this is less common than the variety store model. The current Japanese sales tax of 8% is also added, making a 100-yen purchase actually cost 108 yen.

One supporter of 100-yen shops is Hirotake Yano, the founder of Daiso Industries Co. Ltd., which runs "The Daiso" chain. The first store opened in 1991, and there are now around 1,300 stores throughout Japan. This number is increasing by around 40 stores per month. One of the largest 100-yen Shops is the Daiso in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. It spans four stories and over 10,500 square feet (980 m²). Larger still is the five story Daiso Giga Machida in front of Machida Station, Tokyo.

Spice

A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, berry, bud or vegetable substance primarily used for flavoring, coloring or preserving food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are parts of leafy green plants used for flavoring or as a garnish. Many spices have antimicrobial properties. This may explain why spices are more commonly used in warmer climates, which have more infectious disease, and why the use of spices is prominent in meat, which is particularly susceptible to spoiling. A spice may have other uses, including medicinal, religious ritual, cosmetics or perfume production, or as a vegetable.

History

Early history

The spice trade developed throughout South Asia and Middle East in around 2000 BCE with cinnamon and pepper, and in East Asia with herbs and pepper. The Egyptians used herbs for embalming and their demand for exotic herbs helped stimulate world trade. The word spice comes from the Old French word espice, which became epice, and which came from the Latin root spec, the noun referring to "appearance, sort, kind": species has the same root. By 1000 BCE, medical systems based upon herbs could be found in China, Korea, and India. Early uses were connected with magic, medicine, religion, tradition, and preservation.

Melange (fictional drug)

Melange (/meɪˈlɑːndʒ/ or /meɪˈlɑːnʒ/), often referred to as simply "the spice", is the name of the fictional drug central to the Dune series of science fiction novels by Frank Herbert, and derivative works.

In the series, the most essential and valuable commodity in the universe is melange, a drug that gives the user a longer life span, greater vitality, and heightened awareness; it can also unlock prescience in some humans, depending upon the dosage and the consumer's physiology. This prescience-enhancing property makes safe and accurate interstellar travel possible. Melange comes with a steep price, however: it is addictive, and withdrawal is fatal.

Carol Hart analyzes the concept in the essay "Melange" in The Science of Dune (2008). According to Paul Stamets, Herbert's creation of the drug was related in part to his own personal experiences with psilocybin mushrooms.

Description

Herbert is vague in describing the appearance of the spice. He hints at its color in Dune Messiah (1969) when he notes that Guild Navigator Edric "swam in a container of orange gas ... His tank's vents emitted a pale orange cloud rich with the smell of the geriatric spice, melange." Later in Heretics of Dune (1984), a discovered hoard of melange appears as "mounds of dark reddish brown." Herbert also indicates fluorescence in God Emperor of Dune (1981) when the character Moneo notes, "Great bins of melange lay all around in a gigantic room cut from native rock and illuminated by glowglobes ... The spice had glowed radiant blue in the dim silver light. And the smell—bitter cinnamon, unmistakable." Herbert writes repeatedly, starting in Dune (1965), that melange possesses the odor of cinnamon.

Spice (Perfume song)

"Spice" (スパイス, Supaisu) is the nineteenth single of Japanese girl group Perfume. It was released on November 2, 2011, as the lead single to the group's third studio album, JPN. It was also the group's last single to be released under Tokuma Japan Communications as the group moved to Universal Music Japan (as announced February 28, 2012) for their future releases.

Background

The B-side song, "Glitter", was first used in the commercial for Kirin. Then on September 5, 2011, the group released information on their website about a new single and album, both slated for release for November. The new single will be released on November 2 and will contain two songs including "Glitter" which was featured as a “Kirin Chu-Hi Hyouketsu” CM song. The group also announced that their third studio album will be released on November 30.

The name of the single was finally announced on September 26. It was also chosen as the theme song for the upcoming TBS drama “Sengyo Shufu Tantei ~Watashi wa Shadow“, starring actress Kyoko Fukada making it the group’s first single to tie-in with a drama series. The group's producer Yasutaka Nakata was heavily influenced by the image of the drama when he wrote “Spice”. It’s also the first time that he produced a soundtrack for them.