Copycat

Copycat

Don't pay for brand name
Type	Public
Industry	Discount store
Predecessor	Copycat's Choice Discount Store
Founded	1984
Founder	Prina N'Massani
Headquarters	Agnannet , Charnea
Number of locations	16,533 stores (2020)
Area served	Worldwide
Products	Clothing, cleaning supplies, household decor, toys, pet supplies, electronics, health and beauty, snacks, seasonal items and groceries
Divisions	Copycat Marketplace
Subsidiaries	Plexico Copycat Financial Copycat Logistics and Sourcing Copycat Business Ethics and Integrity Foundation

Copycat Inc. (Tamashek: ⵙⴰⴽⴱⴰⵔ ⵎⵧⵙⵙ, Sakbar Moss) is an international chain of discount variety stores founded and headquartered in Charnea, where it is the leading retail chain. The company was established in Agnannet in 1984 by local entrepeneur Prina N'Massani, owner of a retail store known as the Copycat's Choice, and quickly grew to open stores across Charnea before expanding to the Nine Cousins and other Scipian nations, and finally other continents to bring Copycat retail stores to their current global presence. Copycat specializes in substitute and inferior goods such as generic brands and so-called copycat products, for which the company itself is named. The company is not only well known for this, but in fact markets itself as a seller of copycat goods with the slogan "Don't pay for brand name". In practice, Copycat operates in a typical fashion for a discount store, securing local suppliers in its countries of operation and buying in bulk to cut down its costs, in addition to its widely touted policy of not purchasing the more expensive name brand products for its stores. Because of its diverse stock and relatively compact store locations, Copycat stores are especially succesful in rural areas and smaller towns and cities where they are considered more convenient to the local clientele than major department stores and superstores.

History

Copycat's founder Prina N'Massani founded her first store, then known as Copycat's choice in 1984 on the corner of Industry Avenue and Edi Road in outer Agnannet. The store location was immedeatley outside a workers village for a nearby mineral processing plant, and the workers and their families were the primary clientelle. Prina chose to specialize in inferior goods, especially in non-name brand copycat items to popular products that would be more appealing to the notoriously thrifty workers of outer Agnannet. The business had limited success and would open two branches. During this time, Prina's daughter who had gone off to University in Belisaria, invented the Copycat black cat mascot based on a foreign idiom. Prina, who found this amusing, underwent a rebrand under the name Copycat's Choice during this time. The early 1990s were a period of economic downturn in Charnea, resulting from the turmoil of the Ninvite War and its aftermath, which proved to be a great commercial boon to Prina N'Massani. Copycat rapidly expanded through the early 1990s to all the major Charnean cities as Prina initiated an advertising campaign exalting thirfty behavior during those troubled economic times and charachterizing the Copycat stores as the go to location to save money on household products. By the 2000s, buoyed by the commercial success the local stores were experiencing, Copycat went international and began a second prolonged wave of expansion. The company went public in 2007 after becoming one of Scipia's retail giants and one of the most well known Charnean corporations worldwide due in part to the company's aggresive and often comedic ad campaigns.

Merchandise

Copycat merchandise is highly variable from location to location, particularly across national borders. This is due to the company's policy of purchasing its products from local manufacturers, a move which reduces logistics costs and helps enforce the company's reputation for low prices for the customer. True to the company's advertising, Copycat stores almost never sell products from large brands due to the added pricetag of these products from being associated with such brands. Because of this, Copycat products are generally manufactured by small firms or by bulk manufacturers unwilling or unable to wark up their prices over brand recognition and added value. Copycat's suppliers may fluctate from time to time because of these policies, while the general categories of merchandise sold at Copycat locations remains stable. These categories include cleaning supplies and household decor, clothing and beauty items, children's toys and pet supplies, certain electronics such as phone chargers as well as a limited selection of over the counter pharmaceuticals such as ibuprofen pain relievers. Some locations have expanded invetory to include snacks and a selection of grocieries and staple food items in response to demand from their local clientelle. The wide variety of low cost merchandise has made the Copycat business model uniquely succesful in rural areas or relatively isolated or peripheral neighborhoods of cities where competition from large dedicated department stores and superstores is low and the local clientelle generally as a preference towards thrift making them more responsive to Copycat's marketing strategy.

Subsidiaries

Subsidiary	Business	Executive
Plexico	Plastics and plastic products, Copycat Store Brand products manufacturing	Ishel Bitou
Copycat Financial	Financial Services and Payments Processing	Fatima Miszka
Copycat Logistics and Sourcing	Merchandise Acquisition and Transport	Imusa Zuba ult Talati
Copycat Business Ethics and Integrity Foundation	Charitable Organization	Magdalena Djamienka