Kohl's

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Kohl's Corporation
Type Public (NYSE: KSS)
Founded 1962
Headquarters Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, USA
Industry Retail
Products Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics, and housewares.
Website http://www.kohls.com/

Kohl's Corporation (NYSE: KSS) is an American department store chain headquartered in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. The Company currently operates 957 stores in 47 states. Kohl's mission, as stated in store and online, is to be the leading value-oriented, family-focused, specialty department store. Based on 2007 revenue, Kohl's was the 23rd-largest retailer in the United States.[1]

The company entered the S&P 500 list in 1998 and is also listed in the Fortune 500 (#152 in 2007).

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Beginnings

Max Kohl, who had previously operated traditional grocery stores, built his first Kohl's supermarket in 1946, first in what would become a southeastern Wisconsin chain known as Kohl's Food Stores.[2] In 1962, he started his first department store, also called Kohl's Department Store in Brookfield, Wisconsin. He positioned Kohl’s between the higher-end department stores and the discounters, selling everything from candy to engine oil to sporting equipment.

In 1972 the British-American Tobacco Company's (parent of U.S. subsidiary Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co.) U.S. retail division, BATUS Inc., bought a controlling interest in Kohl's Corp., which at the time operated 50 grocery stores, six department stores, three drug stores and three liquor stores.[3] The Kohl family, led by Allen and Herb Kohl, stayed on to manage the company. The family left the management in 1979, and Herb Kohl went on to become a United States Senator and owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. This firm expanded Kohl's presence from 10 to 39 stores in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. The grocery stores were eventually sold to A&P in 1983, operating under the name Kohl's II, but the last of them were later closed in 2003.

[edit] Expansion

A group of investors, including the senior management, purchased the company in 1986, and the company added 27 more stores in the next two years. In 1988, the chain acquired 26 locations from Chicago-based MainStreet, gaining several stores in Chicago's suburbs, Minneapolis, Minnesota and parts of Michigan, the first of which opened its doors on January 16, 1989 in Roseville, Michigan. In 1992, the company went public and a period of expansion began. Kohl's entered mid-Atlantic markets in 1997 (opening in many former locations of Clover, an offshoot of the Strawbridge's corporation brand department stores in the Philadelphia region); Texas, Missouri and the North East in 1999; Georgia and the Southeast in 2001; New England in 2002; California and the Southwest in 2003; and the Northwest in 2006.

The chain's expansion has mainly focused on the middle of the country; however, they recently expanded into the Rochester and Buffalo markets in Western New York. In April 2005, the company opened stores in Florida and other Southern states.

Kohl's design office opened in January 2007, located in the heart of New York's Garment District. The 23,000-square-foot (2,100 m²) facility, located at 1359 Broadway, is the company's first product-design presence in the nation's fashion capital.

[edit] Store Renovations

As of January, 2008. Kohl's is currently remodeling 29 stores, making them cleaner and more organized. This includes new registers and counters, cleaner dressing rooms, wood floors, expanded walkways, new carpet, newly painted walls, new shoe shelves, home departments and more stock availability. Kohl's hopes to have those 29 stores finished by May. The company plans to increase store renovations in 2008; so far, 90 stores have already been renovated to the new prototype.

[edit] Store design

The exterior of a typical Kohl's department store.
The exterior of a typical Kohl's department store.

While some locations are in enclosed shopping malls, the majority of stores are free-standing.

Kohl’s operates differently from traditional department stores. The most noticeable distinction between Kohl's and traditional department stores is that all Kohl's stores have centralized checkout aisles. This has led many observers to consider Kohl's a hybrid of a department store and a mass merchandiser.

Kohl's also pioneered the use of a "racetrack" aisle that circles the entire store, a technique borrowed from discount stores but rarely used in department stores.[2]

[edit] Merchandise

Kohl's stores feature nationally recognized brand-name merchandise, exclusive labels, and private-branded goods, virtually the same merchandise mix as traditional department stores. The stores sell a variety of goods, such as apparel, shoes, and accessories for women, children and men, and home products such as small electronics, Kitchen electrics, Electric shavers, toothbrushes, vacuums & floor care, bedding, toys, and luggage. Kohl's exclusive lines include Candie's, Chaps by Ralph Lauren for Men, Women and Children, Simply Vera Vera Wang, Elle Contemporary Collection, Casa Cristina by award-winning TV personality Cristina Saralegui, American Beauty, Tony Hawk Apparel, daisy fuentes, axcess, Bobby Flay and Food Network-branded housewares and cookware. Kohl's Private brands include apt. 9, SONOMA life+style, Croft & Barrow, Jumping Beans, Urban Pipeline, Moments, So... and Tek Gear. Some of Kohl's National brands include Nike, Haggar, Dockers, Gloria Vanderbilt, Columbia Sporstwear, Oshkosh, Carter's, Reebok, adidas, Champion, Jockey, Goldtoe, Lee, l.e.i. and Levis.

[edit] Online shopping

The company has had a World Wide Web presence since 1998 [3] and offered online shopping since the year 2000.

The domain kohls.com attracted at least 58 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com survey.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Top 100 Retailers: The Nation's Retail Power Players (PDF), Stores, July 2006.
  2. ^ Daykin, Tom. "1st Kohl's supermarket to be next Lena's." Milwaukee Sentinel June 14, 2002 [1]
  3. ^ Milwaukee Sentinel 10-28-1972, p. 6, pt. 2
 The references in this article would be clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking.

[edit] External links

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