Builders Square was a big-box home improvement retailer headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. A subsidiary of Kmart, its format was quite similar to The Home Depot, Menards, and

Lowe's Lowe's Companies, Inc. (), often shortened to Lowe's, is an American retail company specializing in home improvement. Headquartered in Mooresville, North Carolina, the company operates a chain of retail stores in the United States and Canada. A ...

with floor space of about , and inventories in excess of 35,000 different items. In 1997, a Los Angeles leveraged buyout specialist acquired Builders Square and merged it with

Hechinger The Hechinger Company was an American chain of home-improvement centers headquartered in Landover, Maryland, on the immediate outskirts of Washington, D.C., from 1911 to 1999. It was also an online retailer owned by Home Decor Products from 2 ...

but the new combined company failed to thrive and all remaining stores ceased business operations by the end of 1999.

Home Decor Products A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or many humans, and sometimes various companion animals. It is a fully or semi sheltered space and can have both interior and exterior aspects to it. H ...

revived the Builders Square brand name in the mid-2000s as builderssquare.com, a comparison shopping website for home and garden products. It was headquartered in Edison, New Jersey. The website was abandoned in 2009.

History

Beginnings

The company was founded in February 1983 as Home Centers of America by Frank Denny, an executive who had recently been president of the home center subsidiary of W. R. Grace and Company. Somewhat unusually for the time, Home Centers of America was funded from the beginning as a public stock company. The company opened its first store in San Antonio soon after and eventually operated nine stores, all in Texas, and all operating as Home Pro Warehouse. Home Centers of America was sold to Kmart in July 1984 for $88.2 million ( USD). The company and all stores were renamed Builders Square after acquisition, with Denny continuing as Builders Square company president for several years and overseeing company expansion. During the 1980s, Builders Square was a player in the fast-growing do-it-yourself consumer market, which included competitors National Lumber, Home Depot, HomeClub, Builders Emporium, Ole's, Angels, and others. By 1997, the chain operated 162 stores in Alabama, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Puerto Rico. However, despite a $700 million investment by its parent company, high-profile sponsorships that included the Alamo Bowl, and celebrity spokespeople such as Al Michaels,

Darrell Waltrip Darrell Lee Waltrip (born February 5, 1947) is an American motorsports analyst, author, former national television broadcaster, and stock car driver. He raced from 1972 to 2000 in the NASCAR Cup Series (known as the NASCAR Winston Cup Series dur ...

and Tim Allen, the chain was not able to maintain profitability.

Hechinger and bankruptcy

In 1997, Kmart and Leonard Green & Partners agreed to merge

and Builders Square as the third-largest home improvement retail chain in the United States. Store closures were underway in early 1999; for example, in February the company announced the closure of 16 stores in the Chicago area. Hechinger filed for Chapter 11

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...

reorganization in June 1999. The reorganization effort resulted in closure of a large number of stores and the sale of others to The Home Depot. All remaining Builders Square stores were converted to the

Home Quarters Home Quarters Warehouse (HQ) was an American chain of " big-box" home improvement stores, originally based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. In 1984, the chemical manufacturing company W.R. Grace & Co. announced its intentions to enter the home improv ...

brand. However, the reorganization plan was not successful and Hechinger filed for

Chapter 7 Chapter 7 may refer to: Albums * ''Chapter Seven'' (album), a 2013 album by Damien Leith. *''Chapter VII'', a 1973 album by drummer Buddy Miles George Allen "Buddy" Miles Jr. (September 5, 1947February 26, 2008) was an American composer, drum ...

liquidation in September 1999. The six locations in Puerto Rico were bought out by Empresas Masso (Masso Enterprises), a local chain of home improvement stores, which in turn sold the stores to The Home Depot in 2000.

Return

Builders Square re-emerged in 2006 as an online shopping comparison site focused exclusively on the home and garden market after the parent company,

, purchased rights to the Builders Square name. Home Decor Products filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy in April 2009 and ceased operations, but former executives purchased all assets as a new virtual company, HomeClick LLC. They dropped the Builders Square brand and the now-dead builderssquare.com website.

References

{{Sears Holdings Online retailers of the United States Retail companies established in 1983 Retail companies disestablished in 1999 Retail companies established in 2006 Internet properties established in 2006 Retail companies disestablished in 2009 Defunct retail companies of the United States Re-established companies Companies based in San Antonio Companies based in Middlesex County, New Jersey Edison, New Jersey 1983 establishments in Texas 2006 disestablishments in Texas Home improvement retailers of the United States Kmart