Top-50-Stores-That-Dont-Exist-Anymore
Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for 50 retail outlets from your childhood that we lost along the way.
#50: Rexall
These stores began with a revolutionary concept for 1903: independent pharmacists could use their collective market strength to purchase supplies and resell them under a single store name. The modernization of the 20th century made it easier to deliver health and wellness products to more North Americans than ever before. A half-century later, Rexall was a household name with thousands of locations. The model was great, but ultimately proved to be no match for huge chain pharmacy companies. Rexall stores either closed up shop or rebranded almost overnight. Today, Rexall is a moderately sized Canadian pharmacy chain.
#49: Esprit
Susie and Doug Tompkins were just two young San Francisco hippies, hawking simple, stylish clothes out of the back of their VW van. Their environmentally conscious brand struck a chord in 1968. Twenty years later, Esprit had become a global fashion powerhouse, known for its flashy ads and its social responsibility. Esprit grew into a worldwide brand thanks to the explosion of mall culture. Just as video killed the radio star, the 90s and 2000s killed the mall. Sales fell through the floor, and stores went dark. Today, Esprit is a small chain, operating thanks to international markets and online sales.
#48: TG&Y
Tomlinson, Gosselin, and Young were three Oklahoma boys with bright dreams when they founded TG&Y in 1935. The brand sold itself to small-town America by marketing their budget-friendly merchandise. It spent years as a rural American staple, soon growing through bigger towns and suburbs. There were once more than 900 TG&Ys across the United States. That all came to an end in the 1980s. Big box retailers Walmart and Kmart were knocking at the company's door, ready to eat their lunch. Their 1986 acquisition didn't help matters. TG&Y ultimately shuttered its stores one by one, until the brand faded into retail history.
#47: Gimbels
Adam Gimbel was a mild-mannered resident of Vincennes, Indiana, who decided to open a modest dry goods store in 1842. The store grew, converting into a Milwaukee department store in 1887. They opened a Philadelphia location seven years later. The store became a Philly staple, founding the Gimbels Thanksgiving Day Parade. Gimbels only grew from there, and by 1930 it was the biggest department store chain on earth. It was even the setting for the movie "Miracle on 31st Street.” In 1973, a mega-corporation gobbled Gimbels up and closed all of its stores by 1986. Their iconic locations became prime real estate for other department stores.
#46: Kinney Shoes
The small upstate town of Waverly, New York was the site of the first Kinney Shoes back in 1894. Named after its founders, Kinney Shoes was a go-to spot for relatively inexpensive, quality shoes. The concept was a hit, expanding across America to become a well-known supplier of footwear. Known for its wide selection and competitive prices, Kinney Shoes thrived throughout the 20th century. Its sub-brand, Foot Locker, was born in 1974. Though popular, the company that acquired Kinney decided to shutter all the stores by 1998, moving forward with the Foot Locker as a new, spinoff company.
#45: Mervyn's
Mervin G. Morris was the entrepreneur who, in 1949, founded Mervyn's in San Lorenzo, California. He hopped on the post-War department store gravy train, offering affordable, quality merchandise. By targeting middle-class families, Mervyn's expanded like wildfire across the American West. Unfortunately, big-box retailers proved to be Mervyn's big bad wolf. Coupled with ownership changes and strategic missteps, the brand started to falter. Their lack of diversity meant it was ultimately impossible to compete with their competitors. In 2008, Mervyn's filed for bankruptcy and closed all its stores, marking the end of a once-prominent retail chain.
#44: deLiA*s
The year 1990 represented the apex of mall culture in America. A few years later, Stephen Kahn and Christopher Edgar saw a way around the mall: direct-to-consumer marketing. Delia's marketed to teenage girls with its quirky mail order catalogs. The catalogs themselves grew into a cultural touchstone for a subset of American teens. Their eyes on the future, Delia's was also an early adopter of e-commerce, acquiring Gurl.com in 1997. In this case, they were too early, and got swallowed up in the dot com burst of 2000. They limped on until 2014 as an acquired brand, at which time the company filed for bankruptcy. Four years later, online fashion store Dolls Kill licensed Delia's as a new sub-brand.
