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'Kohl's Corporation' () is an American department store chain headquartered in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. The Company currently operates 834 stores in 46 states. Kohl's mission, as stated in store and online, is to be the leading value-oriented, family-focused, specialty department store. Based on 2005 revenue, Kohl's is 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

History

Beginnings

Expansion

Store design

Merchandise

Online shopping

References

External links

History

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. [1] In 1962, he started his first department store, also called Kohl's Department Stores.
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.^[2] 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.

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

Store design

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]

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, vacuums, bedding, toys, and luggage. Kohl's exclusive lines include Candie's, Chaps by Ralph Lauren for Men, Women and Children, Simply Vera by Vera Wang, Casa Cristina by award-winning TV personality Cristina Saralegui, cosmetic brands created by Estee Lauder, Tony Hawk Apparel, and Food Network-branded housewares and cookware.

Online shopping

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

References

1. Top 100 Retailers: The Nation's Retail Power Players (PDF), ''Stores'', July 2006.
2. ''Milwaukee Sentinel'' 10-28-1972, p. 6, pt. 2

External links

★ Kohl's official website

★ Kohl's corporate website

★ Early history of Kohl's from ''Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel'' article