Two Guys,Clarks and Topps

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laundromat

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These three companies were also around in compitition with E.J.Korvettes.Two Guys was right across the street but,unlike EJK,they had no major appliances.Mostly clothes and dry goods.Kohls and Target are real similar to them.
 
laundromat....

Two Guys did sell small appliances though....After A.O Sutton stopped making Vornado fans and A/C's in 1958 Two Guys bought the name and it became their house brand. I have a Vornado steam iron made by Proctor Silex and I have seen Vornado mixers, blenders, coffee pots, transistor radios, and even xmas Lights...PAT COFFEY
 
According to Wikipedia....

Two Guys was a discount store primarily operating in the New York metropolitan area and headquartered in northern New Jersey until the early 1980s. It was founded in 1946 in Harrison, New Jersey by brothers Sidney Hubschman and Herbert Hubschman as Two Guys from Harrison. The company originally sold major appliances such as televisions.

In 1959, the company acquired O.A. Sutton Corp., manufacturers of electric fans, air conditioners, and dehumidifiers. The merged company was renamed Vornado, Inc., after O.A. Sutton's Vornado line of appliances. At its peak, there were more than 100 Two Guys locations nationwide, including Upstate New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, Maryland, and Virginia.[1]

As Vornado's commercial fortunes declined throughout the mid-to-late 1970s, they began selling off Two Guys stores to various companies. In late 1980, Vornado (later renamed to Vornado Realty Trust) was acquired by Interstate Properties, Inc. after Interstate won a proxy fight. Interstate began the process of liquidating its Two Guys outlets by closing the stores and leasing the physical location to other retailers, which had posted a loss of $20 million for the first half of 1981.[1]

Many locations originally included a discount store with a supermarket, as well as complete hardware, major appliance, and automotive service departments. The Two Guys supermarkets were full sized "stores within a store." They competed directly with large supermarket chains in the region at the time like Acme, Food Fair, Penn Fruit, Grand Union, A&P, and ShopRite. Trading stamps like Plaid and S&H Green Stamps were popular supermarket promotions into the early 1980s, and Two Guys supermarkets had its own private label trading stamps. Completed books of Two Guys trading stamps could then be turned in for merchandise credit slips that could be used in any non-food Two Guys department. The supermarkets used the tag line, "Two Guys, The Super Supermarket", while the main store used the tag line, "We Save Money For You, Naturally". The store in East Hanover, New Jersey even had an attached liquor store with bar. It was succeeded by developer Vornado Realty Trust, which developed – and in many cases still owns – the land on which Two Guys stores once stood. In Middletown, New Jersey, a Two Guys on New Jersey Route 35 operated for many years within sight of the "Evil Clown of Middletown"; it later became a Bradlees. There were also stores on Route 9 in Manalapan Township, on Route 37 in Toms River, New Jersey and Route 18 in East Brunswick Township.

One of the chains more unusual operations was its outlet in downtown Newark, New Jersey. This location was originally the flagship of the Kresge-Newark department store, and for a brief time Chase-Newark. Two Guys operated on 4 floors of this building (later 3), and operated this store more like a traditional department store. Two Guys continued to maintain display windows, revolving doors and other touches of a traditional downtown department store. This location also included an in-store dining room, The Rainbow Cafeteria. This store opened in 1967, and remained until the chain's liquidation.

Bernard Marcus, one of the founders of Home Depot, began his retail career when he convinced the Hubschmans to let him operate the cosmetics concession at a Two Guys store in Totowa, New Jersey. He eventually was put in charge of first sporting goods and the major appliance department for the entire company, controlling over $1 billion dollars in sales. He left the company after it was sold to outside investors following Herbert Hubschman's death.
 
Okay, here's a trivia question!

Anyone remember Skruggs Vandervort? I've no idea if they were only local or not, but as a child I remember thinking they rivalled Macy's (which at the time was nowhere near St. Louie). I'm not certain if it was Skruggs or Stix, Baer and Fuller that had the huge appliance department. Whichever it was, that was where Mama knew to find me if I (rarely) escaped her watchful eye.
 
When I lived in Santa Monica in the late 70's I used to go to a nearby Two Guys store. There were a number of them in the area at the time, but they never showed up in northern California.
 
Scruggs Vandervoort and Barney was the 3rd full-line department store in St. Louis. Famous-Barr (May Department Stores) and Stix Baer and Fuller (Associated Dry Goods) were the other two. Vandervoort's was the smallest of the 3, with stores downtown, Clayton and Crestwood Plaza (at least). They dissolved in about 1970...the Crestwood Plaza Vandervoort's became Famous-Barr (it was a weird kind of junior store for them...never had furniture or a budget store, although it was about a 200k sf store/3 levels). The Clayton store became Dolgin's (catalog showroom) and IDK what it is now. There is some history on the webs....IDK where I saw it, but definitely within the last year or so.

Stix became Dillards in about 1984, and Famous became Macy's. Interesting...the Baer family were big supporters of the St. Louis council of the Boy Scouts of America...they donated 100-some acres for a camp about 80 miles south of St. Louis...called it S-bar-F (get it...I didn't until about 5 years ago!)
 
E. J. Korvette Question...

I remember them as a child as a discount type store like others mentioned above but at one time wasn't E.J. Korvette an upscale New York store?

On several movie credits I have seen them listed with Bergdorf's, Lord & Taylor, and other upscale stores of that time period in the early sixties. For example the movie a New Kind of Love with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

Did they start upscale and go discount?
 
I have only been to Korvette's once, and that was in the 60's while visiting relatives in the Chicago area. It was definitely a discount store at that time. My guess is that it always was.

I think in the western part of the country during that time period the major discount chain was White Front. All of those stores had the giant arched entrance made up of white panels with lettering perched on top. They had the best deals on LP's in their record department. I got The Beatles white album for $6.49 there, way cheaper than anywhere else. We also got our first color TV there. It was a Webcor brand.
 
Korvette's started life as a discounter in the late 40s...they got "uppity" when they opened a store on Fifth Avenue in the 60s. They moved to the suburbs in the 50s in NYC/NJ, moved to Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis in the 60s, collapsed in 1979 or so and closed up entirely in 1980 or so. They opened 2 level stores in Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis (I've lived in all 3 places and their locations are strangely similar...you can kind of see them if you know what to look for ) but never enough in any one city (2 in St. Louis, 3 in Detroit, no more than 6 in Chicago) to gain economies of scale in advertising etc. I grew up close to one of the ones in St. Louis which was built in about 1962 right on the edge of town. It had a supermarket, a furniture store and the 2 level store with a garden shop to the far end. Big parking lot (as you can imagine). A separate building on an outlot had a weird collection of stores (a Ben Franklin with penny candy, a piano store, an upscale restaurant, doctors' offices). The store originally (my memory is fuzzy here) was 2 levels and I think the downstairs might have started out with island cash registers (the upstairs was appliances, I seem to remember). They had private label HABA and small appliances. The furniture was nothing special as I recall. They converted in about 1976 to a single-level store with centralized cash registers and moved downscale, as I recall. They had interesting Sweda mechanical cash registers (not like any I'd ever seen) with a money clip on the front...I have a vivid memory of the checker one time putting a $20 bill in the clip as she made change (in hindsight they probably had security cameras on the front-end). We also shopped at Target and Venture, and they converted to electronic cash registers (not scanners) at about the time when Korvettes closed (I think Target put in an IBM system and Venture put in a TRW system which seemed unique/not very common). Back in those days the checker entered a 3 digit department and a 3 digit item code, and then the price.
 

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