Top 20 MORE Stores That Don't Exist Anymore

Tweeter, a.k.a Tweeter Etc. a.k.a Tweeter Home Entertainment was a New England consumer electronics chain. Founded in Boston by Sandy and Michael Bloomberg in 1972, the chain grew and grew throughout New England. In the 1990s, Tweeter started a campaign of national expansion by buying out chains in other markets. They expanded to Chicago, Florida, and Atlanta through acquisitions of other electronic franchises. By the end of its time, Tweeter specialized in flat-screen televisions. In the spring of 2007, Tweeter had around 100 stores nationwide. Even before the Great Recession hit, half of those stores had closed. By the time the waves of the Recession receded, Tweeter went bankrupt.

Steven Shore and Barry Prevor were college students at the University of Pennsylvania in 1985. They recognized that university bookstores and gift stores sold goods with an absurd markup. They saw an opportunity, founding a chain targeting college students with bargain basement prices. Steve & Barry's was a retail clothing store that focused on casual clothes, accessorizing, and footwear. They expanded to college campuses and malls across America, eventually reaching 276 stores in 39 states. Steve & Barry’s seemed destined to conquer, earning such praise as “Hot Retailer of the Year” in 2005 and “Marketer of the Year” in 2007. Before the decade was out, the chain went belly up. Like so many others, Steve & Barry's was taken out by the Great Recession.

Some stores make the decision early on that they aren’t selling goods, but an experience. That was the logic behind the short-lived Club Libby Lu franchise. Named after the childhood imaginary friend of founder Mary Drolet, Club Libby Lu served girls from ages 4 to 12. It provided girls and young tweens with makeovers, dress-up parties, stuffed animals, and custom cosmetics. At its peak, Club Libby Lu was a subsidiary of Saks and had almost one hundred locations nationwide. By November 2008, the miserable state of the economy forced Saks to shutter Club Libby Lu’s doors.

Crazy Eddie Antar was a Brooklyn-based businessman who opened up an electronics retail chain with his brother, Sam. The store and their Crazy Eddie commercials were a New York City staple in the 1980s. The chain was wildly successful, with just one wrinkle: from the very beginning, Eddie and Sam were crooks. They committed an absolutely gobsmacking amount of fraud and their books were a complete sham. By 1983, it became difficult for Eddie to hide his criminality, so he took the company public. Eddie pumped and dumped a ton of stock, lost the business, and then went to prison. The chain closed in 1989, though in the late 90’s and 2000’s the Antars attempted an online comeback. It died for good in 2012.

Loehmann’s is a sad example of how even the American Dream doesn’t necessarily last forever. Frieda Loehmann was a young woman when her husband’s haberdashery failed. She took a job as a clothes buyer in New York. Frieda started to buy overstocked items from top designers and sold them at a bargain out of her home. Eventually, they opened the first Loehmann’s in 1921. The store was incredibly successful and went public after her death. Thirty-seven years later, by 1999, Loehmann’s had around one hundred locations in seventeen states. Over the next fifteen years, the chain underwent a series of bankruptcies and acquisitions. By 2014, all brick-and-mortar locations were closed and by 2018, its online store shut down.

After leaving Simon & Schuster in 1933, sales manager Lawrence Hoyt opened a small rental library in Connecticut with his partner Melvin T. Kafka. They named their business the Walden Book Company after Henry David Thoreau’s famous book. Their goal was to help an immiserated populace psychologically deal with The Great Depression. They had hundreds of locations by 1948. The post-WWII era killed the rental library business so the company successfully pivoted to book sales. Waldenbooks entered the great wheel of capitalism, acquiring smaller companies and getting bought and sold by larger ones. It was eventually spun off by Kmart and became a part of Borders. All Waldenbooks closed when Borders was killed by Amazon in 2011.

