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Rasco Tempo Discount Store

Posted: 30 Nov 2006 00:40
by Floyd
Has anyone ever heard of the "Rasco Tempo" Discount stores? They had one store on Waterloo Road in East Stockton and several in Sacramento. I don't know how big they were or where all the locations were at? They were around from the 1960's and 1970's. I believe it was replaced by "Builders Emporium" in Stockton in 1981 before closing for good in 1982 or 1983?

Posted: 30 Nov 2006 01:39
by justin karimzad
There was a Rasco store listed in the phone directory in Palos Verdes mall (actually a neighborhood shopping center) at Geary and Pleasant Hill Rds in Walnut Creek, CA. This may or may not be related, since it was only listed as Rasco and not Rasco Tempo, or at least I thought so. The Rite Aid in the shopping center was originally a Thrifty, and the Lunardi's market was originally a Park and Shop (which may have been part of the same bay area chain that was the forerunner to Andronico's). The shopping center was built between 1964 and 1966, so the timing looks right...

Posted: 30 Nov 2006 01:53
by justin karimzad
justin karimzad wrote:This may or may not be related, since it was only listed as Rasco and not Rasco Tempo, or at least I thought so.
The more I think about it, Rasco Tempo kind of strikes a cord, but I'm still not certain if it was listed as such. I can confirm the Rasco part, however.

Palos Verdes Mall

Posted: 30 Nov 2006 10:09
by romleys
The Palos Verdes Mall in Walnut Creek, CA opened in stages from mid-1965 to early-1966. The Rasco store more of a 5c and 10c store which was a common format for smaller stores in the chain. These small stores were related to Rasco-Tempo, however I think when both names were combined the stores had a discount format. The Park and Shop was owned by Andronicos. In the 80's the store was changed into a Petrini's who in the late 90's sold the store to Lunardi's which is still in operation

Posted: 18 Jan 2007 16:38
by TenPoundHammer
I don't know if it was related, but there was a Tempo discount store in this mall: http://mallsofamerica.blogspot.com/2006 ... -mall.html

Also, there was a Tempo discounter in Alpena, Michigan on Ripley Blvd. I think it became a Fisher's Big Wheel, and now it's partially occupied by Dollar Tree and Tractor Supply Company.

Posted: 18 Jan 2007 19:57
by rich
Tempo was a discount department chain that was part of Gamble-Skogmo, which also owned Buckeye Mart (in Ohio, of course) and the Red Owl super market chain in the northern Great lakes & upper Midwest. I forget what Skogmo was, but I think Gambles was a Western Auto-like hardware chain. I think the Tempos were in small towns and secondary markets.

Tempo may have bought Rasco. They also may have franchised the name. Red Owl had a lot of "agency" stores in small towns that were owner operated, but supplied by Red Owl, with common adverising. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried the same model with the regional discounters. Red Owl went out of business in the mid/late 80s and I think the rest of Gamble-Skogmo went out of business during the 80s. I think the company's demise is documented elsewhere on this board or at Remembering Retail (a Yahoo group).

Posted: 20 Jan 2007 11:27
by TenPoundHammer
I've heard of Skogmo, I have a 1976 phone book which lists one in Lewiston, a very small ghost town about a half hour west of Alpena. It was listed under Variety Stores, so I'm guessing it was a Woolworth/Kresge type.

We also had a bunch of Gambles stores around here. In fact, there's still a hardware-type store in Alpena called Gambles. I don't know if it was part of the same chain or not.

Rasco Tempo Toy World Sarco Buckeye Mart

Posted: 08 Jun 2007 23:07
by dirtyharry667
I happen to be your resident expert on all that is Tempo-Buckeye, having worked for the chain as a high school stuedent. There is a Yahoo Group called "Remembering Retail" where I posted a ton of things bearing the Tempo-Buckeye logo including product packages and ad slicks. You can browse the group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/remembering_retail/ but you have to join to see the Tempo-Buckeye pictures.

