Ames & Hills

[tokensafari]

Here i want to discuss the Ames & Hills merger. I, being a major fan of Hills Department Stores, thought when Ames merged with Hills, that it was a bad idea. But little did i know the two stores were so much alike that it was scary! At the time, i was still a kid, and i really didn't understand it all. The only thing i knew was, the store that i shopped at with my mom all the time, was being taken over by some chain with a green and white logo that appealed to my young mind. Hills was a cheaper of Ames... at least the stores around here were. When Ames took over nothing changed except the logo out front, and the employee smocks. Everything still had the Hills feeling to it, and the colors. Ames never did change the store that much, and i admire them for that. This is what made Ames so special. They never really changed the stores they acquired. I believe now, that these two stores had to merge to stay competitive. Ames saw it as a way to compete with bigger chains than itself. And Hills saw it as a way to keep there stores alive, and their employees employed. Without the Ames merger Hills would have died.

[AMESbalti/toledo]

something to add this looks funny i just registared when ames was in fiancial trouble in bankruptcy #1 we could not get any new merchandise from distributors. so ames in a bold move to save x mas sales bought inventory from hills warehouses. i had to reticket majority of the itmes sent because hills paid to have there toys and such preticketed. hills saved or buts back then.........

[tokensafari]

Was that the only times Ames used Hills to save their butts? lol I thought it would be reversed. Hills buys stuff from Ames to save their skin. That blows me away to be honest.

[Caldor1999]

ames should have let hills go out and they could have picked locations and u would have think they learned form Zayer

[Zayre88]

I agree with Caldor 1999.  Ames should have picked some Hills locations instead of buying the entire company and everything bad that comes with it.

I was reading the 1999 Ames annual report and the 2000 report lately and the numbers say a lot. With Hills, the sales topped $4 billion  but expenses doubled (administrative, debt, interest, depreciation and then store closing charges)

Even if the company managed to cut $10 million in general expenses in 2000, other charges were already too much for the company.  The net income slowly went down since 1997 but took a huge dive in 2000.

[Caldor1999]

Originally posted by Zayre88
I agree with Caldor 1999.  Ames should have picked some Hills locations instead of buying the entire company and everything bad that comes with it.

I was reading the 1999 Ames annual report and the 2000 report lately and the numbers say a lot. With Hills, the sales topped $4 billion  but expenses doubled (administrative, debt, interest, depreciation and then store closing charges)

Even if the company managed to cut $10 million in general expenses in 2000, other charges were already too much for the company.  The net income slowly went down since 1997 but took a huge dive in 2000.

u would have think tha they leared form the last time when they bought out zayer in 1988 funny thing is around teh same time 10 years latter in 1998 they bought out hills i also read an acartcl from 1997 about a possble meger with Caldor and bradlees but i doubt that would have happen seeing as how bouth companys were in ch 11 that year

[tokensafari]

Eventually Hills would have faded. Ames would have faded too, just not as fast as they did with the merger.

[beachgal26]

I agree with everyone that things could have turned out very differently for Ames had they not bought the Hills chain.  All it seemed to do was add more expense to their bottom line and bring their days to an end much more quickly.

When I lived in PA in the early 80's, I liked both chains but in our area the Hills stores were brighter, cleaner and offered a much better variety of merchandise.  By comparison, the Ames stores were in odd, out of the way locations that were hard to reach and tended to look neglicted and carry dated merchandise.  

One was located in a shopping center at the top of a big hill that was surrounded by trees and if you didn't see the small sign at the bottom of the hill, you'd never even know that it was there.  I only shopped there once and was not impressed at all.  (It is the Bethel Park location for anyone that wants to look it up on the Ames locator.)

Funny how things worked out and they both went under....

:no:   :no:   :no:   :no:

[IGA/Kmart Is Forever!]

