A History of Bradlee's: THE SCRIPT
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The
story of Bradlee’s discount store can be traced all the way back to the late
1950s, where three businessmen set out to start their own chain of discount
stores to rival the Connecticut-based department store Caldor and
Massachusetts-based Zayre, which were already immensely popular with consumers.
The result was Bradlee’s, a discount type store that truly was ahead of its
time. The founders settled on the name Bradlee’s after the Bradley
International Airport in Windsor Locks, CT, where some of the earliest planning
meetings were held, and in 1958, the very first Bradlee’s store opened its
doors on South Frontage Road in New London, CT. The company’s launch was a
massive success and before long more and more Bradlee’s stores began popping up
across the Northeast.
Bradlee’s stores initially took a
different approach than most retailers of the time and moreso resembled a flea
market, which each of the store’s departments being owned by independent
licensees, meaning that the store’s merchandise wasn’t actually owned by the
Bradlee’s company itself. Despite this core difference, however, Bradlee’s was
very much so like its competitors in regard to the fact that it offered a wide
array of household goods at discounted prices, it touted itself as more upscale
than other competing chains; notably Kmart, Walmart, and Sears. The retailer’s
widespread growth and success was enough to capture the attention of the
well-established Stop and Shop Company, a grocery store chain in based out of
Boston that primarily serves the New England region, and in 1961 Stop and Shop
bought the Bradlee’s chain in a merger that boosted Bradlee’s yearly sales by $102
million dollars from 1961 to 1968. The merger proved to be an excellent
opportunity for Bradlee’s to expand its reach with the new finances and assets
Stop and Shop could bring to the company and resultantly the chain labeled
itself in its ads as ‘One of the Stop and Shop companies’ to make its name more
familiar with the many Stop and Shop customers across the Northeast. Alongside
Bradlee’s, the Stop and Shop company consisted of Stop and Shop Supermarkets;
Medi-Mart, which was a chain of pharmacies; and Perkin’s Tobacco Stores, which
sold a variety of tobacco products. Now that Bradlee’s and Stop and Shop were
one company, Bradlee’s would often times open stores adjacent to a Stop and
Shop store which provided shoppers with general merchandise as well as food all
in one place. Near many older stores, Bradlee’s would open its own branch of
supermarkets to sell food and produce, aptly labeled Bradlee’s Foods. This move
was made by Stop and Shop to add another name to their repertoire of
subsidiaries and offer customers a supermarket other than Stop and Shop to make
their grocery purchases. All across the Northeast United States Bradlee’s
became everyone’s go-to place for all their shopping needs, and soon was able
to establish itself as the unquestioned king of discount stores across the New
England area
Throughout the latter half of the 1960s, Bradlee’s
management style began to take a drastic shift now that Stop and Shop was at
the helm of the company. Up to that point, most departments at Bradlee’s stores
were still owned by independent franchisees rather than Bradlee’s itself. Now
that Stop and Shop was in charge of the chain, the franchising program was
quickly phased out so that Bradlee’s management could have more control over
what goods were sold in the store and how much customers were charged for them.
Although shift lead to a complete overhaul in the store’s management style, it
ultimately proved to be a huge success for the company as profits continued to
rise with more and more stores were opening across the country. By the turn of
the decade Bradlee’s was pulling in more than 130 million dollars’ worth of
sales annually whereas other notable competitors such as Walmart made a mere
$25 million that same year.
Bradlee’s was seemingly on cloud nine, and in the
beginning of the 1970s, the buzzing brand introduced its most memorable
advertising campaign featuring the infamous Mrs. B, portrayed by actress
Cynthia Harris. The aggressive advertising campaign was accompanied with the
opening of many more stores as well as the addition of more departments to its
stores. New renovations to the stores would expand the store’s clothing
selection as well as introduce a brand new Do-It-Yourself department that
offered a wide variety of hardware and other construction materials. Additionally,
Bradlee’s invested a good chunk of its capital to update older stores and
worn-out fixtures to help maintain Bradlee’s platinum status with consumers. Towards
the end of the 1970s, Bradlee’s begun plans to experiment by opening stores
with unique names and formats to offer more variety across the Bradlee’s brand.
One of the most notable projects was a small subsidiary chain of Bradlee’s
locations which exclusively carried clothing tailored towards juniors and
misses, although these stores never made it past the initial planning phase. A
more successful concept that Bradlee’s actually introduced was the Bradlee’s
Family Center, which offered an extensive selection of general goods and food
items under one roof, a revolutionary concept for its time.
Bradlee’s in the 1980s can be categorized by waves of
massive expansion that aimed to increase the company’s presence outside of the
northeastern United States. Bradlee’s first looked to take hold in the
metropolitan Washington D.C. area when in 1982 the company announced it
purchased 13 former Memco Store locations which would be converted into brand
new Bradlee’s stores. A few years later, Bradlee’s opened shop in the New
Jersey and Pennsylvania area when they acquired 16 former Jefferson Ward
locations which quickly reopened under the Bradlee’s name.
Despite all this expansion, the company’s sales
slumped, which posed a serious threat to Bradlee’s parent company Stop and
Shop. Stop and Shop had already lost a good sum of money that year and it was
banking heavily on Bradlee’s to boost the company’s revenue. In response to
Bradlee’s slowing sales, the Stop and Shop company replaced Bradlee’s president
which saw sales increase by 300 million dollars.
