Gold Circle

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Gold Circle
Former type Discount department store
Industry Retail
Founded 1967
Defunct 1988
Headquarters Worthington, Ohio
Products Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics, toys, hardware, housewares and seasonal.
Website None

Gold Circle was a discount department store chain based in Ohio. Founded in 1967, it was a division of Federated Department Stores with 76 stores when the chain was sold and dismantled in 1988.[1]Hills Department Stores took over 35 stores and Target purchased 31 locations while Kmart leased 3 others.[2]

History

Covering mostly New York, Ohio, Kentucky and Western Pennsylvania, the chain was founded in 1967 in Columbus, Ohio, with its corporate headquarters and distribution center located in Worthington, Ohio, a northern Columbus suburb. In 1984, Gold Circle was notable as the first major discounter to implement chain wide UPC barcode scanning[3] in an effort to reduce checkout time for shoppers and improve inventory accuracy and speed store merchandise replenishment.

Merge with Richway

In 1986, Federated merged its Gold Circle division with its Richway Department Stores, another Federated discount division, in an effort to improve the operating efficiency and profits of both.[citation needed] While the chains each continued to operate under their original names (though several Richways were converted to Gold Circles), buying and other administrative functions for both were consolidated into Gold Circle's Worthington, Ohio headquarters.

Liquidation

After Campeau Corporation acquired Federated Department Stores in 1988, Gold Circle was liquidated along with Richway (in addition to the sale or liquidation of several other under-performing Federated divisions). The chain was dismantled in late 1988 with Kimco Development acquiring all of the store locations while the corporate office and distribution center were sold off in separate transactions. Hills leased 35 Gold Circle stores in Ohio, New York and Kentucky and immediately converted them into Hills stores following the liquidation sales, reopening early in 1989.[4] Most, if not all, of these stores later became Ames when they bought Hills in 1998 and eventually were shuttered in several waves of store closures that ended with Ames' liquidation in 2002. Kohl's moved into some former Gold Circle locations.[citation needed] Dayton Hudson Corporation bought 31 Gold Circle and Richway stores in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky to remodel and reopen as Target. Most of the locations that became Target stores were later closed when Target built new stores to replace them. K-Mart leased 2 locations in Ohio.

Multimedia

Gallery

References

  1. ^ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE2DE143AF93BA3575AC0A96E948260
  2. ^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3092/is_n19_v27/ai_6680026
  3. ^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3092/is_/ai_3345588
  4. ^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3092/is_n19_v27/ai_6680048?tag=rel.res2