#43: The Disney Store
In 1987, Disney realized it was late to the mall culture game. Aimed at capitalizing on the beloved Disney brand, the Disney Store became a destination for exclusive products. The concept thrived, leading to rapid expansion across the U.S. and internationally, with over 700 stores worldwide. The rising popularity of Disney animated films provided a constant churn of new properties to exploit. Unfortunately, like many mall-based stores, online shopping killed their brick and mortar business. Despite efforts to innovate and revamp the in-store experience, Disney announced the closure of most physical locations in 2021. Disney now sells its branded products online and through bigger retailers like Target.
#42: Dressbarn
Roslyn Jaffe was a trailblazer for women in business. In just a few years, she went from living in a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment with three roommates to owning a company. Jaffe went to Stamford, Connecticut in 1962 to start Dressbarn, a women's discount fashion retailer. Dressbarn expanded rapidly, nearly reaching 800 stores nationwide. It focused on customer service and understanding the needs of middle-class women. With the rise of e-commerce and changing consumer preferences, the business struggled to adapt to the shifting landscape. Online retailers and fast fashion brands eventually eroded its market share. Despite efforts to modernize, Dressbarn's parent company announced its closure in 2019. A year later it found new life as an online-only retailer.
#41: 99 Cents Only Stores
This ultra low-cost retailer was founded in 1982 by Dave Gold in Los Angeles, California. Gold believed in a somewhat unique vision of a store: he would offer high-quality items at a low, fixed price. The concept was a hit, and 99 Cents Only Stores spread rapidly. However, competition was the store's Achilles’ heel. Other discount outlets cannibalized the market. Due to rising costs, the store also had to raise prices, undercutting its core brand. The year Dave Gold died, 2013, the chain was sold to a private equity firm. After a decade of getting gutted by venture capitalists, inflation was the nail in the brand's coffin in 2024.
#40: Tweeter
Tweeter, a.k.a Tweeter Etc. a.k.a Tweeter Home Entertainment was a New England consumer electronics chain. Founded in Boston by Sandy and Michael Bloomberg in 1972, the chain grew and grew throughout New England. In the 1990s, Tweeter started a campaign of national expansion by buying out chains in other markets. They expanded to Chicago, Florida, and Atlanta through acquisitions of other electronic franchises. By the end of its time, Tweeter specialized in flat-screen televisions. In the spring of 2007, Tweeter had around 100 stores nationwide. Even before the Great Recession hit, half of those stores had closed. By the time the waves of the Recession receded, Tweeter went bankrupt.
#39: Steve & Barry's
Steven Shore and Barry Prevor were college students at the University of Pennsylvania in 1985. They recognized that university bookstores and gift stores sold goods with an absurd markup. They saw an opportunity, founding a chain targeting college students with bargain basem*nt prices. Steve & Barry's was a retail clothing store that focused on casual clothes, accessorizing, and footwear. They expanded to college campuses and malls across America, eventually reaching 276 stores in 39 states. Steve & Barry’s seemed destined to conquer, earning such praise as “Hot Retailer of the Year” in 2005 and “Marketer of the Year” in 2007. Before the decade was out, the chain went belly up. Like so many others, Steve & Barry's was taken out by the Great Recession.
#38: Club Libby Lu
Some stores make the decision early on that they aren’t selling goods, but an experience. That was the logic behind the short-lived Club Libby Lu franchise. Named after the childhood imaginary friend of founder Mary Drolet, Club Libby Lu served girls from ages 4 to 12. It provided girls and young tweens with makeovers, dress-up parties, stuffed animals, and custom cosmetics. At its peak, Club Libby Lu was a subsidiary of Saks and had almost one hundred locations nationwide. By November 2008, the miserable state of the economy forced Saks to shutter Club Libby Lu’s doors.
#37: Crazy Eddie
Crazy Eddie Antar was a Brooklyn-based businessman who opened up an electronics retail chain with his brother, Sam. The store and their Crazy Eddie commercials were a New York City staple in the 1980s. The chain was wildly successful, with just one wrinkle: from the very beginning, Eddie and Sam were crooks. They committed an absolutely gobsmacking amount of fraud and their books were a complete sham. By 1983, it became difficult for Eddie to hide his criminality, so he took the company public. Eddie pumped and dumped a ton of stock, lost the business, and then went to prison. The chain closed in 1989, though in the late 90’s and 2000’s the Antars attempted an online comeback. It died for good in 2012.
