Crown Books was a
bookseller headquartered in
Prince George's County, Maryland
)
, demonym = Prince Georgian
, ZIP codes = 20607–20774
, area codes = 240, 301
, founded date = April 23
, founded year = 1696
, named for = Prince George of Denmark
, leader_title = Executive
, leader_name = Angela D. Alsobrooks ( ...
, with a
Largo post office address. It was founded in the
Washington, D.C., metro area by
Robert Haft in 1977. Crown Books (retail) is of no relation to
Crown Books (publisher), although the former carried inventory from the latter.
Founding and growth
Crown Books was founded in the Washington, D.C., metro area in 1977 by
Robert Haft with money borrowed from his father, D.C. businessman
Herbert Haft. The chain was organized under the umbrella of the Dart Group (not related to the current UK-based
Dart Group), which also included
Trak Auto,
Shoppers Food Warehouse,
Total Beverage,
Dart Drug, and
Combined Properties. Known for low prices, the chain gained fame in the 1980s and early 1990s for its clever advertising campaigns (such as Robert Haft sitting on large stacks of books with the caption "Books Cost Too Much, That's Why I Opened Crown Books. Now You'll Never Pay Full Price Again!") At the beginning, Crown Books day-to-day operations were managed by Jose Gonzales (Vice President of Operations) and Jeanne Herrick (Vice President of Merchandising). Once the decision was made to expand into other areas the dynamic of Mr. Gonzales & Ms. Herrick was replicated into the California Market with the addition of Steve Young & Miriam Bass. Later Crown made the decision to enter the Chicago Market and that entry was managed by Richard Lowe & Rhonda Branch.
Crown Books grew rapidly, from its single store in 1977 to a regional chain of 196 stores at its height in 1993, close on the heels of
Borders and poised to become the nation's second-largest book chain. While Classic Crown Books stores, which afforded customers between 2,000 and of book selection, had been the backbone of the company since its founding in 1977, they were gradually phased out in favor of the larger, more competitive, superstore format adopted by the company in 1990. Stocking up to 80,000 titles—10 times the number carried in Classic Crown stores—Super Crown Books locations supplemented the Classic Crown holdings with a large line of greeting cards, games, computer software, and an assortment of gift items. Each superstore provided between 12,000 and of retail space.
Robert Haft showed great foresight in planning
Crown Software in 1986, but his side projects made him late to the
superstore scene which competitors Barnes & Noble and Borders had begun.
In 1993, the company was the third largest book chain in the United States, after Barnes & Noble and Borders, and had stores in
Washington, D.C.,
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
,
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
,
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
,
Houston
Houston (; ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas, the Southern United States#Major cities, most populous city in the Southern United States, the List of United States cities by population, fourth-most pop ...
,
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...
,
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
,
Sacramento
)
, image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg
, mapsize = 250x200px
, map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...
,
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...
and
Portland
Portland most commonly refers to:
* Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States
* Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...
. With the advent of its Super Crown Books locations, as well as the boom in sales volume of competitors like Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Books-a-Million, the company reevaluated its Classic Crown locations and determined that several of the smaller stores would become increasingly unprofitable as the trend toward larger bookstores continued. In 1993, under the guidance of Glenn E. Hemmerle, president and CEO of the company from October 1992 through June 1994, Crown prepared the financial groundwork for closing several of its smaller stores.
Haft family feud
A bitter divorce between Herbert Haft and his wife tore the family apart, and pitted Crown Books founder Robert Haft against his father. When Herbert tried to replace Robert as the head of Crown Books, the situation exploded and their back-and-forth exploits regularly made the front page of ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'' over the months between the fall of 1993 and the summer of 1994, becoming a regional media sensation. After Robert's firing, upper management positions were abandoned and refilled with some regularity, draining the company of both management skills and cash.
The family feud playing out among Haft family members appeared close to resolution by May 1994. However, four months later a jury awarded Robert M. Haft $34.1 million in compensation for a breach of contract by Dart Group and Crown Books. Several lawsuits and countersuits were filed by other members of the Haft family as each jockeyed for a controlling interest in family-controlled companies. By 1996 Crown found itself listed as co-plaintiff in a lawsuit brought against Herbert H. Haft by the Dart Group charging fraud and breach of fiduciary duty with regard to business transactions made during the course of Haft's divorce and resulting power struggle. Crown had been named as a co-defendant in similar lawsuits filed by shareholder groups as early as 1993.
A standstill rider was entered in Delaware court in 1995, restricting certain relevant actions of the Dart Corporation until such time as all legal matters were resolved; by mid-1997 a conditional settlement had been reached with Herbert H. Haft whereby Haft would relinquish his position and voting rights in the Dart Group in exchange for approximately $41 million.
Bankruptcy
With the dissolution of the Dart Group, Crown was unable to find a buyer and was forced into bankruptcy. After being hired to replace Jeanne Herrick as Vice President of Merchandising, Steve Stevens (Circuit City) replaced Glenn E. Hemmerle in the CEO seat. Over the next few years, the chain began to close over half of its 196 stores and pulled out of Houston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Portland, and Sacramento markets. The chain reorganized with help from
Ingram Content Group, which provided
jobbing services to the crippled giant.
Crown emerged briefly from bankruptcy in 1997 only to fall back into it in 1998 under leadership of CEO
Anna Currence
Anna Currence was CEO of Kitchen Bazaar from 1993 to 1995,
June 1, 1998. SEC record 5-35814, Accession 950133-98-2177. before sh ...
