Turn Style
 | |
| discount department store | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Fate | stores sold individually to other chains |
| Founded | 1961[1] |
| Defunct | 1978 |
| Headquarters | Brighton, Massachusetts, United States |
Area served | Boston and US Midwest |
| Products | Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics and housewares. |
| Parent | Jewel (supermarket) |
| 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. Some mid-western Turn Styles had an Osco Pharmacy, at the time very uncommon for a discount store in the 1960s and 1970s.[2] At its peak, the chain comprised more than fifty stores throughout Chicago, as well as in Boston, Massachusetts, downstate Illinois, Moline, Illinois, Davenport Iowa, Indiana and Michigan.
History
Jewel acquired the Turn Style brand in 1961 and began rapidly expanding the chain. Sales for the 1961 year were listed as $14 million U.S. dollars with four stores, with headquarters in Brighton, Massachusetts.[3] At its peak, the chain operated throughout the Midwest, as well as in the Boston, Massachusetts area. Within three years of opening a store in Racine, Wisconsin, profits as measured on a ROI basis were the highest within Jewel Companies. Rapid expansion, the 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. In 1978 the stores were sold to May Department Stores and converted to the Venture format. Other stores were converted to large Osco Drug Stores, and some were closed entirely.