#36: Loehmann's
Loehmann’s is a sad example of how even the American Dream doesn’t necessarily last forever. Frieda Loehmann was a young woman when her husband’s haberdashery failed. She took a job as a clothes buyer in New York. Frieda started to buy overstocked items from top designers and sold them at a bargain out of her home. Eventually, they opened the first Loehmann’s in 1921. The store was incredibly successful and went public after her death. Thirty-seven years later, by 1999, Loehmann’s had around one hundred locations in seventeen states. Over the next fifteen years, the chain underwent a series of bankruptcies and acquisitions. By 2014, all brick-and-mortar locations were closed and by 2018, its online store shut down.
#35: Waldenbooks
After leaving Simon & Schuster in 1933, sales manager Lawrence Hoyt opened a small rental library in Connecticut with his partner Melvin T. Kafka. They named their business the Walden Book Company after Henry David Thoreau’s famous book. Their goal was to help an immiserated populace psychologically deal with The Great Depression. They had hundreds of locations by 1948. The post-WWII era killed the rental library business so the company successfully pivoted to book sales. Waldenbooks entered the great wheel of capitalism, acquiring smaller companies and getting bought and sold by larger ones. It was eventually spun off by Kmart and became a part of Borders. All Waldenbooks closed when Borders was killed by Amazon in 2011.
#34: Gadzooks
In this golden age of online retail, it can be hard to remember that the shopping mall was once the center of American commerce. In the 1980s and 1990s, malls were both shopping and cultural centers. There were retail brands that did not exist outside of a mall. If you were a teen at a mall in Texas during that time, there's a good chance you shopped at Gadzooks. The store initially focused on t-shirts before expanding into a full-blown “mini-department store” for teens. By 1995, Gadzooks went public and by 2000 there were over 300 stores in malls across America. To fight off competitors, Gadzooks dropped its menswear and catered exclusively to teen women. That pivot killed the brand completely five years later.
#33: Papyrus
Margrit Schurman opened the first Papyrus store as a retail branch of her fine paper company. With barely $1,000 and a dream, Schurman created a business that would grow into an empire of over 450 stores throughout the U.S. and Canada. Papyrus sold greeting cards and luxury stationery throughout the country, expanding with a 2009 purchase of American Greetings stores. Unfortunately, they misread the market and slowly but surely contracted to only 260 stores by 2020. In January, two months before the COVID lockdowns would send shockwaves throughout the economy, Papyrus stores were all shuttered and liquidated.
#32: Virgin Megastore
Mega billionaire Richard Branson started his mogul career at the age of 16 with a self-published magazine, “Student.” In 1970, he pivoted to a mail-order record business and opened his first Virgin Records in 1972. The brand boomed quickly, and Branson opened his first Megastore in London by 1979. Virgin Megastores’ expanded product selection included consumer electronics, books, and sometimes fashion. Branson ruled the British Market and Virgin Megastores opened around the world. Perhaps predicting a shift in retail, Branson sold or licensed the brand to a number of companies in the early 2000s. Today, Virgin Megastores only exist in the Middle East and North Africa. All other locations have closed down.
#31: Suncoast Motion Picture Company
Thanks to the invention of VHS tapes and, to a lesser extent, Betamax, Hollywood discovered a profitable secondary market for movies. Tens of thousands of video rental stores and national chains popped up all over the U.S. and became a booming business. One of those retailers was the Suncoast Motion Picture Company. A spin-off of Suncoast Records, Suncoast Motion Picture Company sold VHS tapes, collectibles, records, cassette tapes, and CDs. The retailer fell victim to chains of acquisitions and sales, eventually getting liquidated. Today, only three Suncoast Motion Picture Company stores are left in the United States.
