This article is about the Kohl's department store chain. For the recently defunct grocery store chain also known Kohl's, see Kohl's Food Stores .

Kohl's Corporation is a department store chain based in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin started by Max Kohl in 1962. The stores sell a variety of goods, such as apparel, shoes & accessories for women, children and men, plus home products like small electronics, bedding, luggage, and more. The store aims at a mid-price market.

Kohl's features virtually the same merchandise mix as traditional department stores. However, its operations differ considerably from that model. The most noticeable distinction between Kohl's and traditional department stores is that all Kohl's stores have centralized checkout aisles, unlike the traditional setup of separate checkout counters in each major department. This has led many observers to consider Kohl's a hybrid of a department store and a mass merchandiser.

There are almost 600 Kohl's stores in 38 states in the United States. The chain's expansion has focused on the middle of the country, only recently opening stores in California, and having no presence in Maine, Florida, or the Pacific Northwest.

The company has had a world wide web presence since 1998 [1], and offered on-line shopping since the year 2000. The company entered the S&P 500 list in 1998, and is also listed in the Fortune 500.

History

Max Kohl built a grocery store in 1946, the first in what would become an southeastern Wisconsin chain known as Kohl's Food Stores .[2] In 1962, he started the first department store, also called Kohl's.

In 1972 the British-American Tobacco Company, then known as Brown and Willaimson Tobacco, bought the department stores and food stores. The Kohl family, led by Herb and Allen Kohl, stayed on to manager the company. The family left the management in 1979, and Herb Kohl went on to become a senator and owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. This firm expanded Kohl's presence from 10 to 39 stores in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.

The grocery stores were sold to the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company in 1983. The last grocery stores were closed in 2003.

A group of investors including the senior management purchased the company in 1986, and the company added 27 more stores in the next two years. In 1992, the company went public, and a period of expansion began. Kohl's entered mid-Atlantic markets in 1997; Texas and Missouri in 1999; New England in 2002; and California and the Southwest in 2003.

External link

• Official website
• Early history of Kohl's from Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article