Cost Plus World Market, Kennesaw, GA May 2019

World Market, formerly Cost Plus World Market until 2021, is an American chain of specialty/import

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and ...

stores, selling home furniture, decor, curtains, rugs, gifts, apparel, coffee, wine, craft beer, and international food products. The brand's name originated from the initial concept, since abandoned, of selling items for "cost plus 10%". Its current headquarters are located in Alameda, California. The company was previously a subsidiary of

Bed Bath & Beyond Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. is an American chain of domestic merchandise retail stores. The chain operates many stores in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Bed Bath & Beyond was founded in 1971. It is counted among the Fortune 5 ...

since being acquired in 2012. It was sold in 2021.

History

On 23 October 1958, William Amthor and Lincoln Bartlett opened the first Cost Plus store at 2552 Taylor Street on Fisherman's Wharf in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " 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 fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. This location permanently closed in 2020. Founder William Amthor had been operating a small family-owned furniture store in San Francisco, when he imported a surplus of wicker furniture. Rather than display the wicker pieces in his store, he rented of warehouse space in the Fisherman's Wharf area of San Francisco. The imported furniture sold quickly, and Amthor began a new business as an importer. When he opened his first store in 1958, it was devoted exclusively to wicker and rattan that he had imported himself. The store was named Cost Plus after Amthor's strategy of pricing the imported goods at cost, plus ten percent. The stores featured an eclectic mix of imported furniture and home furnishings, displayed in the style of a bazaar. In 1962, with the help of

Tandy Corporation Tandy Corporation was an American family-owned leather goods company based in Fort Worth, Texas, United States. Tandy Leather was founded in 1919 as a leather supply store. By the end of the 1950s, under the tutelage of then-CEO Charles Tandy, ...

, another Cost Plus-named import chain was founded in Texas, named Cost Plus Imports. These stores would, in 1965, be renamed

Pier 1 Imports Pier 1 Imports, Inc. is an online retailer and former Fort Worth, Texas-based retail chain specializing in imported home furnishings and decor, particularly furniture, table-top items, decorative accessories, and seasonal decor. It was publicl ...

, and would be sold in 1966. The success in San Francisco led Amthor to quickly open other stores across the Bay Area and later in other states. There are 258 stores spread across 39 states and Washington, D. C. In 1987, Bechtel Investments (Fremont Group) completed a

leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money ( leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loa ...

. In the 1990s, "Cost Plus" shifted the branding of its stores to either Cost Plus World Market or simply World Market in markets new to the brand (generally in the Eastern or Southern regions of the United States). In 1996, Cost Plus World Market went

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichk ...

and began trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange. In February 2006, Cost Plus reported quarterly earnings of $125 million, with $367 million in revenue for the fourth

fiscal quarter A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. Laws in many ju ...

of 2006. Annual earnings were $280 million with over $800 million in revenue. Cost Plus was acquired by

in 2012. In 2014, Cost Plus World Market launched an online crowdsourcing-model marketplace called Craft by World Market. The website posts items for one month at a time, and sells only products that have a certain number of pre-orders to ensure that enough customers will buy them. In October 2019, Bed Bath and Beyond announced pending closure of 60 stores; 40 of the shuttered stores will be Bed Bath and Beyond locations, while 20 will be World Market or other subsidiaries. This was later followed with the company's decision to sell Cost Plus World Market to Kingswood Capital Management by February 2021, in 2020.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Home decor retailers Furniture retailers of the United States Retail companies based in California Companies based in Oakland, California American companies established in 1958 Retail companies established in 1958 1958 establishments in California 2012 mergers and acquisitions 2021 mergers and acquisitions