#30: Filene's
William Filene was an American businessman who founded an incredibly successful department store in Boston in 1881. Filene’s is so important to the city’s identity, the original store was designated a city landmark. Its sister store, Filene’s Basem*nt, saw similar success. In 1929, Filene’s joined with other competitors to create the holding company Federated Department Stores. In the back half of the 20th century, Filene’s gained a foothold in New England and New York shopping malls. Federated was bought out by May Company and, by 2006, May decided to fold Filene’s into another May-owned brand: Macy’s. A few years later, Filene’s Basem*nt met a similar fate.
#29: Discovery Channel Store
Large companies love to find ways to leverage their brand power and enter new markets. In the 1990s, a number of media corporations tried to synergize their media brand with a retail store business to sell branded content. Both Disney and Warner Brothers made the attempt but failed thanks to large market forces. If those brands – each with a massive library of intellectual property – couldn’t make it happen, it’s no surprise that The Discovery Channel Store was an abysmal failure. The company tried to create a retail market to sell Discovery Channel merchandise. Unfortunately, the small retail chain of less than twenty locations lasted less than a dozen years before going under.
#28: Zany Brainy
David Schlessinger was an entrepreneur frustrated by a lack of brick-and-mortar stores for educational toys. He started the retail chain Zany Brainy in 1991 to bridge that gap. Zany Brainy’s products specialized in developmental education through play. They sold puzzles, books, audiotapes and CDs, toy trains, and learning software. The individual stores also offered in-store workshops, concerts, and book signings. Though the retailer was eventually purchased by FAO Schwarz, it never really found a long-term market. Zany Brainy filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001. Less than two years later, all its locations shut down.
#27: Modell's
After 140 years in business, Modell’s Sporting Goods learned the hard way that not everyone has “got to go to Mo’s.” Morris A. Modell, a Jewish immigrant from Hungary, founded the sporting goods store in Manhattan in 1889. Over the next century, his descendants grew the business into a profitable chain, operating over 150 stores in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. By 2014, however, rival Dick’s Sporting Goods had sued the company. They accused CEO Mitchell Modell of wearing a disguise to learn Dick’s’ retail secrets. By mid-2020, every Modell’s store had closed, attempting to rebrand as an online-only business.
#26: Movie Gallery
Movie Gallery was founded in 1985 in the middle of the ascension of home video. By the mid-1990s, the company launched an aggressive campaign of expansion. They added new franchisees, bought out the competition, and built new stores. In 2005, they merged with competitor Hollywood Video to become the second-largest video chain in North America. They had reached 4,700 stores in the U.S. and Canada with more than $2.5 billion in revenue. But it all went downhill from there. The rise of video-on-demand and streaming services destroyed Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video just as it had with Blockbuster. By 2010, even the contents of the corporate headquarters were auctioned off.
#25: Pier 1
The ripple effects of major global catastrophes can spread into every aspect of life. The Great Depression, Great Recession, and the pandemic all caused global shifts in consumer habits. In an adapt-or-die world, even large and powerful retailers fall victim to global trends. Pier 1 had risen to national prominence in the furniture and home decoration space. By January 2020, the business was struggling and they announced the closure of almost half of their locations. The pandemic was the final nail in Pier 1’s bespoke coffin. After all the stores shut for good, Retail Ecommerce Ventures, REV, acquired the company. REV has a penchant for buying dying brands and pivoting to e-commerce. Unfortunately, in Spring 2023, REV announced that it, too, may go bankrupt.
#24: Kmart
Inspired by a meeting with the founder of Woolworths, businessman S.S. Kresge founded his first big box department store in 1899. The first Kmart-branded store opened in 1962 in Michigan. The next thirty years saw almost exponential growth. By 1990, it was the second largest retailer in America, behind only Sears. It unfortunately struggled throughout the 90s and early 2000s, collapsing and merging with Sears. Both brands suffered further decline over the next decade until Kmart underwent its second bankruptcy and sold off its stores. By 2019, virtually all Kmart locations were shuttered. As of April 2022, there were only nine Kmarts left in the world.