How much more longer and for how many more years do you think Hills and Ames both would have survived when it comes to Hills surviving past 1997 and Ames surviving past 2002 had Ames not purchased out the Hills Department Store Chain? I am just curious because as a lot of you know here on the message-board I have always been a very big Kmart Store person. But at the same time I have always been a very big Hills and Ames Department Store person as well. That is because when I was a very little boy growing up back in the 1980/90's my mother did all of her discount department store shopping at both Hills and Kmart Stores. In fact, my mother shopping at Hills went back to the days when Hills Department Stores in my area were still Gold Circle Department Stores. My mother loved Gold Circle while at the same time also shopped at Kmart. However, when Gold Circle Department Stores went out of business in 1988 and Hills purchased the going out of business Gold Circle chain, my mother started going to Hills, but continued to shop at Kmart at the same time. There were no Kohl's, Target, or Wal*Mart Stores around me where I live until I was teenager in the late 1990's. All we had around us where I live prior to the late 1990's were Ames, Hills, Kmart, JCPenney, Sears, Value City Department Stores, as well as Higbee's Department Stores which got bought out by Dillard's in 1992 and O'Neil's Department Stores which got bought out by MayCompany in 1989, which got bought out by Kaufmann's in 1993, which last but not least got bought out by Macy's in 2006. I pretty much shop at the same stores now that I was born and raised to shop at while growing up as a little boy while being raised by my mother. As you can see out of these stores that still exist today in the present time from when I was growing up are just Kmart, JCPenney, and Sears. I am a very big Kmart and JCPenney person, not just because they were where I was born and raised to shop at, but also because Kmart has the selection of products that I am looking for while at the same time are very good quality products that consist of a higher quality than what both Wal*Mart and Target sell. The reason that I go to JCPenney is because they are one of the very few department stores that has a, "Big and Tall" Clothing Department with clothes at very affordable prices. Both Macy's and Dillard's clothes are so expensive that I would have to pay just about $200.00 to get just one shirt and a matching pair of shorts or one shirt and a matching pair of pants. At JCPenney I can get at least five pairs of shorts for somewhere around $100.00 or five shirts for somewhere under $100.00. When I was born we only had one Ames Department Store around us where I live. It got shut down during Ames first bankruptcy in 1990 and we no longer had any Ames Stores local to us for the next seven years until Ames bought out Hills in 1997. Now that I have explained my retail background in my area around here where I live and my connections with both Hills and Ames in my past, it brings me back to my original question which is how much more longer and for how many more years do you think Hills and Ames both would have survived when it comes to Hills surviving past 1997 and Ames surviving past 2002 had Ames not purchased out the Hills Department Store Chain?

[IGA/Kmart Is Forever!]

*Bump! I would really like anybody's opinion in regards to my last post on this topic. Please feel free to post if you have an opinion.

[jason83080]

After the Ames stores went away the first time (post-Zayre merger), there was this one odd location that we used to occasionally visit in trips out toward Sandusky, and that was the location at SR58 and US20 out in Oberlin, Ohio. It maintained the white/red street sign and, as far as I knew back then, was the only Ames store around. Hills was still thriving back then (there were two out this way when I moved to Sheffield Lake in 1996: one on SR57 at US20/SR113 in Elyria, and one on Cooper Foster Park Road by SR58 in Amherst), so that Ames had to have survived the first round of bankruptcy closures. After the 'rebirth,' it did get the white front sign and, I believe, the green/beige makeover inside, but I'm not sure.

Now, here's what happened to the three out here:
- Elyria (SR57 / US20/SR113) - vacant; was sublet, and the only two stores using the GIANT space are a Best Cuts and a larger Dollar Tree - RentWay and Fast Cash Tax have since closed, but that's been it for occupancy there; the Finast/Tops next door closed when the chain left OH, was turned into a Giant Eagle store, and closed again after the colossal supercenter-style Wal-Mart store nearby drove them out of business
- Amherst (58/CFP) - half of the building was expanded frontward for Advance/Pierre Foods' new production facility; half of the front of the building still remains intact
- Oberlin (58/20) - front facade removed and renovated into a small, fully-occupied plaza; smaller supercenter-style Wal-Mart store constructed NEXT DOOR

[TheFugitive]

I worked for Ames in Ohio and Michigan back in the 1988-92 timeframe.  We basically crashed and burned at that time due to the ill-advised acquisition of Zayre.  Not a good match for a number of reasons.  Zayre had a lot of stores in rough inner-city locations, while Ames was primarily small town and rural.  Zayre had some stores with extremely high shrink.  We all presumed that this merger was nothing more than our President at the time, Peter Hollis, bailing out all of his buddies from Zayre, his former company.  After we bought the discount stores they spun-off their other properties as "TJX", which is still in business today.  So obviously we did not get the profitable end of that deal.

One of the first tip-offs was when they spun our jewelry department off to a totally separate company called JBA.  In retrospect, a brazen attempt to keep the gold and diamonds out of the hands of the bankruptcy court.  And then the Coca-Cola driver would not unload without a cash payment.

A few days later we got a phone call saying "Do not cash your paychecks.  They will bounce."

Several years later I found myself working for Hills in Pennsylvania.  I always enjoyed shopping there.  The stores had a nice family atmosphere (except the one where I was, which was located in a tough area).  When rumblings came that Ames was trying to acquire us, I thought "No way I am going back to work for those idiots and getting dragged through another bankruptcy".  I got out of retail and never looked back.