Retailer offers pathway for social skills training: your dollar store with more offers a place for Wikwemikong residents to buy goods for less and pick up valuable service skills and confidence.

• Author: McKinley, Karen
• Position: INDIGENOUS BUSINESS

One business in Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island is offering its community more than a place to get great bargains. They also offer to teach service skills people will need to be successful in life.

Your Dollar Store With More, a Canada-wide chain, has a franchise on the reserve, offering the community a place to shop and in turn helps to train staff to engage with the public and help keep money in the community.

Manager Leslie Manitowabi-Recollet said the store has been more than a convenient place to shop. It provides service industry training and teaches staff to have pride in their workplace.

"They stress to have pride in our workplace because it is a reflection of our community," she said. "They teach them to walk the aisles, engage with the customers, and if they can't find exactly what they are looking for they try to find something that they may like."

Recollet, who is from the reserve, said she studied retail management and decided to return to her community. She explained while chain stores may get a bad reputation for funneling cash out of a community, Your Dollar Store with More has a mandate to have each franchise be a part of the community. This has helped lead a retail boom on the reserve, Recollet said.

"People from other parts of the Island are coming to shop here, even from as far as the west end," she said.

Recollet said staff retention has been very high as well. Most of their employees have beep with them since it opened in April of 2014. They have had a few high school students work for them and have gone on to college, crediting their time at the store with helping to build confidence.

The store had a lively booth at the Manitoulin Trade Fair the weekend of May 26 to 28 selling everything from candy to the popular fidget spinner toys. Customer service representative Debbie Gravelle said the store really is more than just a store for bargains.

"We are the kind of place that asks why pay $10 for something when you can get it here for just $1?" she said. "When I moved here years ago people were so timid. It took a long time for people to warm up to me. This place also helps teach people customer service skills, so they can have some confidence and head off-reserve to go to college, then return to help more people also learn skills."

Recollet said the trade fair gave them more exposure.

"A lot of people didn't even...