Gamble-Skogmo expanded into mass merchandising by forming its Tempo Stores division in 1962, which grew into a chain of 50 discount stores. In 1964 Gamble-Skogmo entered the catalog merchandising field by acquiring the large Aldens operation, including its life insurance subsidiary. In 1966 Founder's, Inc. was merged into the corporation, bringing it a women's wear chain (Mode O'Day), and a group of hardware and variety stores called Cussins & Fearn (in Ohio), Rasco stores (in California) and a discount store chain called Buckeye Mart. In 1967 Gamble-Skogmo acquired the 400-store Red Owl supermarket chain, which also included 62 Snyder's drug stores.

Buckeye Mart was an outgrowth of Cussins & Fearn, which were closed. It was merged with the Tempo division to form Tempo-Buckeye Stores. The Tempo-Buckeye Division had stores as far west as Cheyenne, Wyoming and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Rasco variety store division also attempted to expand into discount retailing by branding 3 larger outlets in the Sacramento area as Rasco-Tempo stores. I recently found a Rasco-Tempo store in Hobbs, NM. The Rasco division also operated "Toy World" toy stores, which were smaller format toy stores, in California.

In the mid-1970's, the 5 Columbus-area Buckeye Mart stores were closed. In the late-1970's Gambles sold its Buckeye Mart and Tempo stores in smaller Ohio and Michigan cities to Fisher's Big Wheel, which renamed the stores "Fishers Buckeye Tempo". The remaining Tempo stores were transferred to the Rasco division. In 1979, Rasco reopened 2 shuttered Tempo-Buckeye stores in Columbus, Ohio and Cheyenne, Wyoming as "Sarco Outlet Stores" (Sarco is an inversion of the letters "R" and "S" in Rasco). Their mission was primarily to liquidate stale merchandise that had piled up in the distribution center serving the Michigan and Ohio stores. Gamble-Skogmo also owned another discount store chain in the south called "Howard's Brandiscount".

Gamble-Skogmo was purchased by Wickes Companies, Inc. in 1980. The Sarco stores closed in 1981. Wickes filed for bankruptcy shortly afterwards and shuttered most of the remaining Gamble-Skogmo discount store operations.

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UPDATE 1/5/2014

1. The above vignette is mostly correct, but I have some additional information I found interesting. I subsequently learned that Founders, Inc. and Gamble-Skogmo, Inc. were affiliated companies. Founders, Inc. owned a big chunk of common stock in Gamble-Skogmo. I read in a 1962 Newspaper article that B. C. Gamble was to attend a Buckeye Mart grand opening ... even though Founder's was not yet a part of Gambles.

2. I was looking through the 1962 grand opening advertising for Buckeye Mart and noticed that they did not sell Coronado or any of the other Gambles brands, even though they were affiliated companies.

3. Western Auto was a Gamble's affiliated company.

4. Clark's-Gamble, Inc., operating under both the "Clark's Discount Department Store" and "Cook's Discount Department Store" names, was another affiliated company. M. N. Landau Stores, Inc. owned 51% of the chain and Gamble's owned the remaining 49%. In 1968, M. N. Landau Stores, Inc. was purchased by Cook United, Inc., the Cleveland operator of Cook's, Clark's, Uncle Bill's, Ontario and Consolidated Sales Co. stores. According to a court case I read, all Cook United Stores were operated under the M. N. Landau Stores, Inc. umbrella.

http://www.leagle.com/decision/19721326486SW2d840_11200

According to evidence submitted by the appellants, Clark's-Gamble, Inc. is the corporate entity which operates Cook's Discount Department Store in Lubbock, Texas. Fifty-one per cent of the stock of Clark's-Gamble, Inc. is owned by M. N. Landau Stores, Incorporated, an Ohio corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cook United, Inc., which is a publicly held corporation. The discount division of Cook United, Inc. does business under the name of "Cook's" and other names in different parts of the country. All of the discount stores which are partly or wholly owned by Cook United, Inc. are operated by M. N. Landau Stores, Incorporated, which in turn owns numerous other subsidiaries. Thus, Cook's Discount Department Store is the assumed name under which Clark's-Gamble, Inc., operates the discount store involved in the instant case.

Sacramento Rasco Tempo

Posted: 05 Jul 2007 13:33
by wulfgar64
Yes, I remember a Rasco Tempo store located at 24th St and Florin Rd. It was along the lines of Woolco, Grants, White Front. Been closed for years.

