Turn Style

Turn Style Department Stores Inc.

Company type	Department store
Industry	Retail
Founded	1962
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois
Products	Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics and housewares.
Website	None

Turn Style was a chain of discount department stores and was a division of Chicago-based Jewel, the parent company of the Jewel Food Stores supermarket chain. Jewel acquired the Turn Style brand in 1962 and began rapidly expanding the chain. At its peak, the chain comprised twenty-two stores, twelve of which were located in the Chicago area, four in the Boston area, three in Indianapolis, two in Omaha and the remaining store was in Decatur, IL. Within three years of opening the first Chicagoland store in Racine, Wis. profits as measured on a ROI basis were the highest within Jewel Companies. Rapid expansion, the unfortunate corporate decision to incorporate a catalog type store within it's four walls, and an unrealistic divisive venture into the "Hypermarket" business all caused profits to suffer. The economy also caused Jewel to rethink it's growth strategy and the decision was made to sell Turn Style in order to concentrate it's growth within it's core businesses which were Food Stores and Drug Stores. During the mid 70's most of the stores were sold to May Department Store(Venture). Other stores were converted to large Osco Drug Stores. Turn Styl was considered a "cut above" mass merchant and it's reputation in the marketplace was comparable to that of Target. Most of the top executives left Jewel Companies and have held key positions within many of the major general merchandise stores throughout the United States. Turn Style dominated the markets in which they served and became a casualty of it's own success.