Following the slight blip in the company’s profits,
Bradlee’s continued expansion by acquiring a chain of stores named Two Guys,
which were spread across the New Jersey area, further cementing Bradlee’s
presence in the retail marketplace. By now, Bradlee’s reached all states from
Maine to Virginia with steady growth unrivaled by any other chain of the time.
To keep up with the stores’ demand, Bradlee’s opened up a more than 500,000
square foot distribution facility in Edison Township, New Jersey which would
increase the chain’s efficiency to its newer stores south of New York. Then, in
1988, the Stop and Shop Corporation became the victim of an aggressive takeover
bid from the Dart Group Corporation, which sought to purchase the Stop and Shop
company alongside all of its assets. To remain an independent company, Stop and
Shop needed to take evasive action which ultimately resulted in a leveraged
buyout, which is the same type of business move that ultimately doomed Toys R
Us. Basically, a leveraged buyout is essentially when the company purchases
back its shares from shareholders so that way it doesn’t have to get outside
approval before making important business decisions. So now, I’m sure you’re
asking, If a leveraged buyout ran Toys R
Us into the ground, it must’ve done the same for Bradlee’s
Well, actually, no. Unlike Toys R Us during its
leveraged buyout back in 2005, Stop and Shop realized that to survive it would
need to pay off its 1.2-billion-dollar debt that it accumulated purchasing back
shares in the company. The result of the leveraged buyout was a cutback in
Bradlee’s operations to recuperate for the cost of purchasing back Stop and
Shop’s shares leading Bradlee’s to shudder 37 outlet stores in North Carolina,
Virginia, and Maryland which were then sold off to the Hechinger company and
Bradlee’s once again turned to focus on its operations in the Northeast United
States. As the 1980s rolled into the 1990s, Bradlee’s slowly began to transform
into a different type of store. Now that the Stop and Shop company had to pay
off its debt from the buyout, Bradlee’s was now pushing hard for customers to
come into the store by launching a new ad campaign to replace the company’s
longtime spokesperson Mrs. B and offered new, more competitive prices on
various goods every day in a marketing ploy similar to Walmart’s Everyday
Rollback. Other aspects of the store were updated as well, such as a digital
inventory management system and on-line credit verification which increased
Bradlee’s customer capacity, ultimately costing Bradlee’s upwards of 30 million
dollars.
The following year, big news broke when Stop and Shop
announced it was planning on undoing the leveraged buyout from a few years
prior. This would burden Stop and Shop with massive debt, and to make up for
undoing the buyout, Stop and Shop announced in 1982 that it planned on spinning
off the Bradlee’s company into its own privately held corporation. After nearly
20 years of owning the Bradlee’s chain of stores, Stop and Shop completely
severed its ties with Bradlee’s which left the company scrambling to organize
its own management now that it no longer had access to Stop and Shop’s various
assets. On July 1, 1992, Bradlee’s officially went public on the New York Stock
Exchange under callsign BRAD where the company quickly went on to sell more
than 11 million shares which supported the company through a strong holiday
season. Despite the promise that Bradlee’s showed following the separation from
Stop and Shop, Bradlee’s success came to a screeching halt the following year
when rival companies such as Walmart and Target really began targeting
Bradlee’s success in the northeast. This coupled with lower-than-expected sales
in the next few quarters took its toll on the now independent company. To help
recover some lost sales, Bradlee’s opened up 10 new stores in the metro New
York area, including a 6-story flagship store on Union Square in New York City,
which enabled the now floundering company to experiment with new store formats
to see what customers most desired. The new stores touted wider aisles and
better lighting which Bradlee’s believed would make the stores more appealing
to potential shoppers and another $30 million was invested on updating stores’
inventory management equipment as well as credit card systems to speed up the
checkout process, and though at first the renovations left the company hopeful,
it soon became clear that the investments did little to bring customers back to
the store in a market where competing brands like Walmart and Target slowly
collected more and more market share. Two years later, Bradlee’s filed for
Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection after sales continued to slump and made
efforts to reorganize its corporate management. Bradlee’s also cut back on the
number of stores it operated, including the chain’s original New London store which
at that point had operated for almost 50 years. Ultimately, what saved
Bradlee’s from full out bankruptcy was the liquidation of the Caldor chain of
stores, once one of Bradlee’s most fierce competitors. Bradlee’s was now able
to fill a bit of the void that Caldor left in the discount store market, which
was critical as Walmart and Target were becoming ever-more prominent throughout
the area in which Bradlee’s operated. Bradlee’s was able to muster up a decent
enough profit from 1998 to 1999 where it looked like the company could turn
itself around. Later on that same year, Bradlee’s emerged from bankruptcy
protection and things looked good for the reviving company; that was until 2000
when seemingly out of nowhere Bradlee’s filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, leading
to the liquidation of all of its remaining locations to repay debtors as much
as it could manage. Bradlee’s chief executives blamed the closure on a quote
general economic downturn which left customers with less disposable income now
that oil and gas prices rose. Some also pointed to other brands such as Walmart
and Target, who both would strategically open stores near Bradlee’s locations
in hopes of eating away at their market share. Many industry leaders said the
economy just wasn’t right to revive the Bradlee’s brand in the late 1990s, and
its failure was inevitable without changes being made in how consumers budgeted
their money. At the time of Bradlee’s liquidation, the chain consisted of 105
stores across 7 states, where upwards of 10,000 people lost their jobs. When
Bradlee’s came off the stock exchange, its stock had dropped to a measly 22
cents per share.
