Builders Square

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Builders Square
Type Originally, home improvement retailer
Currently, online retailer
Founded 1984 (as retail store)
2006 (as online retailer)
Headquarters Original company in San Antonio, Texas
Current company in Edison, New Jersey
Industry Retail
Products Home improvement, Home and Garden
Website http://www.builderssquare.com

Builders Square was founded as a big-box home improvement retailer headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. A subsidiary of Kmart, its format was quite similar to Home Depot and Lowe's with floor space of about 100,000 square feet.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Beginnings

The company opened its first store in 1984. In the 1990s, with Tim Allen as a spokesman, they had stores in Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Puerto Rico. However even with a $700 million (USD) investment by its parent company, and promoting itself with high-profile sponsorships that included the Alamo Bowl and NASCAR driver Darrell Waltrip, as well as having Tim Allen as their spokesperson, it was not able to compete.

[edit] Hechinger and Bankruptcy

In 1997, Kmart sold all 162 Builders Square stores to Leonard Green & Partners (Hechinger) for only $10 million. The parent company filed for bankruptcy in 1999, followed by the closure of stores and the sale of several stores to Home Depot, and the remaining ones were converted to the Home Quarters format. The locations rebranded to Home Quarters have also closed as part of Hechinger. The six locations in Puerto Rico were bought out by Empresas Masso (Masso Enterprises), a local chain of Hardware & Home Improvement stores.

[edit] Return

Builders Square re-emerged in 2006 as an online shopping comparison site focused exclusively on the Home and Garden market, by parent company Home Decor Products. The company is headquartered in New York, New York, and manages a product catalog of over 5 million items. Builders Square also owns and operates two blogs — The Square Deal and Builders Share.

[edit] External links