 | |
| Company type | Discount Department Store |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | November 24, 1961 |
| Defunct | 1981 |
| Fate | Bankruptcy |
| Headquarters | Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States |
| Products | Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics and housewares. |
| Parent | J.C. Penney |
Treasure Island, formerly The Treasury, was a chain of discount stores owned for most of its lifespan by J.C. Penney.
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Field Trip to the Money Factory
Transcription
Narrator: It takes one person to spend money, but many people to create money. These are the people from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, also known as the Money Factory. Meet Brian. He's one of the Banknote Designers at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Brian: My job is to design United States currency. One thing about being a bank note designer is it's 98% thinking. You have to think about what you're going to do and think about what's going to work when it gets on the press. The easiest approach when designing, it's a big puzzle. You take different pieces and aspects of America or different things and piece it together almost like one united, almost like a story. Different icons, such as the eagle, because I know we hand draw those and to end up seeing those on a note is pretty awesome, because you know, it's like your artwork is all over the world. Narrator: Once the design team has finalized the design, steel plates need to be created for the printing press. This is Dixie. She's a script engraver and puts the finalized design into steel. Dixie: If you notice your money it has lettering on it and it also has numerals on it to denote the denomination. While we have designers that pick up and make designs, my job is to interpret their designs in steel. Sitting and cutting script, because it's very rhythmical. You're just looking in your die through your glass and twirling the die around and cutting it. There's not too many artists that could say that they've had their work replicated billions of times. Narrator: Once the plates are created, the money starts being printed. Blank currency sheets are brought in. First, the background images are printed. Then presses print the backs of the notes and then the faces of the notes. The final step is the printing of the serial number and Treasury and Federal Reserve seals. Once the bills are printed, they're cut and packaged into "bricks." The completed loads are transferred and securely stored in the Federal Reserve Vault. For more information on the latest bill design, visit NewMoney.gov. For more about the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, including taking a tour, visit MoneyFactory.gov. For more information on money and more, visit Kids.gov.
History
The General Merchandise Company was a mail order company founded by David Kritzik and his two sons, Robert and Stanley, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Treasure Island was founded as GMC's discount store division, with their first location opening in Appleton, Wisconsin on November 24, 1961. The architecture of these stores, the work of Milwaukee architect Jordan A. Miller, was unique, having utilized a zig-zag pattern that was very prominent both inside and outside. Because of this, the store's merchandise was advertised as being "under the squiggly roof" well into the 1970s.
In 1961, J.C. Penney was looking to break into the catalog business, and after failing to reach an agreement with Aldens in October, looked to acquire General Merchandise, who at the time was the country's fifth-largest catalog merchant. A merger proposal was agreed upon in December 1961, with GMC’s acquisition approved in February 1962.[1]
The small chain, at this point only numbering five stores in Wisconsin, would announce plans in March 1967 to enter the Atlanta, Georgia market in its first expansion. Three stores in Forest Park, Doraville, and Marietta would open simultaneously on May 29, 1968, with a grand opening on July 31 coinciding with the completion of its grocery department.
The Treasure Island name was used into 1969, when it was announced in mid-May that the chain was to expand westward to Orange County, California. It was in July of the same year, however, while announcing an impending entry into the south Florida market that its new name, The Treasury, was divulged. This was, according to Jack F. Behrendt, then-vice president of the stores under J.C. Penney, to shift the chain's image and better express its personality. Stores in the Milwaukee and Atlanta, Georgia markets, in which the Treasure Island name was already well established, were not renamed.
Despite having been announced before the name change, the first locations to use the Treasury name opened in Torrance, Buena Park, and Orange, California on October 29, 1970. The two long-awaited south Florida stores opened in Hialeah and Hollywood on March 4, 1971, and three stores in the Memphis, Tennessee area that had been announced in September 1969 were opened on July 29, 1971.
Some stores also sold food and fuel, like the Wal-Mart Supercenters of today. But the recessions of the 1970s and early 1980s were too much to bear for J.C. Penney, and the discount division started losing money. The Treasury stores were eventually closed in 1981.[2] However, the mail order business, which was the main reason for J.C. Penney's acquisition of Treasure Island, remains a thriving, multibillion-dollar endeavor.
In 1979, The Home Depot chain subsequently launched its first four stores in these former Treasure Island storefronts (which it shared with Zayre) around the Atlanta area, as the home improvement chain was growing around the same time that many Treasure Island stores were already closing.[3]
Treasury Drug
The company branched out into drug stores, located in many Southern states, as Treasury Drug. Treasury Drug survived into the 1990s when J.C. Penney acquired Eckerd and converted remaining Treasury Drug locations into Eckerd stores. J.C. Penney sold the Eckerd chain to CVS and Jean Coutu Group of Canada in 2004. CVS got roughly 1,200 Eckerd stores in the Southern United States, while Jean Coutu Group got approximately 1,500 Eckerd stores in the Northeastern United States. In 2007, all the remaining Eckerd stores were sold to Rite Aid and rebranded.
References
- ^ Associated Press. "Penney to Acquire Discount Company", Appleton Post-Crescent, December 19, 1961, page B-12.
- ^ Koplien, Doug. "Treasure Island stores to be closed by May", Appleton Post-Crescent, February 17, 1981, front page.
- ^ "Home Depot Opens 4th Store in Forest Park", The Atlanta Constitution, February 28, 1980, page 10-A.
This page was last edited on 30 September 2023, at 07:51