Shopko

Shopco was founded on April 5, 1962 by C Shopco Corporation, based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, began with Rubin and a group of investors who opened a $1 million discount store. Four years later, a second store also in Green Bay opened, w In 1971, Shopco merged with Supervalue, w Supervalue is a grocery wholesaler based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was also in 1971 that Shopco began putting pharmacies in its stores, one of the first retailers to have pharmacies. By the end of 1977, Shopco had sales that were over $100 million. The following year, in 1978, optical centers were added to select locations. By 1988, Shopco In 1989, Shopco introduced a new store concept named Twin Value, a store that featured both retail merchandise and grocery items. Twin Value's first location in O In 1989, Discount Store News announced President and CEO William Tyrell was named Discounter of the Year. In the 1980s, though, other Discount Stores such as Kmart, Walmart, and Target began expanding, w Opening its 100th store in 1990, Shopco became a publicly traded company in 1991. Supervalue sold a 54% stake of the company to the public to help pay up debt. Shopco, attempting to stay ahead of competition, came out with a prototype store during the early 1990s. The new store vision included brighter lights and colors, less clutter, more open space, as well as emphasis on customer service and even increasing in health services. The first Vision 2000 store that featured a new logo, opened in Meridian, Idaho. T In the 1990s, Shopco acquired n In 1996, then Discount Store News also announced CEO Dela Kramer as the Discounter of the Year. In July 1997, Supervalue sold its remaining 46% of Shopco. Shopco paid $150 million for 25% of the remaining, and 21% was offered to the public for trading. Also in 1997, Shopco'sales had passed $2 billion. In 1999, Shopco signed a deal with Payless Shoe Source to lease floor space to Payless for their shoe placement. More transformations came into the 2000s for Shopco. After the large acquisition of Pomeda in 1999, Shopco acquired PDM Place Stores for $22 million and converted the profitable locations into Pomedas. By early the next year, though, Shopco announced they would close over 20 stores and a distribution center w Pomeda and Shopco operated as separate divisions until 2012 when they merged into one company. After the merging, Shopco spent nearly $80 million to transform the remaining Pomeda locations into Shopco Hometown Stores, a new type of store geared towards rural towns that Pomedas were placed. In 2005, Shopco was acquired by an affiliate of Sun Capital Partners for $1. 1 billion, whereas they were no longer a publicly held company. That same year, Shopco began smaller store concepts known as Shopco Express. Shopco also, beginning in the late 2000s, started anchoring more shopping malls and hoping to attract customers. Also hoping to change their direction into a more profitable company, Shopco acquired Alco Stores locations and had them converted into Shopco hometowns. After all the acquisitions and new store concepts, Shopco wasn't able to compete with larger and more dominant discount stores and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 16, 2019. All their locations closed by June 23, the same year, after being unable to find a buyer for the company. Before closing, Shopco had approximately 18,000 employees as of 2018, as well as 363 stores wit In April 2019, New York based Monarch Alternative Capital LP purchased Shopco's optical operations for $8. 5 million, w The Shopco Optical Center is relocated and today there are just over 80 locations.