In this golden age of online retail, it can be hard to remember that the shopping mall was once the center of American commerce. In the 1980s and 1990s, malls were both shopping and cultural centers. There were retail brands that did not exist outside of a mall. If you were a teen at a mall in Texas during that time, there's a good chance you shopped at Gadzooks. The store initially focused on t-shirts before expanding into a full-blown ‘mini-department store’ for teens. By 1995, Gadzooks went public and by 2000 there were over 300 stores in malls across America. To fight off competitors, Gadzooks dropped its menswear and catered exclusively to teen women. That pivot killed the brand completely five years later.

Margrit Schurman opened the first Papyrus store as a retail branch of her fine paper company. With barely $1,000 and a dream, Schurman created a business that would grow into an empire of over 450 stores throughout the U.S. and Canada. Papyrus sold greeting cards and luxury stationery throughout the country, expanding with a 2009 purchase of American Greetings stores. Unfortunately, they misread the market and slowly but surely contracted to only 260 stores by 2020. In January, two months before the COVID lockdowns would send shockwaves throughout the economy, Papyrus stores were all shuttered and liquidated.

Mega Billionaire Richard Branson started his mogul career at the age of 16 with a self-published magazine, “Student.” In 1970, he pivoted to a mail-order record business and opened his first Virgin Records in 1972. The brand boomed quickly, and Branson opened his first Megastore in London by 1979. Virgin Megastores’ expanded product selection included consumer electronics, books, and sometimes fashion. Branson ruled the British Market and Virgin Megastores opened around the world. Perhaps predicting a shift in retail, Branson sold or licensed the brand to a number of companies in the early 2000s. Today, Virgin Megastores only exist in the Middle East and North Africa. All other locations have closed down.

Thanks to the invention of VHS tapes and, to a lesser extent, Betamax, Hollywood discovered a profitable secondary market for movies. Tens of thousands of video rental stores and national chains popped up all over the U.S. and became a booming business. One of those retailers was the Suncoast Motion Picture Company. A spin-off of Suncoast Records, Suncoast Motion Picture Company sold VHS tapes, collectibles, records, cassette tapes, and CDs. The retailer fell victim to chains of acquisitions and sales, eventually getting liquidated. As of May 2023, only four Suncoast Motion Picture Company franchises exist in the United States.

William Filene was an American businessman who founded an incredibly successful department store in Boston in 1881. Filene’s is so important to the city’s identity, the original store was designated a city landmark. Its sister store, Filene’s Basement, saw similar success. In 1929, Filene’s joined with other competitors to create the holding company Federated Department Stores. In the back half of the 20th century, Filene’s gained a foothold in New England and New York shopping malls. Federated was bought out by May Company and, by 2006, May decided to fold Filene’s into another May-owned brand: Macy’s. A few years later, Filene’s Basement met a similar fate.

Large companies love to find ways to leverage their brand power and enter new markets. In the 1990s, a number of media corporations tried to synergize their media brand with a retail store business to sell branded content. Both Disney and Warner Brothers made the attempt but failed thanks to large market forces. If those brands - each with a massive library of intellectual property - couldn’t make it happen, it’s no surprise that The Discovery Channel Store was an abysmal failure. The company tried to create a retail market to sell Discovery Channel merchandise. Unfortunately, the small retail chain of less than twenty locations lasted less than a dozen years before going under. As of 2023, even Discovery’s online store has closed.

David Schlessinger was an entrepreneur frustrated by a lack of brick-and-mortar stores for educational toys. He started the retail chain Zany Brainy in 1991 to bridge that gap. Zany Brainy’s products specialized in developmental education through play. They sold puzzles, books, audiotapes and CDs, toy trains, and learning software. The individual stores also offered in-store workshops, concerts, and book signings. Though the retailer was eventually purchased by FAO Schwarz, it never really found a long-term market. Zany Brainy filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001. Less than two years later, all its locations shut down.

