Dept. store chains with widely dispresed operations

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Dean
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Post by Dean »

TenPoundHammer wrote:One chain that was rather oddly dispersed until recently was Mervyns. Their operations were mostly in the West, but they did spread out to Louisiana, Florida, and Georgia, as well as a handful in Michigan and Minnesota (the MI and MN stores evidently a result of Dayton-Hudson acquisition).

The FL locations were all former Jordan Marsh stores which were sold to Dillard's a couple years later, while the GA locations seem to have just been random additions that went as fast as they came. LA, OK, MI and MN were all wiped out in 2006, of course.

Also, the Bon-Ton skipped over VA, NC, and SC entirely to have one store in Georgia (more specifically, the now-demolished Riverbend Mall in Rome) after acquiring Hess's in 1994. Similarly, Hess's only had one store in NC, and none in SC at all, despite two different stores in Rome, GA (Riverbend Mall, and a replacement at Mount Berry Square).
They went thru the phase that it was MERVYN'S CALIFORNIA...and they had California in script.

I read that the chain was named after founder Mervin. When the original sign arrived for the first store...it was spelled Mervyn. Mervin just had them leave it...and never changed it.
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tesg
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Post by tesg »

TenPoundHammer wrote:One chain that was rather oddly dispersed until recently was Mervyns. Their operations were mostly in the West, but they did spread out to Louisiana, Florida, and Georgia, as well as a handful in Michigan and Minnesota (the MI and MN stores evidently a result of Dayton-Hudson acquisition).
The Minnesota stores were all former Carson-Pirie-Scott stores. They sold their local stores to Dayton-Hudson, who converted the locations to Mervyn's.

Dayton-Hudson's original intent for Mervyn's was to create a national competitor for the Kohl's niche.
Jeff
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Post by Jeff »

on a side note, the Glendale Mervyn's is the only one that I know that still has the California script next to the Mervyn's, and is also the only three-level Mervyns store in the chain.
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Macy's

Post by J-Man »

If memory serves, Macy's had the following divisions in the 70s:
1. New York
2. Bambergers (NJ south to MD)
3. Missouri-Kansas (sold to Dillard's)
4. West (originally O'Connor Moffat in SF; San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, Reno, Fresno, Modesto, Monterey)
5. Davison's (Atlanta)
rich
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Post by rich »

Macy's also owned LaSalle's (Toledo, Findlay, Sandusky, Bowling Green).

I think the Kansas City chain had different roots from the stores in Topeka and Wichita; basically a group of stores that started out as sepaarte family owned stores. The small town LaSalle's branches seemed to have had similar roots.
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Post by jamcool »

Sakowitz (of Texas) had its lone AZ store in Scottsdale, later picked up by Bullock's when Sakowitz closed.
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Post by TenPoundHammer »

jamcool wrote:Sakowitz (of Texas) had its lone AZ store in Scottsdale, later picked up by Bullock's when Sakowitz closed.
Sakowitz also had a store at Forest Fair Mall (now Cincinnati Mills) way the heck out in Ohio, in addition to a couple stores in Oklahoma.
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Post by Jeff »

I just read this:

I. Magnin was a San Francisco, California-based high fashion and specialty luxury department store. Over the course of its existence, it expanded across the West into Southern California and the adjoining states of Arizona, Oregon, and Washington. In the 1970s under Federated Department Stores ownership, the chain entered the Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, DC
bigbubby
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Re: Macy's

Post by bigbubby »

J-Man wrote:If memory serves, Macy's had the following divisions in the 70s:
1. New York
2. Bambergers (NJ south to MD)
3. Missouri-Kansas (sold to Dillard's)
4. West (originally O'Connor Moffat in SF; San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, Reno, Fresno, Modesto, Monterey)
5. Davison's (Atlanta)
That's exactly right. Macy's West was originally known as Macy's California, and included the above mentioned places, as well as Stockton. I don't know when Monterey opened, but Modesto and Fresno actually opened in the early 80s.
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Daniel
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Post by Daniel »

Fresno's Macy's opened in 1984, to be exact. It was the first expansion of Fashion Fair Mall, and the property was the site of the Starlite Drive-In Theater.
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Post by Dean »

I was not familiar with chain VON MAUR until the horrible shootings this week. :(

I noticed they are clustered in the mid-west:

http://www.vonmaur.com/Default.aspx?PageId=6&nt=9

Were these stores blended together over the years via acqusitions...or was this their personal growth?
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Post by TenPoundHammer »

Dean wrote:I was not familiar with chain VON MAUR until the horrible shootings this week. :(

I noticed they are clustered in the mid-west:

http://www.vonmaur.com/Default.aspx?PageId=6&nt=9

Were these stores blended together over the years via acqusitions...or was this their personal growth?
A few of them were indeed acquisitions, but to such a random degree that they might as well have been natural expansion. Here are all the ones that used to be other stores.

*Forsyth, IL; Normal, IL; and Cedar Falls, IA - former Carson Pirie Scott locations acquired in 1989-1990 (Cedar Falls was also formerly James Black Co. and Donaldson's)

*Lombard, IL - former Wieboldt's

* St. Charles, IL - former JCPenney

* Greenwood, IN; Indianapolis, IN; and Eden Prairie, MN - former Montgomery Ward

* Cedar Rapids, IA (Lindale) and Iowa City, IA - former Killian's, acquired in 1981

* Wichita, KS - former Henry's

* Louisville, KY - former Stewart's->L. S. Ayres->Ben Snyder's->Hess's->Jacobson's (yes, this anchor's had six names on it)

* Ann Arbor, MI - former Lord & Taylor->Jacobson's

* Livonia, MI - former Jacobson's also

* Columbus, OH - former Lord & Taylor

* Cedar Rapids, IA (Westdale) - former Brandeis (now closed)
TenPoundHammer
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Post by TenPoundHammer »

Sorry for the double post, but here are a few more chains I know of that had their locations spread about:

* Zody's: Briefly (very briefly) operated in Michigan through acquisition of Yankee, way outside Zody's main market of Arizona, California, and New Mexico

* Turn Style: Had locations in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, and Wisconsin... plus four in Boston.

* Jefferson Ward: I've confirmed that this chain had locations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia (and possibly Delaware)... plus a few in Florida, oddly.

* Parisian also had odd distribution, as it was mostly in the SE United States (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee), but also had a location in Ohio, and two each in Indiana and Michigan. I find this one to be especially bizarre since the only three Parisians left are the ones furthest away from the chain's foundation in Birmingham!

Also, I'm not 100% certain on this, but it seems that E. J. Korvette didn't have locations in Indiana or Ohio, although a few existed in Illinois, Missouri and Michigan. (The other states that I've confirmed as once having Korvette's include Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia.)
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Fantastic Fair

Post by romleys »

One of the most comical slogan used by a discount store was from Fantastic Fair Discount Department Store and Supermarket was their "Coast to Coast" line. I guess two stores in Nevada and one store in South Portland, Maine made the chain literally on the East Coast and West Coast!
Charles H:)
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