Re: Rasco Tempo Discount Store

Posted: 28 Apr 2012 21:19
by ExRascoAssociate
I worked for Rasco's for 7 years and, by their standards, was vested in their pension plan. They no longer exist so the funds I put in the plan no longer exist either. Rasco is nothing more than a faint memory.


History

Born at the end of the 19th century, Bertin Gamble and Philip Skogmo were boyhood friends in Arthur, North Dakota (30 miles northwest of Fargo). As young men they each came separately to Minnesota and worked in a variety of jobs. In 1920, they pooled their resources, borrowed some money and bought an auto dealership in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Soon they discovered the sale of auto parts and accessories was the most profitable part of their car dealership. In March 1925, they opened the first Gamble Auto Supply store in St. Cloud, Minnesota. In 1928, they moved their headquarters to Minneapolis. By 1929, the chain consisted of 55 stores in five states. Eventually, Gamble stores were franchised, and by 1939 there were 1,500 Gamble dealers and 300 corporate stores in 24 states. In 1947, Gamble-Skogmo went public with its first offering of common stock. Philip Skogmo died in 1949.[1]

From the mid-1940s to the end of the 1970s, Gamble and Skogmo diversified their businesses into many new endeavors, including a discount division, financial services, real estate, and retail businesses such as Aldens mail order company, Womans World Shops, Red Owl Grocery and Snyder Drug stores. At the end of this period of growth, Gamble-Skogmo was the 15th largest retailer in the United States with 4,300 stores and 26,000 employees in 39 states and Canada. In 1977, Bert Gamble retired from the company.[1] In 1978, they attempted a takeover of Washington, D.C.-based retail conglomerate Garfinckel, Brooks Brothers, Miller & Rhoads, Inc. Gamble-Skogmo purchased a 20-percent share from the Joseph R. Harris family, thereby gaining a controlling interest in the conglomerate. A court suit resulted in an agreement that Gamble-Skogmo would not acquire any more stock in Garfinckel.[2][3][4]

In 1980, it was sold to the Wickes Corporation of California. The purchase was highly leveraged, the combined companies struggled, and in 1982 Wickes filed for bankruptcy.[1] In the subsequent reorganization, the Gamble-Skogmo empire was sold off in pieces or, in the case of Aldens, closed.[5] In 1986, Bert Gamble died. Tempo and Buckeye Mart stores in Ohio and Michigan were sold to Fisher's Big Wheel in the late 1970s, with the remaining Tempo stores transferred to the Rasco Variety Store Division.[6]

Re: Rasco Tempo Discount Store

Posted: 30 Apr 2012 02:15
by J-Man
I worked for Rasco's for 7 years and, by their standards, was vested in their pension plan. They no longer exist so the funds I put in the plan no longer exist either.
If it was a defined benefit pension plan, your benefit was insured by the Pension Benefity Guaranty Corporation (a government agency, like the FDIC). You should do some investigating to see if there's any money due to you.

Re: Rasco Tempo Discount Store

Posted: 27 Dec 2012 19:08
by DHilliard
There was one in my home area of Arroyo Grande, CA, but branded only as Rasco (with another in San Luis Obispo, ditto.) The Arroyo Grande one turned into a JJ Newberry when Rasco folded.

The store itself is still standing (as is the rest of the 1960s-era shopping center it's in), currently as a Carquest Auto Parts.

Re: Rasco Tempo Discount Store

Posted: 05 Jan 2014 14:05
by dirtyharry667
ExRascoAssociate wrote:I worked for Rasco's for 7 years and, by their standards, was vested in their pension plan. They no longer exist so the funds I put in the plan no longer exist either. Rasco is nothing more than a faint memory.
The funds are still there. Contact the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC). It is an arm of the federal government and they are to pensions what the FDIC is to banks.

Re: Rasco Tempo Discount Store

Posted: 05 Jan 2014 14:25
by dirtyharry667
I posted some information about Gamble-Skogmo, Rasco, Tempo and Buckeye Mart in the above post on 08 Jun 2007. The original post was edited to include additional information I recently found.

Re: Sacramento Rasco Tempo

Posted: 05 Dec 2014 15:18
by TheStranger
wulfgar64 wrote:Yes, I remember a Rasco Tempo store located at 24th St and Florin Rd. It was along the lines of Woolco, Grants, White Front. Been closed for years.
Is this the bingo hall in the same shopping center as the AMF bowling alley?