, strangled by lack of financing and stores too small to compete with the superstores of the competition (of the 56 remaining Crown Books stores after the first bankruptcy, only one had a drink bar, an ominous sign of Crown's out-of-touch management in the retail book marketplace). Crown emerged briefly from their second bankruptcy in the spring of 2000 with former
Waldenbooks
Waldenbooks, operated by the Walden Book Company, Inc., was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain, from 1995 as a subsidiary of Borders Group. The chain also ran a video game and software chain under the name Waldensoftware, as well as ...
CEO
Charlie Cumello
Charlie may refer to:
Characters
* "Charlie," the head of the Townsend Agency', from the ''Charlie's Angels'' franchise
* Charlie, a character on signs for the CharlieCard, a smart card issued by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
* ...
in the CEO seat, financed by private funding. In the fall of 2000, the company's debt was purchased by
Wells Fargo, which hounded the reemerging brand with collection fees until it eventually broke. In February 2001, Crown Books filed for liquidation,
and in April 2001, ten of the D.C.-area stores and eight Chicago stores were purchased by
Books-A-Million for pennies on the dollar. The liquidation of the remaining Crown Books stores was completed by July 2001, when a former
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was ...
, flagship store was shuttered.
The aftermath
After Crown Books' bankruptcy in 2001, Andy Weiss, owner of a private bookseller called A&S Booksellers, bought the Crown Books name and trademark and applied the name to most of his stores.
In 2007, Ward Albright purchased the right to share the name with Weiss and opened more bookstores under the Crown Books name. The present Crown Books chain buys
remaindered books and overstock in bulk from
publishers at large discounts and passes the discounts to customers.
Books-A-Million closed one of the DC-area former Crown stores shortly after purchase, but remodeled the remaining 17 stores in 2001 and 2002, and hired on many of the former Crown Books staff. After Crown Books,
Anna Currence
Anna Currence was CEO of Kitchen Bazaar from 1993 to 1995,
June 1, 1998. SEC record 5-35814, Accession 950133-98-2177. before sh ...
became an executive recruiter with
Sarasota, Florida-based Brooke Chase Associates Inc. Crown
CIO
CIO may refer to:
Organizations
* Central Imagery Office, a predecessor of the American National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
* Central Intelligence Office, the national intelligence agency of the former Republic of Vietnam
* Central Intellige ...
Susan Harwood stayed with Books-A-Million until 2007, when she joined
Borders Books and Music as CIO. Crown Books area manager Rich Ball briefly assisted the Books-A-Million changeover, then founded book
wholesaler The Page's Edge in
Springfield, Virginia
Springfield is a census-designated place (CDP) in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. The Springfield CDP is recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau with a population of 30,484 as of the 2010 census. Homes and businesses in bordering CDPs incl ...
.
Corporate affairs
The headquarters had a
Largo, Maryland post office address. Its area was physically defined as being in the
Mitchellville, Maryland census-designated place
A census-designated place (CDP) is a concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only.
CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counterparts of incorporated places, su ...
by the
U.S. Census Bureau in the
1990 U.S. Census. As of the
2000 U.S. Census, the Census Bureau redefined the area as being in the
Lake Arbor census-designated place.
[2010 CENSUS - CENSUS BLOCK MAP (INDEX): Lake Arbor CDP, MD]
" U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved on September 1, 2018. Pages
1
an
2
Sources
''The New York Times'', June 25, 1990
October 14, 1994
Funding Universe. Accessed November 7, 2007
Washington Business Journal, December 17, 1996
''The Washington Post'', April 28, 1997
* "Crown Books in deep trouble; stock dives 39%", ''Washington Times'', May 6, 1998
''The Motley Fool'', December 8, 1997
* "Crown Says Bankruptcy Is Possible; Book Chain Comments After Nasdaq Stops Trading in Stock", ''Washington Times'', July 9, 1998
''International Directory of Company Histories Volume 21'', St. James Press, 1998
"Crown Books may face uncertain future" ''Discount Store News'', July 27, 1998
''The New York Times'', August 4, 1998
* "14 Crown Bookstores Shut Doors; Bankruptcy Court Approves Plan", ''The Washington Post'', August 21, 1998
Crown Books - Employment Agreement Re: Anna L. Currence January 12, 1998
"Crown Books Files Consensual Plan of Reorganization" ''Crown Books Press Release'', July 1, 1999
Crown Books Plan of Reorganization is Confirmed ''Crown Books Press Release'', October 7, 1999
Crown Books Hires Charlie Cumelo as President and CEO" ''PRNewswire'', November 19, 1999
* "Crown recruits ex-CEO of rival", ''The Washington Post'', November 30, 1999
''Publishers Weekly'', February 19, 2001
"Borders Group Appoints Susan Harwood Chief Information Officer" Borders Press Release, August 20, 2001
Letter to holders of Crown Books gift certificates A&S Booksellers. Accessed November 7, 2007.
"Discount bookseller takes on Crown name" ''North (San Diego) County Times'', June 9, 2005
"A bookstore does grow in Cupertino" ''Cupertino Courier'', November 7, 2007
References
Notes
External links
*
Crown Books{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071121234648/http://www.crown-books.com/ , date=2007-11-21 (current unrelated California company)
Bookstores in Maryland
Retail companies established in 1977
Retail companies disestablished in 2001
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1997
Defunct retail companies of the United States
Companies based in Prince George's County, Maryland
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001
1977 establishments in Maryland
2001 disestablishments in Maryland