Younkers is a department store chain in the Midwestern United States. The chain concentrates on the middle- and upper-class segments of the market.
The company was founded by Polish immigrant brothers Lipman, Samuel, and Marcus Younker, who opened a general store in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1856. Herman Younker, the youngest of the brothers, opened a dry goods store in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1874. Following Samuel's death in 1879, the Keokuk store was closed and the Des Moines location became the main store. In 1899 the Younker brothers' main store in downtown Des Moines was moved to 7th and Walnut Streets, and it operated at the same location for 106 years before closing on August 12, 2005. A series of additions, enlargements, and mergers resulted in the company changing its name to Younkers Incorporated. The Grand Department Store in downtown Des Moines was purchased in 1912 and the opening of the Tea Room restaurant followed in 1913. The company started growing in the 1920s by acquiring other department stores throughout Iowa including its merger with Wilkins Department Stores in 1923 and its purchase of Harris-Emery in 1927. The year 1928 saw the acquisition of J. Mandelbaun and Sons, and the Iowa retailers Britnalls of Marshalltown and Davidson's of Sioux City were acquired in 1948 and Yetters of Iowa City was acquired in 1949.
Younkers was operated by Equitable of Iowa, an insurance company, from 1979 to 1992. Under Equitable's ownership, Younkers acquired all 11 locations of the Omaha, Nebraska-based Brandeis department store chain in 1987. After becoming a publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ on April 22, 1992, Younkers purchased the 22 stores of the H.C. Prange chain in Wisconsin and Michigan. Proffitt's, Inc., of Knoxville, Tennessee, acquired Younkers in October 1996; two years later Proffitt's merged with Saks Fifth Avenue to form Saks Incorporated. In 2003, Saks closed Younkers' headquarters in Des Moines and merged its operations with those of Carson Pirie Scott, another Saks-operated department store chain, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. On October 31, 2005, Saks announced that it was selling Younkers and its other Northern Department Store Group stores (Carson Pirie Scott, Bergner's, Boston Store, and Herberger's) to Bon-Ton Stores in a $1.1 billion deal; the transaction was completed on March 6, 2006.
As of November 1, 2005, Younkers has 47 stores in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Most of its stores are anchors of shopping malls.
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