20 Facts About Mervyn's

Mervyn's was an American middle-scale department store chain based in Hayward, California, and founded by Mervin G Morris.

One year later, Mervyn's had reduced its store count to 177 stores in seven states.

Mervyn's was located in the midst of San Lorenzo Village, a planned residential community between the cities of Hayward and San Leandro, composed of two- and three-bedroom tract homes built between 1944 and the 1950s.

Mervyn's carved a niche for itself by having a relatively no-frills shopping environment that reduced overhead, enabling the store to price merchandise lower than competing department stores.

Mervyn's offered significantly-discounted factory seconds of basics such as jeans, T-shirts, underwear and similar garments, as well as household linens, with flaws minor and undetectable by most.

Related searches

Second Mervyn's store opened about 15 miles south as an anchor tenant of the Fremont Hub Shopping Center, one of two regional malls in Fremont, California, in 1962.

In mid-1975, Mervyn's operated stores in major cities and towns throughout California.

Mervyn's kept its separate identity as a Dayton Hudson subsidiary.

Mervyn's had not previously had a retail presence in the southern US, taking over a handful of Jordan Marsh sites in 1992.

In July 2004, Target Corporation announced that Mervyn's had been sold to a group of investors that included private investment firm and turnaround specialist Sun Capital Partners, Cerberus Capital Management, and real estate investment company Lubert-Adler Management Inc Rick Leto was named the new president and chief merchandising officer in January 2005.

Mervyn's had an enviable real estate portfolio, and it was believed they could further invest in those properties, and make themselves more competitive.

Signs of financial distress and possible bankruptcy surfaced on July 21,2008, when the Associated Press reported that Mervyn's had stopped updating its financial status and that the department store's vendors ceased shipping some products, hurting the store's back-to-school season sales efforts.

Company made no official comments at the time, but on July 29,2008, Mervyn's announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California.

Mervyn's hired an outside company to assist in the liquidation of assets from the stores affected.

In September 2008, Mervyn's sued the private equity firms involved in the leveraged buyout of the chain, alleging that the deal had stripped the retailer of its real estate assets, forcing it into bankruptcy.

Mervyn's said in the suit that Cerberus Capital Management and its partners had used the increased rent to finance the buyout.

The original negotiations failed, and Mervyn's liquidated all 149 stores under the bankruptcy action.

In 2009, the Mervyn's website was replaced with a single-page site allowing visitors to sign-up for a mailing list to receive updates about the future of Mervyn's.

Street named Mervyn's Drive still exists in Fullerton, California, as a Mervyn's location was there prior to 2008.

Mervyn's is the preferred clothing outlet of Charles Boyle and his family in the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine.