Builders Square was a big-box

home improvement The concept of home improvement, home renovation, or remodeling is the process of renovating or making additions to one's home. Home improvement can consist of projects that upgrade an existing home interior (such as electrical and plumbing), ...

retailer Retail is the sale of goods and Service (economics), services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturing, manufacturers, dire ...

headquartered in

San Antonio, Texas ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , subdivision_t ...

. A subsidiary of

Kmart Kmart Corporation ( , doing business as Kmart and stylized as kmart) is an American retail company that owns a chain of big box department stores. The company is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. The company was inc ...

, its format was quite similar to

The Home Depot The Home Depot, Inc., is an American multinational home improvement retail corporation that sells tools, construction products, appliances, and services, including fuel and transportation rentals. Home Depot is the largest home improvement re ...

Menards Menards is an American home improvement retail company headquartered in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Menards is owned by founder John Menard Jr. through his privately held company, Menard, Inc. It has 335 stores in 15 states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, ...

, and Lowe's with floor space of about , and inventories in excess of 35,000 different items. In 1997, a

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

leveraged buyout specialist acquired Builders Square and merged it with Hechinger 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 pet, companion animals. It is a fully or semi sheltered space and can have both interior and exterior aspects to ...

revived the Builders Square brand name in the mid-2000s as builderssquare.com, a

comparison shopping website A comparison shopping website, sometimes called a price comparison website, price analysis tool, comparison shopping agent, shopbot, aggregator or comparison shopping engine, is a vertical search engine that shoppers use to filter and compare pro ...

for home and garden products. It was headquartered in

Edison, New Jersey Edison is a township located in Middlesex County,in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Situated in Central New Jersey within the core of the state's Raritan Valley region, Edison is a commercial hub, home to Menlo Park Mall and Little India. It ...

. 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 W. R. Grace and Co. is an American chemical business based in Columbia, Maryland. It produces specialty chemicals and specialty materials in two divisions: Grace Catalysts Technologies, which makes catalysts and related products and technologies ...

. 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

in July 1984 for $88.2 million (

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

). 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 The Alamo Bowl is an NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision college football bowl game played annually since 1993 in the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. Since 2010 it matches the second choice team from the Pac-12 Conference and the secon ...

, and celebrity spokespeople such as

Al Michaels Alan Richard Michaels (born November 12, 1944) is an American television sportscaster currently working as the play-by-play announcer for '' Thursday Night Football'' on Prime Video and in an emeritus role for NBC Sports. He has worked on n ...

, Darrell Waltrip and

Tim Allen Timothy Alan Dick (born June 13, 1953), known professionally as Tim Allen, is an American actor and comedian. He is known for playing Tim "The Toolman" Taylor on the ABC sitcom ''Home Improvement'' (1991–1999) and Mike Baxter on the ABC/ ...

, the chain was not able to maintain profitability.

Hechinger and bankruptcy

In 1997, Kmart and

Leonard Green & Partners Leonard Green & Partners ("LGP") is an American private equity investment firm founded in 1989 and based in Los Angeles. The firm specializes in private equity investments. LGP has invested in over 95 companies since its inception, including Petc ...

agreed to merge Hechinger 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 The Chicago metropolitan area, also colloquially referred to as Chicagoland, is a metropolitan area in the Midwestern United States. Encompassing 10,286 sq mi (28,120 km2), the metropolitan area includes the city of Chicago, its suburbs and hi ...

. Hechinger filed for

Chapter 11 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wheth ...

bankruptcy reorganization in June 1999. The reorganization effort resulted in closure of a large number of stores and the sale of others to

. All remaining Builders Square stores were converted to the Home Quarters brand. However, the reorganization plan was not successful and Hechinger filed for Chapter 7 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