King's Variety / Discount Department Stores Gives In

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
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King's Variety / Discount Department Stores Gives In

Post by SamSpade »

One of my favourites from childhood announced this week they have to liquidate.
King's to Close all Stores
Some of these towns do not have any other general merchandise retailer, but many were invaded by the rapid expansion of Family Dollar (fairly similar merchandise mix) and I'm sure the decision of Walmart.com to move to free 2 day shipping for eCommerce was another nail in the coffin.Kings Store Locations Their facebook page is already gone.

This will also be a hit to the Burley and Rupert, Idaho trade area, where Kings warehouse and main offices were located.

King's always had that coffeepot for your discontinued drip coffee maker, plants, a fun pet or two, a great toy department (usually in the basement) and a variety of office and home supplies. I still have two surge protectors from my college years that are good merchandise. They never really carried a deep hardware section, clothing you'd want to buy or electronics beyond the cheapest discount stuff.

This makes me curious about / nervous for Bi-Mart. Then again, maybe being employee owned, a pharmacy business, and stores housed in real estate I think they largely own will insulate them.
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Re: King's Variety / Discount Department Stores Gives In

Post by pseudo3d »

I wasn't aware that it existed (I seem to remember reading about a similarly-named operation in New York). Sadly, I'm guessing it had struggled for a while now, because maybe with the exception of ShopKo, the "regional discounter" has gone all but extinct. Kmart and the economy caused most to shrivel up during the 1970s, and the rapid falling of dominoes in the Northeast (Caldor, Ames, Bradlees, all in short order) meant that there was only Kmart, Wal-Mart, and Target left (and since 2003 slowly but surely becoming two).
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Re: King's Variety / Discount Department Stores Gives In

Post by SamSpade »

So in many of the communities where Kings was still located, there is either ShopKo Hometown (same store with a pharmacy, more shopping hours, probably better pricing) or a Family Dollar (more hours, almost the same offerings). I think the high cost of doing business as a low volume Idaho based retailer with 12 employees per site probably did them in. The ShopKo Hometowns were sometimes former ALCO locations taken over after their bankruptcy and others were just built new (Orofino, Idaho for example).

One community is really stuck though - John Day, Oregon has no other shopping for hours in several directions with the exception of a typical small town mix of a supermarket, auto parts store and hardware store.

Montpelier, Idaho isn't particularly close to anywhere else either, but has a location of regional supermarket Broulims, who offer variety elsewhere. Maybe they will open a variety market in the former ALCO next to their store. Otherwise it is quite the distance to a general merchandiser.
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Re: King's Variety / Discount Department Stores Gives In

Post by BillyGr »

The Kings chain that was around in NY years ago wound up being part of Ames eventually (after first somehow being combined in with the Barkers chain but the Kings name surviving) - I wouldn't think there is any connection between the two, aside from a common name (there is also a Kings supermarket chain in NJ that still exists).

Perhaps, since the mention that ShopKo Hometown stores are similar to these, they would be interested in taking over those in areas they are currently not represented (as they did with the Alco locations), especially if those towns have no other similar options?
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Re: King's Variety / Discount Department Stores Gives In

Post by Super S »

King's always struck me as a store more like Woolworth or Newberry's which had lower quality offerings. Quite honestly, I was surprised they were still around.
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Re: King's Variety / Discount Department Stores Gives In

Post by storewanderer »

King's hung on for 30-40 years longer than one would have expected it to. I am pretty surprised they hung on this long. There must have been a few good stores carrying them.

I would guess something happened with whoever was running the chain and there was nobody left who wanted to be bothered with operating it. I suspect it was marginally (very marginally) profitable. So there was not much motivation to keep it going any longer.

The one in Winnemucca, NV closed 5 or so years after Wal Mart opened (it had a basement, quite interesting place). The one out in Spring Creek is still open and is a small operation that is not interesting at all. In my multiple visits to these stores I never saw more than 1-2 other customers and I always spent a bit of time in these stores trying to figure their model out. I never quite figured it out. It was hard to find anything to buy. Usually some Idaho-produced chocolate bars were about it... the stores had a mix that was just... weird. No depth in any category. Food/snacks category was limited; drug category did not exist. Housewares, garden supplies, hardware, clothing, toys... it was all there, but quality and mix always felt "off."

I am trying to figure out when the one in Burns, OR closed... that one was a bit newer.
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Re: King's Variety / Discount Department Stores Gives In

Post by wnetmacman »

Super S wrote:King's always struck me as a store more like Woolworth or Newberry's which had lower quality offerings. Quite honestly, I was surprised they were still around.
And the problem with that is that the last of these two closed in 1997 (Woolworth) and 2001 (McCrory, the eventual owner of Newberry). And they weren't much to see then, either.
storewanderer wrote:King's hung on for 30-40 years longer than one would have expected it to. I am pretty surprised they hung on this long. There must have been a few good stores carrying them.

I would guess something happened with whoever was running the chain and there was nobody left who wanted to be bothered with operating it. I suspect it was marginally (very marginally) profitable. So there was not much motivation to keep it going any longer.
I'd suspect this is 100% true. The old variety store no longer has a place in the retail landscape, with a few novelty exceptions. Places like Dick's in Branson, MO, exist because Branson is a tourist destination, and folks flock in to see that. Every rural town in the northwest can't have this. I suspect that Shopko will swoop in and take a few of these, just to get folks a place to shop. None of the towns look to be big enough to support Walmart.
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Re: King's Variety / Discount Department Stores Gives In

Post by storewanderer »

Wal Mart learned its lesson on the small town variety store the hard way. I still find it interesting King's finally decided to shut down. One has to give them credit for surviving this long.

The hard discounters Dollar General and Family Dollar are the two who understand this concept. Cheap pre-fab buildings, dim lights, little upkeep, 1-2 employees on duty at a time, no public restroom in many cases, not even a trash can out front by design (some stores have put one out front, which came from the shelf...)... these are hard discounters that have value engineered out costs in an impressive way.
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