After 140 years in business, Modell’s Sporting Goods learned the hard way that not everyone has ‘got to go to Mo’s.’ Morris A. Modell, a Jewish immigrant from Hungary, founded the sporting goods store in Manhattan in 1889. Over the next century, his descendants grew the business into a profitable chain, operating over 150 stores in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. By 2014, however, rival Dick’s Sporting Goods had sued the company. They accused CEO Mitchell Modell of wearing a disguise to learn Dick’s’ retail secrets. By mid-2020, every Modell’s store had closed, attempting to rebrand as an online-only business.

Movie Gallery was founded in 1985 in the middle of the ascension of home video. By the mid-1990s, the company launched an aggressive campaign of expansion. They added new franchisees, bought out the competition, and built new stores. In 2005, they merged with competitor Hollywood Video to become the second-largest video chain in North America. They had reached 4,700 stores in the U.S. and Canada with more than $2.5 billion in revenue. But it all went downhill from there. The rise of video-on-demand and streaming services destroyed Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video just as it had with Blockbuster. By 2010, even the contents of the corporate headquarters were auctioned off.

The ripple effects of major global catastrophes can spread into every aspect of life. The Great Depression, Great Recession, and the pandemic all caused global shifts in consumer habits. In an adapt-or-die world, even large and powerful retailers fall victim to global trends. Pier 1 had risen to national prominence in the furniture and home decoration space. By January 2020, the business was struggling and they announced the closure of almost half of their locations. The pandemic was the final nail in Pier 1’s bespoke coffin. After all the stores shut for good, Retail Ecommerce Ventures, REV, acquired the company. REV has a penchant for buying dying brands and pivoting to e-commerce. Unfortunately, in Spring 2023, REV announced that it, too, may go bankrupt.

Inspired by a meeting with the founder of Woolworths, businessman S.S. Kresge founded his first big box department store in 1899. The first Kmart-branded store opened in 1962 in Michigan. The next thirty years saw almost exponential growth. By 1990, it was the second largest retailer in America, behind only Sears. It unfortunately struggled throughout the 90s and early 2000s, collapsing and merging with Sears. Both brands suffered further decline over the next decade until Kmart underwent its second bankruptcy and sold off its stores. By 2019, virtually all Kmart locations were shuttered. As of April 2022, there were only nine Kmarts left in the world.

Lord & Taylor was the oldest retailer in America, having been founded in 1824 when John Quincy Adams was president. For almost two centuries, Lord & Taylor rose to become synonymous with luxury branded clothing. Six different parent companies saw Lord & Taylor through two world wars, The Great Depression, and The Great Recession. Unfortunately, the company could not survive the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Retail locations were closed in March of 2020 and reopened by July. But the damage had already been done and Lord & Taylor filed for bankruptcy in August. In 2022, the brand relaunched under new management as an e-commerce luxury retailer.

Bed Bath & Beyond, as of June 2023, is at the tail end of a long, slow, painful demise. The company shifted from a small retail chain of local stores to a megastore chain in 1985. It reached over a billion dollars in sales in 1999 and there were over 1,100 locations by 2011. Declining profits led to a big shakeup in 2019. Investment firms purged the CEO from his perch and restructured the board of directors. They accused the company of nepotism and poor management. The pandemic proved to be a fatal blow for Bed Bath & Beyond, pulling the trigger on the starter gun for store closures. After limping along for several years, the company announced the full closure of all stores by July 2023.

The Limited was an Ohio-based clothing brand that became a mall staple in the 1980s and 1990s. At the height of its economic might, The Limited acquired popular brands like Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, and Abercrombie & Fitch. A sub-brand, The Limited Too, was spun off in 1987, catering to young and tween girls. Both store chains did well with hundreds of stores around the country. The Limited Too brand didn’t even make it a decade, merging with Justice in 1996 and going defunct in 2009. Its parent company didn’t fare much better; the bulk of the company was sold to a private equity firm in 2007. By 2017, all physical locations went out of business.