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Most Americans have known about the trendy dollar store Five Below for years. The Philadelphia-based retailer (concept: Most merchandise costs $5 or less) launched in 2002 and has since expanded to 1,850 stores in 44 states. There’s only one Oregon location, though, and it opened in November in Beaverton near Washington Square.
A spin through Five Below on a drizzly weekday afternoon revealed that the store is, essentially, Dollar Tree if it were created by and for 13-year-old girls. It’s nicer than Dollar Tree, but not as nice as Target. Forget practical dollar store staples such as spatulas and cleaning spray and office supplies, and substitute fun, fun and fun. The departments at Five Below are Candy, Style, Party, Room, Create, Tech, Sports and New & Now (seasonal). There is sugar everywhere. Even things that aren’t technically sugar either look or smell like sugar.
Five Below is, therefore, a great option for the following types of shoppers:
- Parents filling Easter baskets.
- Parents buying gifts for their children’s aggressive schedule of birthday parties.
- Children spending their allowance.
- Anyone on a budget who just moved and needs to fill random household product gaps, but only the aesthetic ones.
- Anyone who lives with people who constantly “borrow” their phone chargers.
I naively thought I would be immune to the charms of Five Below, even though I fall into categories 2 and 5.
Immediately upon entering the store, I was welcomed by the cheerful and hardworking retail staff, who were tidying up Easter displays of candy and fuzzy bunny ear headbands ($3) in the New & Now department. They wore shirts that said “Let Go & Have Fun!” on the back. I grabbed an oversized blue handcart. About 90 seconds later, I put it back. Let go and have fun? No thanks. I was here for work, and I have plenty of lip gloss.
I’m sure you can guess where this is headed.
Five Below is going hard for the dupe market—that is, people on the hunt for cheaper off-brand “duplicate” options of well-known products or brands. There are walls of dupe Crocs, here called “charm clogs” ($15); dupe Sol de Janeiro Brazilian Bum Cream, now “Solar Flare Brazilian Caramel Dreams” ($5); and a dupe of Ariana Grande Cloud perfume called “Soft Cloud” ($5, and smells so sweet it’s like aerated candy vapors hitting you in the face). And those are just two of the beauty dupes that I caught. There was definitely Summer Fridays-esque lip gloss and probably a dozen more nonbrand brands that a more educated skin care expert—i.e., most any teenager with an internet connection—could detect.
Certainly, some items here are a good buy—things where quality and longevity don’t matter so much. I snagged a five-pack of cute gift bags with metallic details ($5) to get ahead of my fourth grader’s birthday party demands, and a pink USB-A and USB-C dual wall charger ($7) to hide from my teenager. I then partook in the 3 for $5 deal on Peelerz candy because Five Below carries the typical mango and grape but also lychee, passion fruit, kiwi, orange, watermelon, lemon and the questionable “egg-cellent.”
My arms full, I declared defeat and found the nearest stack of handcarts.
Despite all the dupes, Five Below does carry some name-brand items, and they are priced competitively. They’re mostly children’s items that sound insane when described aloud. Squishmallows ($5–$15) are wildly popular pillows with faces that offer a satisfying tactile experience when squeezed. Fugglers ($5–$8) are small collectible figures whose name is a portmanteau of “funny ugly monster.” MrBeast Feastables ($3) are candy bars that exist because of a North Carolina YouTuber named Jimmy Donaldson. These were all easy skips.
The whole place smelled faintly of plastic, and as I walked around, I started to think of myself as but a cog in a massive global retail wheel, roughly halfway between the factory workers who made all of these items and the landfills the items will end up in, probably sooner than later. I tried to drown out these thoughts by focusing on the 2020 Dua Lipa song “Don’t Start Now” playing over the speaker system—a similarly disposable pop song for the moment.
I left with my wallet $22 lighter, my sense of self a tiny bit bruised that these cheap wares tricked me into letting go and having fun. My children saw the Five Below bag at home and demanded I bring them to the land of dupes to spend their allowance on the weekend. The wheel spins on.
GO: Five Below, 8905 SW Cascade Ave., Suite 130, Beaverton, 503-303-0452, fivebelow.com. 10 am–8 pm Monday–Saturday, 10 am–7 pm Sunday.
