This allowed them to purchase goods in bulk quantity at favorable prices. All purchases and sales were cash. Belk also made extensive use of advertising. In , the brothers opened a store in Greensboro, North Carolina. In the early s, Charlotte was a boom town, expanding along with the textile industry, and was the state's largest city by The company's greatest expansion followed World War I, as the southern economy received a boost. Cotton prices went up, and soldiers came home. The Belk brothers often added managers' names to their own on new stores.
Boom days and postwar prosperity gave way to recession, however, and the Belks retrenched, not opening any stores between and In , however, they opened three more stores and three again in In , the Belks and the Leggett brothers agreed that the Leggetts would own 80 percent of the stores they opened, with Belk Brothers Company owning the remaining 20 percent.
In the past, the Belks had always owned the majority of their stores. This arrangement formed the foundation of Belk's unusual organizational scheme. The years between and were prosperous for retailing. Competition, however, began to creep up on the Belks. Then the stock market crash of slowed Belk's sales growth, but its stores stayed open. Belk took advantage of other companies' misfortune by acquiring defunct stores, netting 22 stores in and In , Belk opened a record 27 stores, expanding geographically into Tennessee and Georgia in the process.
Charlotte was once again becoming a booming center of commerce in the South, and Belk expanded its headquarters store in that city. This location evolved into the organization's operational headquarters, consolidating purchasing, assisting with taxes and merchandise distribution, and providing other services for all affiliated stores.
By , Belk was doing business in locations in seven states. In response to growing competition from such national chains as JC Penney, Montgomery Ward, and Sears and Roebuck, which were thriving in larger cities, Belk stores were remodeled and expanded. Belk Stores Association had formed in the s, gathering the new store managers for quarterly meetings. By the late s, the group was too large to gather for meetings four times a year, so it met at annual conventions.
Belk Buying Service was formally set up in World War II defense spending enhanced the economy, and, by the war's end, sales were two-and-one-half times what they had been in This helped pay off Depression debts and feed expansion. The Belks opened 25 stores in alone and achieved a net increase of more than 60 stores between the end of World War II and the close of the decade. In , founder William Belk died at the age of He had worked as the head of the company up until the time of his death.
After William Belk's death, his son Henry took his place. The founder's other sons, John and Tom, were also active in the company. Six months after his father's death, Henry opened the company's first shopping center store in Florida. This store marked a dramatic break from Belk traditions: a New York design firm created a fancy interior, music was played, and merchandise was displayed for self-service.
This contrasted sharply with the Belk stores' trademark features of spare, no-nonsense decor and an army of well-trained sales clerks. Henry opened several more stores afterward without consulting his family, and by legal disputes were brewing among family members and other shareholders.
Although lawsuits were filed, they eventually were dropped. Later that year, Belk Stores Services, Inc. Though BSS cut all ties with Henry's chain of department stores in November , family feuding would continue throughout the next four decades. John would later advance to chairman of BSS, with Tom as president. The Belks' private-label business was now thriving, and by it accounted for a major share of the buying office's inventory.
In the late s, the Belks department stores had nearly peaked in the South, with stores in 16 states. In , Belk acquired its only viable competitor in the region, the Efird department stores.
During the s, the company had to adjust to a changing retail environment in the South. Stores that could once count on their reputations as local institutions found themselves in the midst of a highly mobile population that was attracted to the offerings of big-city stores. More: National Rifle Association, at center of heated national gun debate, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The department store has struggled during the coronavirus pandemic as customers flocked to online shopping and avoided in-person shopping. In July, Belk cut an undisclosed number of jobs, mostly at its headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. This followed the elimination of 80 corporate jobs in February.
Belk has more than 20, employees at its nearly stores in 16 Southeastern states. Its corporate offices opened in in Charlotte, and now have about 1, workers.
America's department store operators — including Belk and its nearly stores primarily in the Southeast — have struggled as consumers are not frequenting malls as often and are buying less apparel during the pandemic.
Last year, Neiman Marcus, J. The latter, the oldest department store chain in the nation, ended up liquidating and closing all of its stores. Penney narrowly escaped that same outcome after U. Here's the full press release from Belk.
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