Nostalgic Retail Series #58: BEN FRANKLIN
Every small town had one. Wood floors that creaked in the same spot every time, a candy counter by the register, a wall of thread and buttons, and a toy aisle that was the whole reason you came along.
Butler Brothers started in Boston in 1877 as a mail-order wholesaler. In 1927 they launched Ben Franklin, one of the earliest franchise systems in American retail. The franchisee got the name, the store plan, and an obligation to buy his merchandise from Butler Brothers. That last part was the business. The parent lived on wholesale margin. It did not own the stores and it did not own the dirt.
Timeline:
- 1936: 2,600 stores. By 1961, about 2,400.
- Sept 1945: A 27-year-old Sam Walton opens a Ben Franklin in Newport, Arkansas. Sales go from $80,000 to $225,000 in three years.
- 1950: His lease has no renewal option. The landlord takes the store back for his own family. Walton moves to Bentonville.
- Early 1960s: Walton runs 16 Ben Franklin stores, the largest independently owned variety chain in the country. He asks Ben Franklin to halve its wholesale margin so he can discount. They decline.
- July 2, 1962: Walton opens the first Walmart in Rogers, Arkansas.
- 1986: FoxMeyer buys the chain, then about 1,300 stores, and pushes into crafts to dodge Walmart.
- 1996: Chapter 11. 1997: Chapter 7.
Ben Franklin had the best corner in thousands of towns. Walton put his first Walmart on cheap ground at the edge of Rogers and won anyway. Location did not lose here. The definition moved. In 1927 the best site was the intersection people already walked through, because they walked. By 1962 the car had pushed the trade area outward and the best site was the highway parcel with room for a bigger box and parking in front. Ben Franklin never re-ran the analysis. It held 2,400 correct answers to a 1927 question and no way to update one, because every store was a separate owner on his own lease and the parent collected margin, not rent.
The dirt was never the asset. The movement pattern around it was. The stores still open are the ones whose owners re-ran that themselves. Phil and Lori Warnke have run the Ben Franklin in Sheldon, Iowa since 1991 and it is the last one in the state. Two more operate in Washington, in Bonney Lake and Monroe. Hawaii has them on three islands. The corporate parent is thirty years gone and those signs are still lit, held up by operators who read their own town instead of inheriting an answer.
Do you remember your town's Ben Franklin, and do you know what is in that building now?
