Corporate Office

Stein Mart Corporate Office

Stein Mart was founded by Sam Stein in 1908. The first store was located in Greenville, MS. The stores originally carried general merchandise.

Sam died in 1932 and his son, Jake Stein, took over the company. Jake shifted the focus toward discount clothing.

Jake was succeeded by his son, Jay. Jay Stain grew the company from 3 stores in 1977 to 123 stores by 1996. Jay stepped down as CEO in 2002 but resumed his CEO role in 2011 after the resignations of Michael D. Fisher and Linda McFarland Farthing.

The company currently has over 260 stores in 30 US states. The Stein Mart corporate office is located in Jacksonville, FL.

Dollar General Corporate Office

In October of 1939, former farmers James and Cal Turner opened J.L. Turner and Son with an initial investment of $5,000 each. The switch to retailing from farming resulted in annual sales above $2 million by the early 1950s. By the mid-1950s, this father and son team had 35 department stores in Kentucky and Tennessee. The first store actually called Dollar General wasn’t opened until 1955, with the idea that all items in the store would be $1 or less. The idea took off quickly and all J.L. Turner stores were changed to Dollar Generals. The chain reached 29 stores by 1959.

J.L. Turner died in 1964 and Dollar General went public in 1968. In 1977, Cal Turner, Jr. took over as president of the company, making him the third generation to run the company. Cal ran Dollar General until 2002.

In 2007, Dollar General was acquired by private equity firms and taken private. 2 years later, in 2009, the company was made public via IPO.

In 2014, the company was fined $52,000 by OSHA for health and safety violations in a Brooklyn store for blocking fire exit doors with merchandise. The company was fined again in 2016 also for blocking fire exits, as well as for exposing employees to possible electrocution by removing or not replacing face plates on electrical outlets.

In mid-2015, CEO Rick Dreiling announced his retirement and was replaced by COO Todd Vasos. That same year, the company posted annual revenue of $20.369 billion.

The company announced in September of 2016 that they had plans to hire an additional 10,000 employees and open 900 new stores in the next year, as well as an additional 1,000 in fiscal 2017.

The company acquired Family Dollar in 2017 and has stated that at least half of these stores will be rebranded to the Dollar General name.

Due to Trump’s tariff’s on Chinese goods, Dollar General stated that they would be forced to raise prices once the items stored in warehouses have been depleted.

In June 2019 FedEx and Dollar General announced a partnership which would allow customers to drop off packages at Dollar General stores for FedEx pickup and drop-off.

Dollar General settled a lawsuit in Vermont, which found more than 300 cases of stores listing one price on the shelf but charging a different price. The company agreed to pay $1.75 million but did not admit to any errors.

In 2016, the company has over 12,500 stores in 43 US states. The Dollar General corporate office is located in Goodlettsville, Tennessee.

Rent-A-Center Corporate Office

Rent-A-Center or RAC for short was founded in 1973 by Thomas Devlin and W. Frank Barton. Mr. Devlin came up with the rent to own idea after working for an appliance rental company in Wichita, KS.

The company offers brand name new and used household appliances, televisions, computers, and other electronics on a rent to own scale. Customers can return items for any reason, then pick up the items and resume payments again if they wish. Delivery, pick-up, repair, and service are all included in the rental price.

The company went public in 1995 and has gained many of its current locations through acquisitions of other companies including DEF Investments, Thorn Americas, Rent-Way, Rainbow Rentals, and Rent-Rite.

The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol: RCII

Annual revenue in 2015 was $3.28 billion. RAC has 22,200 full-time employees.

In July of 2015, the company sold several of its Ontario, Canada, locations to EasyHome Financial for $3.4 million. The company has plans for expansion in Mexico, where there are currently 176 locations.

In November 2017, RAC came under federal investigation for alleged unfair, abusive, and deceptive practices.

The company reduced the number of corporate employees by 25 percent or approximately 250 jobs in March 2018.

In February 2021, Rent-A-Center reported 4th quarter gains of 7.3 percent.

Rent-A-Center currently operates over 3000 locations in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. Although originally founded in Wichita, the corporate office is now located in Plano, Texas.

Family Dollar Corporate Office

Family Dollar was founded in 1959 by a then 21-year-old Leon Levine. Leon became obsessed with a store in New York called Filene’s. They sold the cheapest possible items in the basement. Leon figured that if they could do it, so could he. He had been working at his parent’s five and dime clothing store since he was 14. He convinced his mother to let him use the basement as a “bargain basement” type of store. It did well. After getting married and working hard at a factory, Leon had saved $6,000 to start his own “Family Dollar” store.

His first location was in Charlotte, NC. The company quickly expanded to South Carolina (1961), Georgia (1962) and Virginia (1965). The company expanded rapidly in the 60’s and had over 50 stores by 1969.

The company went public in 1970 and continued to expand rapidly. The company opened their 100th store in 1971 and had 300 stores by 1978. In 1981, the company had 400 stores and by the end of that decade, 1,500 stores.

Leon Levine retired in 2003 and was succeeded as CEO by his son, Howard Levine.

The company is best known for its imported goods which many families find necessary to stretch their dollar.

Howard Levine stepped down as CEO in January of 2016 after Dollar Tree acquired Family Dollar in late 2015. Family Dollar is now a subsidiary of Dollar Tree.

The chain currently has over 8000 stores in 44 states and opens 300-500 new stores each year.

The Family Dollar corporate office is located just outside Charlotte in Matthews, North Carolina.

Lowes Corporate Office

Lowe’s was originally founded in 1921 by Lucious Lowe in the form of Lowe’s North Wilkesboro Hardware in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Lucious died in 1940 and the business was inherited by his daughter Ruth. Ruth sold the business to her brother Jim the same year. Jim and Ruth’s husband, Carl Buchan, became partners in the venture after serving in World War II (1943). Under Carl’s leadership, the store prospered.

A second location was opened in Sparta, NC in 1949. Carl saw a huge opportunity after WWII and stocked up on hardware and building materials, along with dry goods, horse tack, snuff, and food items.

Carl and Jim never saw eye-to-eye on many things and made a split in 1952. Carl became the sole owner of Lowe’s and Jim Lowe would open Lowe’s Foods grocery chain.

Under Carl, the business expanded rapidly, opening 3 additional stores in Asheville, Charlotte, and Durham in 1955. The company continued to expand during the rest of the 1950’s.

Carl died in 1960. His 5 man executive team decided to take Lowe’s public in 1961. The company is still publicly traded on the NYSE under the ticker symbol: LOW

By 1962, there were 21 locations. In 1982, the company hit $1 billion in sales. In 2017, the company had annual revenue of $65 billion.

Lowe’s continued to expand and today has over 1800 stores in the US and is also expanding into Canada, Mexico, and Australia.

In September 2018, the company acquired Burlington Coat Factory for $3.6 million.

Lowe’s is currently the second largest hardware retailer in the US behind Home Depot. Their corporate office is located in Mooresville, North Carolina.