#23: Lord & Taylor
Lord & Taylor was the oldest retailer in America, having been founded in 1824 when John Quincy Adams was president. For almost two centuries, Lord & Taylor rose to become synonymous with luxury branded clothing. Six different parent companies saw Lord & Taylor through two world wars, The Great Depression, and The Great Recession. Unfortunately, the company could not survive the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Retail locations were closed in March of 2020 and reopened by July. But the damage had already been done and Lord & Taylor filed for bankruptcy in August. In 2022, the brand relaunched under new management as an e-commerce luxury retailer.
#22: Bed Bath & Beyond
This retailer went through a long, slow, painful demise. The company shifted from a small retail chain of local stores to a megastore chain in 1985. It reached over a billion dollars in sales in 1999 and there were over 1,100 locations by 2011. Declining profits led to a big shakeup in 2019. Investment firms purged the CEO from his perch and restructured the board of directors. They accused the company of nepotism and poor management. The pandemic proved to be a fatal blow for Bed Bath & Beyond, pulling the trigger on the starter gun for store closures. After limping along for several years, the company announced the full closure of all stores by July 2023.
#21: The Limited
The Limited was an Ohio-based clothing brand that became a mall staple in the 1980s and 1990s. At the height of its economic might, The Limited acquired popular brands like Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, and Abercrombie & Fitch. A sub-brand, The Limited Too, was spun off in 1987, catering to young and tween girls. Both store chains did well with hundreds of stores around the country. The Limited Too brand didn’t even make it a decade, merging with Justice in 1996 and going defunct in 2009. Its parent company didn’t fare much better; the bulk of the company was sold to a private equity firm in 2007. By 2017, all physical locations went out of business.
#20: Sports Authority
Like many retail outlets, Sports Authority was a casualty of the mid 21st century. Founded in 1928 by Nathan Gart, a series of mergers and acquisitions allowed Gart Sports to become “the” place for sporting goods in the United States. But by 2010, the tired retailer found it difficult to compete with the likes of Walmart and Amazon, and began falling behind in its financials. By 2016, the company chose to close down and liquify its assets. Its brand name and intellectual property ultimately ended up in the hands of its competitor: Dick's Sporting Goods.
#19: Wet Seal
If the 2010s taught businesses anything, it’s that the shape of retail shopping is changing. Founded as Lorne’s in 1962, this fashion retailer was incorporated as Wet Seal in 1990. They also sold their clothing and accessories under the Arden B and Blink brands. By 2015 they were faced with heavy competition, forcing them to close several locations. Store windows could be seen with protest signs from employees over communication from managers and compensation. Wet Seal closed all stores in January 2017 – another victim of the so-called “retail apocalypse.”
#18: Tower Records
Long before the days of Spotify and Apple Music, people had to go into a store and purchase their music. Enter Tower Records. In their heyday, they were one of the largest retailers of music around the world. Based in the US, they spread to over a dozen countries worldwide. The movie “Empire Records” was even inspired by writer Carol Heikkinen’s time as an employee there. Yet with all that success, bad business decisions and the launch of the digital music era killed off this giant in 2006. The brand did resurface as a website in 2020 and continues to sell music and merchandise online.
#17: CompUSA
When you hear the term “big-box store,” you may think of IKEA, Walmart, and even Costco. One such player in this space was the now defunct computer store CompUSA. A purveyor of technology products, they were very similar to competitors like, say, Best Buy. And therein lies part of the problem. Their corporate strategies were out of touch and they were destroyed by the competition. They were eventually sold to Systemax in 2008, and their last CompUSA stores were rebranded as TigerDirect, which also phased out of retail in 2015.
#16: KB Toys
It was 1946 when brothers Harry and Joseph Kaufman opened their own candy store, aptly named Kaufman Brothers. That quickly turned into a wholesale toy company in 1948, and a shopping mall staple in 1973. In the 1990s, a series of additional acquisitions brought the company hundreds of new store locations, totalling 1,324 by 1999. But a combination of both a poorly timed dividend deal in 2002, and a drop in sales the following year, sealed the company’s fate. Neither a bankruptcy filing, or a restructuring of the company was enough to keep it afloat. They were eventually sold to their biggest competitor, Toys “R” Us in 2009.
