Rich's

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For the discount department store of New England see Rich's Department Stores.

Rich's
Type	Department store
Founded	1867
Headquarters	Atlanta, Georgia
Industry	Retail
Products	Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares.
Website	None

Rich's was a major department store retail chain, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, that operated in the southern U.S. from 1867 until March 6, 2005 when the nameplate was eliminated and replaced by Macy's. Macy's South, an Atlanta-based division of Federated Department Stores is the successor to Rich's.

[edit] History

[edit] Beginnings

It began in Atlanta as M. Rich Dry Goods general store in 1867. The store was at 36 Whitehall Street, and was run by Morris Rich. It was renamed M. Rich & Co. in 1871, when his brother Emanuel joined him; it was again renamed M. Rich & Bros. in 1876 when the third brother Daniel joined. In 1872 it moved across the street to the corner with Hunter Street (now MLK Street), and in 1881 to 54 and 56 Whitehall Street, later adding 52 in 1906. In 1901 it became a true department store by dividing merchandise into separated sections, and was incorporated as M. Rich & Bros. Co. It became simply Rich's in 1924. Two innovative ideas that Rich tried were the barter system and a credit system

Daniel's son Walter succeeded his uncle Morris as Rich's president from 1926 to 1947, and was succeeded by the grandson of Morris Rich Richard H. Rich. Under the leadership of Richard Rich, affectionately known as Dick Rich, Rich's began expansion in the 1950s opening its first suburban store at Lenox Square, Georgia's first shopping mall. The open-air mall shared space with the other major Atlanta department store, Davison's. Around that time, Rich's also opened a store at Belvedere Plaza Shopping Center, a large two-level strip mall near Decatur and a store in Knoxville, Tennessee that was later sold to Miller's.

[edit] Expansion

Rich's most aggressive expansion was during the 1960s and 1970s. Four more stores opened in the Atlanta area in the 1960s, two of those enormous three story full line stores. While this expansion resulted in continued success of the chain, it chipped away at the business of the downtown store. By this time, Rich's was the leading regional department store in the country, though it remained largely unknowned by the general public outside of Georgia. This would soon change, however.

Older 1960's South Dekalb Mall store with the original green store sign.

Throughout the 1970s, four more Rich's locations opened in Georgia including one in Augusta, the first in the state outside of Atlanta. Rich's also began an aggressive expansion with stores in Alabama and South Carolina. Also, there were plans much later in the early 1990s to expand Rich's into Charlotte, but these were scrapped. Of all the stores out of state, stores opened in Greenville, Columbia and Birmingham with two (adding a third in 1986) in Birmingham, creating stiffer competition in the city against regional chains Pizitz, Loveman's and Parisian. This expansion also strained the company financially, and the sudden death of Richard Rich in 1975 threw the company into turmoil. It was rumored that the surviving descendants were incapable of running the company, and the store was ultimately sold out to Federated Department Stores.

[edit] Federated

The sale to Federated ended over 100 years of ownership by the Rich family and also began the slow and steady decline in service and quality of Rich's from its peak in 1954. Aside from the Great Tree, most of the traditions of Rich's and the departments (including the bakery) were all stripped away by the early 1990s. Loyalty to the chain, however, remained very strong even after the downtown flagship store was closed and demolished in 1991. This began to diminish though as Atlanta grew in profile as a large Southern city, towards recognition as a major American city, bringing in people who neither knew nor grew up with Rich's.

In 1994, the parent company of Rich's bought out Macy's, which was historically Atlanta's rival chain under the Davison's banner. The following year, Rich's was merged with Lazarus in the midwest and Goldsmith's in Memphis. Through the merged division, the chain grew in a corporate sense as it was operated out of Atlanta, but the Lazarus and Goldsmith's stores continued to operate under their regional names. The merger with Goldsmith's occurred in 1988 and Lazarus in 1995. Lazarus was one of Federated's founding store chains.

Distinct store at North Point Mall, which opened in 1993 with an elaborate design in tribute to the lost flagship. As the first store built since the downtown store was closed, this was likely built this way to make up to the long-time customers angry over the closure. No Macy's was built at this mall.

