Discount retailers Dollar General and Five Below both used their respective Q4 earnings calls to address new digital updates and how that work could improve their omnichannel experiences and sales.
Both mass merchant retailers, known for their low price points, reported their quarterly and full-year 2025 earnings in mid-March. They also both have leaned into third-party delivery services, executives shared on their respective earnings calls.
For Dollar General, part of the omnichannel growth also will come from improving and expanding search capabilities, according to chief operating officer Emily Taylor. She said upgrading search capabilities is important to both consumers and advertisers using its retail media network (which it calls the DG Media Network). It started the network in 2018, she said.
Although neither Dollar General nor Five Below disclosed ecommerce-specific sales for Q4, they each addressed comparable or same-store sales, which account for online transactions and give a sense of the retailers’ omnichannel advancements.
At Dollar General, same-store sales increased 4.3% year over year in Q4 and 3.0% for 2025 as a whole. Meanwhile, at Five Below, comparable sales increased 15.4% year over year in Q4 and 12.8% for 2025 overall.
Dollar General’s total sales in Q4 grew 5.9% year over year to reach $10.9 billion. Its full-year 2025 sales increased 5.2% to reach $42.7 billion.
Five Below’s total sales in Q4 grew 24.3% to reach $1.73 billion. Its full-year 2025 sales increased 22.9% to $4.76 billion.
Although Dollar General’s total sales are larger, Five Below ranks higher in the Top 2000 Database. Five Below is No. 519, whereas Dollar General is No. 674. The Top 2000 Database ranks North America’s largest online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales.
How Dollar General is growing omnichannel sales
Todd Vasos, CEO at Dollar General, said the retailer believes it has “a tremendous opportunity to gain additional market share” by factoring in both in-store and digital shopping experiences.
The company is “advancing our digital initiatives as we seek to further enhance the omnichannel consumer experience at Dollar General,” Vasos told investors.
He noted that the retailer’s mobile app has more than 7 million monthly active users and a total of more than 100 million “marketable customer profiles.”
As a way to drive growth, he said, Dollar General is focused on scaling its delivery options, personalizing customer experiences and growing its retail media network. Dollar General now delivers to customers through:
- Its roughly 18,000 stores.
- Its myDG Delivery same-day offering.
- Third-party last-mile delivery partners DoorDash and Uber Eats.
Vasos noted that collectively, the options have delivered 80% of digital orders within one hour. Dollar General also continues to see larger basket sizes online than its average in-store transactions, he said. It also sees “very strong repeat-visit rates,” he said. That all makes its delivery platforms a “more meaningful sales driver,” he added.
Dollar General sees its retail media network as “one of the most significant components of our digital initiative,” Vasos said. The network enables a more personalized experience for customers and a higher return on ad spend for advertisers, he added.
“Our DG Media Network strategy is focused on accelerating on-site performance through improved search, sponsored products and a stronger ecommerce experience while expanding our ability to capture emerging off-site spends across social, connected TV and video,” Vasos said.
He said Dollar General generated about $170 million “in retail media network volume” in 2025.
Five Below’s omnichannel approach targets convenience
Winifred (Winnie) Park, CEO at Five Below, told investors that the retailer’s future endeavors tied to omnichannel “are very much in a test, learn and ramp mode.”
She said Five Below has begun offering buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS), a decreasingly common omnichannel offering among retail chains after a boom during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve seen actually big, big growth with third-party delivery,” Park said. “And so we’re going to continue to look at those avenues because we’ve got to meet the customer where they are. And I think particularly for the younger customers, specifically Gen Z, convenience is critical.”
She said Five Below sees omnichannel offerings as “an opportunity to acquire new customers who may not have considered us or walk away just because it’s not convenient.” Additionally, the retailer sees omnichannel offerings as a way to lead to greater conversion, she said.
The retailer has also redirected marketing spend toward social and creator content to “be faster and more agile in communicating newness,” Park said.
“We have just begun building a customer database, which will sharpen our ability to direct personalized social and direct marketing content to better engage with our customers and develop a relationship with them,” Park said. “While we’re still in very early innings with the strategy, we are very pleased with how it drove traffic and sales growth, both online and in stores throughout the year.”
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