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May Department Stores: Companies
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By the 1980s, many department stores were in fairly poor shape. Although consumer spending was up, the stores found fierce competition from discounters, specialty stores with numerous outlets, and mail order houses, which sent out 14 billion pieces of mail annually. In an attempt to lure back customers, department stores engaged in competitive price-cutting. The result was a frenzied period of leveraged buyouts (LBOs), mergers, and acquisitions. Of the eight companies that composed the Standard and Poor's index at the beginning of 1986, four were acquired or taken private, while a fifth company undertook major restructuring.
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Federated Department Stores was founded in 1929 in Columbus, Ohio as a department store holding company for Abraham & Straus , F&R Lazarus & Company and William Filene's Sons . Bloomingdale Brothers joined the organization in 1930. In 1945 Federated moved its corporate offices to Cincinnati, Ohio .
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Approximately 10,400 department stores existed throughout the United States in 2001. Most operations began as a single store located within a downtown district. When customers moved to the suburbs, so did the department stores; soon branch outlets appeared throughout the country. Ownership of most department stores reverted to publicly held conglomerates. Many of these companies ... owned or held interest in discount retailers or general merchandisers.
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Federated Department Stores, Inc. is a department store chain founded in 1929 as a holding company in Columbus, Ohio , specializing mostly in retailing clothing, jewelry, dinnerware and watches. The company is currently headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio and operates almost 1,000 stores in the United States .
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Once consummated, Federated will operate more than 950 department stores, along with approximately 700 bridal and formalwear stores. In addition, 15 new states, mostly in the nation's heartland, will be layered onto Federated's existing 34-state operating base, with relatively little overlap between the companies' locations. As a result, Federated for the first time will have a truly national retail footprint, with stores in 64 of the nation's top 65 markets.
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You see, back in the 1960's, the big department stores were looking at launching divisions that targeted the discount store market. They figured why not try to target all these different demographics and reap the profits of everyone. Thus, in 1962, Dayton (which today after many acquisitions and name changes is known as the Target Corporation) launched Target. In response, and to hop on this trend, the May Company launched Venture in 1970 as a "family value retailer." Stores were primarily located in the Midwest.
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