#15: Warner Bros. Studio Store
In 1991, Warner Brothers entered the retail space, selling the likes of Looney Tunes and DC Comic Books merchandise. Eventually opening 130 stores across the country, the chain thrived for a short time. However, the AOL-TimeWarner merger was completed in 2001 and the newly formed company had new plans. With sales in decline, and retail shops floundering in general, the newly formed conglomerate saw the writing on the wall. It took them less than a year to put the nail in the coffin on this chain when their last store closed on New Years Eve, 2001.
#14: Payless Shoes
Much like many of the other stores on this list, Payless started with humble beginnings, only to fall victim to our ever changing times. Formed in 1956 by cousins Louis and Shaol Pozez, Payless became known for its own unique line of shoes called Pro Wings, as well as a plethora of other footwear related products. Their expansion went far beyond the US, bringing their shoes as far away as Australia and Indonesia. But in the midst of the retail shift in the 2010s, Payless filed for bankruptcy twice, eventually shutting down all operations in North America. They do continue to operate stores in other parts of the world, and online.
#13: Ames
Department stores have always been common in big cities. But when Ames opened up in 1958, they went after the retail market in much smaller populated areas. This led to a boom in business and expansion, which reached up to 327 stores. It did not, however, come without a cost. Poor decisions around consumer credit resulted in a bankruptcy filing in 1990. The company survived, and by 1993 was turning a profit again. But the success didn’t last. By the turn of the century, Ames had begun closing many of its stores, and filed a second bankruptcy in late 2001 which saw the end of this store. Or did it? Rumors of a re-opening have surfaced. Time will tell.
#12: Teavana
No matter how large a corporation gets, you have to remember that they all started out small. Such was the case for Andrew T. Mack and his wife, who formed Teavana in 1997 with a little teahouse in a mall. The brand became so successful that it only took 15 years for Starbucks to take notice and acquire them to the tune of $620 million dollars. The name persisted for five more years before Starbucks pulled the plug on all 379 Teavana shops. Their entry into the tea market has since dropped considerably, as Starbucks now only sells a very limited number of Teavana products.
#11: Sharper Image
Similar to SkyMall and Hammacher Schlemmer, Sharper Image was a catalog business that thrived on high tech gadgets and niche products. Distinguishing itself from other catalog companies, they expanded into retail, opening 187 stores throughout malls and airports across the United States. Oddly enough, it was an air purifier product that ultimately helped kill the company. After Consumer Reports gave fail ratings to their Ionic Breeze products, Sharper Image sued. However, they were themselves sued by customers for misrepresentation of their product. As the blame went back and forth, upper management changed and consumer interest tapered off. The company went bankrupt in 2008.
#10: Circuit City
Founded in 1949 under the name Wards Company, Circuit City was one of the most popular consumer electronics stores in the United States. During their peak, the chain boasted more than 550 stores across the country, offering plenty of electronic goods and services. They even had a chance to buy out the fledgling Best Buy operation in 1988, but declined when Circuit City’s CEO thought they could just put them out of business. Well, that didn’t work out in the long run. When 2007 rolled around, wages were being cut, locations were being closed, and management turnover was at a high. By 2009, the company pulled the plug, and the days of Circuit City were over.
#9: A&P
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company existed from 1859 to 2015. Known to most customers simply as A&P, there was a time when they were a huge player in the grocery business. From a few retail shops selling tea and coffee in New York, the company blossomed after being acquired by George Huntington Hartford. From there, over much time, it became a full-on grocery store, which would eventually have roughly 16,000 locations. However, by the 1970s, the stores had become conceptually stale and plagued by bad customer service. The chain did manage to have a bit of a comeback in the early aughts but was short lived, and it finally went under in 2015.
#8: F. W. Woolworth Company
Did you know that Woolworth’s may have been the original inspiration for the dollar store? Founded by Frank Winfield Woolworth in 1879, it opened as “Woolworth’s Great Five Cent Store”, which sold everything for a nickel or two. Although that operation didn’t last, the subsequent store became successful. Frank brought in his brother, Charles Sumner Woolworth, and the two began a journey that would see their ideas about retail continue to be used today. Woolworth’s was highly successful until the 1980s, when stiff competition forced them to shift their priorities to their sporting goods division. In 2001, they became known as Foot Locker and are still selling sporting goods today. A few dozen Woolworth stores do still continue to exist in Mexico, under different ownership.
