Younkers

Company Profile

No Younkers store operates today. The chain's 49 remaining stores were caught in The Bon-Ton Stores' February 2018 bankruptcy, and the last 17 closed on August 29, 2018. The Younkers name, website and customer information were bought out of the bankruptcy by CSC Generation in September 2018 and relaunched online that month, then sold with the other Bon-Ton nameplates to BrandX.com in early 2021; BrandX announced a physical Younkers store in 2022, but none has opened, and younkers.com currently shows only a 'coming soon' notice. Because Younkers is a closed retailer, this page carries no marketplace shop box and no official-store button; the disclaimer below points to the brand site held by its successor owner. The company description this directory carried in its operating years is kept in the profile below as a past-tense record.

In its operating years Younkers described its offer plainly: it consistently offered a wide selection of unique and limited-distribution merchandise and competitively priced national and private brands, tailored to the lifestyle needs of its customers. It aimed to provide an innovative and convenient shopping environment, attended by friendly and knowledgeable associates, selling clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products and housewares, and its website reached out to customers well beyond the geographical boundaries of its stores - a promise every Midwestern department-store chain of its era was making as shopping moved online.

Younkers was an American department store chain founded as a family-run dry goods business in 1856 in Keokuk, Iowa. The retailer evolved over more than 150 years to include a presence in locations throughout Iowa and surrounding states in the Midwest region of the United States, and in its final ownership it operated as a subsidiary of The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc.

The parent group behind the chain in those final years was itself a large department-store operator: The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc., with corporate headquarters in York, Pennsylvania and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, operated 273 stores - including ten furniture galleries and four clearance centers - in 26 states in the Northeast, Midwest and upper Great Plains, under the Bon-Ton, Bergner's, Boston Store, Carson's, Elder-Beerman, Herberger's and Younkers nameplates. Those figures describe the group as this directory recorded it before the 2018 bankruptcy; none of those stores operates today.

From Dry Goods in Keokuk to Iowa's Department Store

Younkers was founded in Keokuk, Iowa in 1856 by three brothers - Marcus, Lipman and Samuel Younker - as Younker & Brothers, a family-run dry goods business. A Des Moines store followed in 1874, and Des Moines became the company's headquarters in 1879; from there the chain grew across Iowa by acquiring rival stores, becoming the state's largest department-store business. Two acquisitions took it well beyond Iowa: the 11 Nebraska stores of Brandeis in 1987, and 25 stores from Prange's in 1992, which carried the Younkers name into Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan. At its height the chain traded in seven Midwestern states, mostly in shopping malls, with more than fifty locations as recently as 2013 and 49 stores in 2018.

Ownership moved out of Iowa in the chain's last two decades. Younkers was acquired by Proffitt's, Inc. in 1996 and became part of Saks, Inc. when Proffitt's took that name in 1998; its Des Moines headquarters closed by 2003 in a corporate consolidation. In 2006 Saks sold its Northern Department Store Group, Younkers included, to The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc., and Younkers traded as one of Bon-Ton's seven department-store nameplates for its final twelve years.

Closure in 2018, and What Happened to the Name

The Bon-Ton Stores filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February 2018 and, unable to find a buyer willing to keep the business running, was placed into liquidation in April 2018. Going-out-of-business sales ran through the summer, and the last remaining Younkers stores - 17 of them by the end - all shut down on August 29, 2018, ending more than 160 years of trading under the Younkers name.

The name itself was sold rather than retired. In September 2018 CSC Generation, a Merrillville, Indiana online retail company, bought the Bon-Ton group's trademarks, websites and customer information - Younkers included - for $900,000, and relaunched Younkers as an online-only retailer on September 14, 2018. In early 2021 CSC Generation sold the Bon-Ton assets, Younkers among them, to BrandX.com, whose founder Deepak Ramani announced in 2022 that a physical Younkers store was planned after the group's Bon-Ton and Carson's revivals. No Younkers store opening has been verified since, and a live check of younkers.com for this update found only a 'coming soon' notice with an email sign-up - no shoppable store. The snapshot above therefore records the chain as closed, and this page carries no marketplace shop box, because a closed retailer has no current products of its own to shop for.