Shopko - Fashion Company Profile
Shopko was James Ruben's Green Bay discount store chain - pharmacies and optical centers inside a discount store, 130-plus stores at its peak - which filed for bankruptcy in January 2019 and closed every store that June.
Company Snapshot
- Status
- Closed - Shopko filed Chapter 11 on January 16, 2019 and all store locations closed on June 23, 2019 (Shopko Optical continues separately)
- Type
- Was public, then private - New York Stock Exchange (SKO) 1991-2005; taken private by Sun Capital Partners in December 2005
- Headquarters
- Green Bay, Wisconsin, United States
- Founded
- April 5, 1962, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, by pharmacist James Ruben (organized in Chicago in 1961)
Company Profile
Shopko no longer operates, and there is no official store website to link: the chain's 2019 closure ended a 57-year run, leaving Shopko Optical as the surviving separate business. What this profile keeps, on the linked history page, is the company's own complete dated timeline - from the 1961 organization and 1971 SUPERVALU merger through the 1991 IPO, the Pamida acquisition and Hometown stores, to the final entry recording the June 23, 2019 closure - a year-by-year record of small-city American retail that exists nowhere else in this form.
The milestones trace a classic American retail arc. ShopKo Stores, Inc. was organized in Chicago in 1961 and merged with the Minneapolis grocery wholesaler SUPERVALU in 1971; sales passed $100 million in 1977 and $1 billion in 1988, the hundredth store opened in 1990, and in 1991 the company was spun off by SUPERVALU and taken public on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SKO. Sales exceeded $3.5 billion in 2001. In December 2005 an affiliate of Sun Capital Partners purchased the company and took it private, ending its fourteen years as a public corporation.
Shopko History
The earlier record for this company - its history, past brand line-ups, figures and photographs from the periods described - is kept on a separate page for historical reference.
Shopko History & Historical Profile →Common Questions
When did Shopko close?
Shopko filed for Chapter 11 on January 16, 2019, and all of its store locations closed on June 23, 2019. Shopko Optical locations continued as a separate business.
Who founded Shopko?
James Ruben, a pharmacist, who organized the company in Chicago in 1961 and opened the first store in Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1962 - one of the first discount stores to combine a pharmacy and optical center with general merchandise.
Was Shopko a public company?
Yes, for a time: spun off from SUPERVALU, it went public on the New York Stock Exchange as SKO in 1991, and was taken private in December 2005 when an affiliate of Sun Capital Partners bought it.
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