Retail & Consumer

Storefronts, brands and household names that shaped daily life.

Entries in this category (56)

• Blockbuster — The video-rental empire that passed on buying Netflix
• WeWork — The coworking startup that briefly seemed worth more than its landlord
• Eastman Kodak — The company that invented the digital camera — then couldn't survive it
• Toys “R” Us — The toy cathedral that debt killed — and nostalgia resurrected
• Sears — The catalog-and-store giant that the discount era and Amazon left behind
• Circuit City — The electronics superstore that Best Buy and the internet switched off
• Borders — The big-box bookseller that Amazon and the e-book switched off
• Linksys — The router company that made home Wi-Fi ordinary — and gave the world a hackable $60 router
• Garmin — The GPS company that outlasted the smartphone and became a wearable and navigation giant
• Casio — The Japanese company that gave the world the calculator watch, the G-Shock, and the keytar
• Seiko — The Japanese watch giant that beat Swiss mechanicals with quartz, and survived the fall it caused
• Gillette — The company that gave you the free razor — so you'd buy the blades — and taught everyone the business
• Aiwa — The Tokyo audio maker that Sony absorbed in 2002 and dropped six years later — the name now belongs to a former Sony radio contractor in Japan and a patchwork of licensees elsewhere
• Alibaba — The Hangzhou apartment startup that became China's e-commerce empire, set an IPO record — and then ran into the state
• Aston Martin — The British luxury car maker behind James Bond's DB5 — still building some of the world's most desirable sports cars
• Avis Budget Group — The car-rental giant that weathered decades — and now faces a shifting rental market and falling profits
• Bed Bath & Beyond — The housewares chain died in 2023; the name did not — it now belongs to a company called Neighborhood Intelligence that is rebranding Container Store shops under it
• Blaupunkt — The German audio brand that became the world's leading car-radio maker — its factories closed, but the name lives on
• Camcorder — The shoulder-mounted home video camera that recorded every family event — quietly replaced by the smartphone
• Chipotle Mexican Grill — The fast-casual giant that built 'food with integrity' — then faced a food-safety crisis and a record fine before recovering
• Citizen Watch — The Japanese watchmaker that beat the Swiss on accuracy, then bought its way into the Swiss industry it had helped nearly destroy
• Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines (now CCEAP) — The Philippine bottler of Coca-Cola that gained a new name — and a new European-Aboitiz partnership
• Commodore International — The Toronto typewriter business that became the world's largest home computer maker, launched the Commodore 64, bought the Amiga — and was liquidated in 1994, after which its brand name was sold on for another three decades
• CompUSA — The big-box computer superstore of the 1990s and 2000s — bankrupt by 2007 and gone by 2012
• David Tran — The Vietnamese-born founder of Huy Fong Foods — the man who gave the world the rooster-label Sriracha
• Edifier — The Chinese speaker maker founded in a Beijing business park in 1996 that quietly bought Japan's electrostatic headphone legend STAX — while its founder still holds the company
• Fry's Electronics — The Silicon Valley electronics superstore chain with 34 themed stores and a one-day shutdown in February 2021
• GameStop — The video-game retailer at the heart of the 2021 meme-stock squeeze — still trading, still reinvented
• Gateway — The mail-order PC maker from a South Dakota cattle town that shipped its computers in cow-spotted boxes, grew to nearly 25,000 employees, and was bought by Acer — which then revived the brand in Walmart
• Jell-O — The wobbly dessert that became an American icon — now a Kraft Heinz brand reformulating its way back into relevance
• Jollibee — The Philippine fast-food chain that beat McDonald's at home — and is now exporting fried chicken and sweet spaghetti around the world
• Kmart — The chain that invented the Blue Light Special and once ran 2,486 stores is down to three — two in US territories and one in suburban Miami
• Krispy Kreme — The original hot-glazed doughnut chain that became a phenomenon — then went public twice and expanded globally
• Milton Bradley — The Springfield toy maker behind The Game of Life and Operation — absorbed into Hasbro in 1984
• Minolta — The Japanese camera and optics maker behind the Maxxum and Alpha SLRs — merged into Konica Minolta in 2003
• Oatly — The oat-milk brand that made plant-based milk hip — then saw the boom cool
• Patrón Tequila — The premium tequila that turned a humble agave spirit into a luxury symbol — and was bought by Bacardi for $5.1 billion
• Peloton — The connected-fitness brand that boomed in the pandemic — then hit a wall as the world reopened
• Pentax — The Japanese camera giant whose SLRs and lenses defined photography for generations — now a Ricoh-owned brand
• Polaroid — The instant-photo pioneer that went bankrupt twice — and was reborn out of a project to keep its film alive
• Popular Bookstore — The home-grown Singapore bookstore chain that put assessment books in every schoolbag — and is now closing the branches that raised generations of readers
• The Quartz War — The fifty-year fight over how a watch keeps time — which Japan won on accuracy, Switzerland won on price and prestige, and which is now being fought again from China
• Quiznos — The toasted-sub chain that briefly rivaled Subway — then collapsed amid franchise discontent
• RadioShack — The 1921 Boston ham-radio shop that became an 8,000-store American chain, went bankrupt twice, and now survives as a licensed brand sold through other people's shops
• Rubik's Cube — The Hungarian teaching aid that became a 1980s fad, died, and came back as a sport — built today by companies that could only exist because the patent ran out
• Sam Walton — The dime-store detective who built the largest retail empire in human history on nickel-and-dime discipline
• Sea-Gull — The Tianjin watch factory that bought a Swiss movement maker's tooling, kept a dead Swiss design alive as the ST19, and co-built the watch that won a prize in Geneva
• Sinclair Research — The Cambridge company that sold Britain its first computer under £100, then lost the business to Amstrad — while the machines it put in bedrooms ended up as Microsoft, EA and Rockstar
• Huy Fong Foods — The Sriracha maker whose rooster sauce conquered the world — then lost the pepper farm it depended on
• Sulpicio Lines (now Philippine Span Asia Carrier) — The shpping line that was haunted by disaster — and changed its name and business to survive
• Swatch — The cheap plastic watch that was invented to save Swiss watchmaking — and became the umbrella for the group that now owns Omega, Longines, Tissot and Breguet
• Haw Par Corporation — The Tiger Balm maker and the history of a century-old Asian healing brand
• Timex — The American volume watchmaker that helped kill Swiss mechanical watchmaking from below — and whose Scottish factory went on to build Sinclair computers
• Tupperware — The iconic food-storage brand that built a home-party empire — then declined and filed for bankruptcy
• Zenith (watchmaker) — The Swiss watch house whose best movement was saved from destruction by an engineer who disobeyed a direct order and hid the tooling in an attic
• Zenith — The last American television maker, which invented the wireless remote and helped define digital HDTV — now an LG research and licensing subsidiary in Illinois that sells no televisions at all