[edit] Closures of Davison's/Macy's stores

When Rich's and Macy's both were owned by the same company, this resulted in the overlapping of the two chains all selling the same products. With department stores beginning to decline in the late 1990s and the two stores selling basically the same product, the decision was made less than ten years later in 2003 to close all of the former Davison's/Macy's stores in Atlanta (no new Macy's stores had been built in Atlanta since Town Center at Cobb in 1986) and co-brand Rich's as Rich's-Macy's. This change was intended to slowly phase out the chain instead of a sudden change so as to reduce the backlash over the elimination of an Atlanta institution that was one of the institutions that defined the city, similar to Marshall Field's in Chicago. Still, with longtime customers already fed up with the decline of the store over time and the long closed downtown flagship slowly being forgotten, the merger was effectively met with less reaction than would have occurred back when the downtown store was alive.

Rich's-Macy's logo, 2003-2005

The same year that Rich's and Macy's merged, the downtown Macy's (Davison's flagship store) was closed down. Also in the merger, the Lenox Square and Perimeter Mall Macy's (also former Davison's) became Bloomingdale's with the rest closed except for the Town Center Mall store, whose middle floor is now used as a Macy's Furniture store. The following year, when the Cobb Center store closed, the furniture clearance center was also relocated there.

[edit] Name Changes

After 138 years, Rich's (as Rich's-Macy's) disappeared on March 6, 2005 along with the other historical nameplates "Goldsmith-Macy's", and "Lazarus-Macy's" were eliminated, with the stores renamed as the Macy's Central division of Federated. Macy's South is the current division encompassing the former Rich's stores. A signature event of the store, Rich's Great Tree, continues as an annual Thanksgiving event in Atlanta, though the flagship downtown Atlanta building it earlier took place on was destroyed. The tradition ironically continues as simply the "Great Tree", ignoring the name of the store that made the tradition famous. All former Rich's today continue to operate under the Macy's banner. Its Richway discount store chain, founded in 1968, was sold in 1988 to what is now Target Stores.

Morris, Walter,Daniel and Dick Rich are all buried at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta.

[edit] Former Locations

[edit] Georgia

• Downtown Atlanta (1925, closed in 1991; 1951 additions later demolished)
• Lenox Square (flagship; now flagship store of Macy's South) (1959)
• Belvedere Plaza (1959, closed 1986 and later demolished)
• Cobb Center Mall/Cobb County Shopping Center (1963, closed early 2004)
• North Dekalb Mall (1965)
• Greenbriar Mall (1965)
• South Dekalb Mall (1968)
• Perimeter Mall (1971)
• Cumberland Mall (1973)
• Southlake Mall (1976)
• Augusta Mall - Augusta (1978)
• Shannon Mall (1980)
• Gwinnett Place Mall (1984)
• Town Center Mall (1986)
• Oglethorpe Mall - Savannah (1991, built anew near the former site of Maas Brothers)
• North Point Mall (1993, store was designed in tribute with distinct architectural elements)
• Georgia Square Mall - Athens (1998, in former Davison's/Macy's location)
• Macon Mall - Macon (1998, in former Davison's/Macy's location)
• Mall of Georgia (2000)
• Mall at Stonecrest (2001)
• Peachtree Mall - Columbus (2002, in former Montgomery Ward location)
• Northlake Mall (2003, in former Davison's/Macy's location, signed as Rich's-Macy's)
• Arbor Place Mall (2004, opened newly as Rich's-Macy's)

[edit] South Carolina

• Columbia Mall - Columbia (1977)
• Haywood Mall - Greenville (1980)

[edit] Alabama

• Century Plaza - Birmingham (1975, closed 2004)
• Colonial Brookwood Village/Brookwood Mall - Birmingham (1975)
• Riverchase Galleria - Birmingham (1986)

[edit] Tennessee

• Downtown Knoxville (1950's)

[edit] External links

• Extensive history at Atlanta city government
• WABE history
• UrbanPlanet
• Rich's Christmas postcard