Turn Style

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Turn Style Department Stores Inc.
Type of Company	Department store
Founded	1962
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois
Industry	Retail
Products	Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics and housewares.
Website	None

Turn Style was a chain of discount department stores and was a division of Chicago-based Jewel, the parent company of the Jewel Food Stores supermarket chain. Jewel acquired the Turn Style brand in 1962 and began rapidly expanding the chain. At its peak, the chain comprised twelve Chicago area stores, one in Decatur, Illinois, four in the Boston area, three in Indianapolis, two in Omaha, and several in southwest Michigan. Within three years of opening the first Chicagoland store in Racine, Wisconsin, profits as measured on a ROI basis were the highest within Jewel Companies. Rapid expansion, the unfortunate corporate decision to incorporate a catalog type store within its four walls, and an unrealistic divisive venture into the "Hypermarket" business, all caused profits to suffer. The economy also caused Jewel to rethink its growth strategy and the decision was made to sell Turn Style in order to concentrate its growth within its core businesses, which were food stores and drugstores. During the mid 1970s, most of the stores were sold to May Department Stores and converted to the Venture format. Other stores were converted to large Osco Drug Stores. Turn Style was considered a "cut above" mass merchant and its reputation in the marketplace was comparable to that of Target. Most of the top executives left Jewel Companies and have held key positions within many of the major general merchandise stores throughout the United States.^{[citation needed]}