#7: Sam Goody
Much like many other music retailers, Sam Goody became the victim of the digital revolution in music. Founded in 1951 as a small music shop in New York City, it eventually merged with Musicland which helped expand the brand. At its peak, the Sam Goody-branded stores expanded to 800 locations and brought in several billion dollars worth of revenue. It had become almost synonymous with music retail, which held it above water for a long time. But after struggling through a handful of acquisitions, and changes to its business model, the stores began to close. By 2012, most of the stores were gone, or simply rebranded as FYE.
#6: Borders
Ever since Gutenberg revolutionized printing so long ago, books have been in demand. This human desire to learn or enjoy stories is what eventually spawned the likes of giant bookstore chains like Borders. Operating for nearly 40 years, this bookstore saw its peak with over 500 US-based stores, and even more via other brands and franchising. By the time 2007 rolled along, however, the company had begun to struggle to remain in business. Several attempts were made to keep it going, but by September of 2011, the chain had come to an end, with its stores closing and rival chain Barnes and Noble buying its trademark.
#5: Fry’s Electronics
The sale of the Fry’s Supermarkets chain eventually spawned a completely new type of electronics store back in 1985. The intent was to make shopping for electronics a similar experience to going for groceries. Whether it was circuit boards, software, or any other kind of electronic device, Fry’s was the place to get it. It was actually one of the few places you could buy raw computer parts off the shelf to assemble your PC on your own. The stores ballooned in popularity, and even the aforementioned Circuit City didn’t offer the same kinds of fare. But after decades of sometimes controversial business practices, and squeezed by the COVID pandemic in 2020 and longstanding market pressures, all their stores ceased operations in February 2021.
#4: Linens ‘n Things
If there is one common thread connecting many of these now-defunct businesses, it’s that for many of them, a combination of acquisitions and management changes seemed to be their undoing. Formed in 1975, this home textile and housewares big box retailer grew considerably by the time it opened its 55th store in 1983. It was acquired and then eventually spun off as its own entity again in 1996, but then re-acquired by Apollo Global Management in 2006. The company then truly began to find itself in financial difficulty. A series of losses combined with the decline of sales, eventually forced the company to pull the plug on their stores by 2008, going online exclusively.
#3: Radio Shack
The humble beginnings for Radio Shack began back in 1921. The company focused its sales strategy on radio and electronics hobbyists. For decades, this gave them a lucrative market to fill, and interest in electronics eventually grew even further with the new computer and videogame age. It was also Radio Shack that produced the famous TRS-80, one of the first widely available home computers. But much like many other retailers, their popularity declined with the rise of online shopping, and fewer hobbyists to buy their wares. By 2017, the company had gone bankrupt and was no longer the giant retailer it once was, with a smattering of stores remaining under different ownership, and eventually the brand being scooped up to attempt viability online.
#2: Toys "R" Us
Who doesn’t remember wanting to be a “Toys R Us Kid”? From toys to video games to books to bikes, this was a chain that had almost everything a child could possibly want. But like many retailers over the last few decades, they struggled to keep up with the times, and competition with the likes of mass-market stores and online shopping. In 2017, the chain filed for bankruptcy and began liquidating their assets. By the middle of 2018, they had closed most of their US stores, with the last two closing in 2021. However, you can still find Toys "R" Us stores across Canada and Asia.
#1: Blockbuster
One of the biggest industries to emerge from the creation of the VCR was the home movie rental business. At the inception of the movie business decades earlier, no one had ever expected people to want to watch their movies at home, instead of at theaters. With more than 30,000 stores open globally at its commercial peak, if you wanted to rent a new release, odds are you went to a Blockbuster Video. Video rentals became ingrained in our culture, and Blockbuster profited mightily. But as streaming services and mail-in DVD options became available over the years, the days of “be kind, please rewind” were over, and Blockbuster famously ceased to be.
Did your favorite store in boom times go bust? Let us know in the comments below.
