Kohl’s

Kohl's Corporation (NYSE: KSS) is an American department store chain headquartered in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. The company currently operates 1,022 stores in 49 states. Kohl's mission, as stated in store and online, is to be the leading value-oriented, family-focused, specialty department store. Based on 2008 revenue, Kohl's was the 24th-largest retailer in the United States.

Max Kohl, who had previously operated traditional grocery stores, built his first Kohl's supermarket in 1946, the first in what would become a southeastern Wisconsin chain known as Kohl's Food Stores. In 1962, he started his first department store, Kohl's Department Store, in Brookfield, Wisconsin. He positioned Kohl's between the higher-end department stores and the discounters, selling everything from candy to engine oil to sporting equipment.

In 1972 the British-American Tobacco Company's (parent of U.S. subsidiary Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co.) U.S. retail division, BATUS Inc., bought a controlling interest in Kohl's Corp., which at the time operated 50 grocery stores, six department stores, three drug stores and three liquor stores. The Kohl family, led by Allen and Herb Kohl, continued to manage the company. The family left the management in 1979, and Herb Kohl became a United States Senator and owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. The firm then expanded Kohl's presence from 10 to 39 stores in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. The grocery stores were sold to A&P in 1983, operating under the name Kohl's II, but the last of them were closed in 2003.