The story
Brothers Paul, Victor, and Charles Baddour opened a dry-goods store named Good Luck in Coldwater, Mississippi, in 1947. Paul later incorporated the company as Baddour, Inc. As the chain expanded throughout the Southeast, he began naming the stores Fred's Dollar Stores after his older brother, Fred. In 1953, Fred's moved its corporate headquarters to Memphis, Tennessee.
Fred's primarily competed against national, deep-discount chains Dollar General, Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree, and against independently owned stores. Most locations were in towns with populations of 15,000 or less.
The company has had two distribution centers: one in Memphis, another in Dublin, Georgia.
Fred's Inc. had owned and operated two smaller additional chains, Getwell Drug & Dollar and Yazoo Trading Company.
Getwell Drug & Dollar was a pharmacy that also offers over-the-counter medication and individualized patient care, the name being a play on the location of the Fred's, Inc. home office on Getwell Road in Memphis. Locations were across Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi also featured more than 1,700 one-dollar items.
Yazoo Trading Company offered hardware, auto, and pet and animal supplies. Five locations were across Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia and also provided basic home project needs.
In 2008, Fred's decided to close over 50 under-performing stores due to rising fuel costs and other economic issues. For example, several North Carolina locations were closed, leaving over a dozen stores in that state.
On December 21, 2016, it was announced that Fred's would acquire 865 stores as a result of the Walgreens Boots Alliance/Rite Aid merger expected to close in 2017 for the price of US$950 Million. The acquisition would have more than doubled the number of stores Fred's operated. However, on June 29, 2017, WBA withdrew plans to acquire Rite Aid and instead opted to buy about half of their stores, a move which nullified Fred's planned acquisition of the Rite Aid stores. Fred's received $25 million as compensation for expenses of the now-terminated merger deal.
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In February 2017 Chief Executive Officer Jerry A. Shore retired and was replaced by Michael Bloom, former CEO of Family Dollar, where he resigned after the company was unhappy with financial results.
Decline
During early 2019, deteriorating performance prompted Fred's to plan to close the vast majority of the stores, shrinking their number from 568 (as of February 2) to just 80 – an over 85% decline – in four waves:
April 11, 159 stores were slated to be liquidated and closed by the end of May due to declining sales and timing of lease expirations at the affected locations;
May 16, 104 stores by the end of June;
June 21, 49 stores by the end of the summer;
July 12, 129 stores
However, rather than continuing efforts to remain in business on a greatly reduced scale, the company announced on September 9, 2019 that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and ending operations. It was delisted from NASDAQ on September 18, 2019, and became listed on the OTC Markets Group. According to the terms of the bankruptcy filing, all stores were required to cease operations by October 30, 2019.
From Wikipedia’s article on Fred's, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7