Bi-Mart
Bi-Mart is a employee-owned chain of retailers located almost exclusively in Oregon and Washington. The company was founded in 1955 and is headquartered in Eugene, Oregon.
As of December 2004, the company projects sales for the fiscal year ending February 28, 2005 of $650 million, compared with $621 million for the previous year.
Its 30,000 square foot (2,800 m²) stores deal mainly in "hard goods" with departments for clothing/shoes, housewares, sporting goods, hardware, toys, electronics, and foods, as well as a pharmacy.
Like Costco and Sam's Club, Bi-Mart stores are membership stores; unlike those chains, its members-only policy started as a work-around to fair trade laws established in the United States in the 1930s by laws such as the Miller-Tydings Act. The membership fee is much lower than other membership stores- $5 buys you a lifetime membership.
History
Bi-Mart's first store opened in Yakima, Washington in 1955 and did not open its second store until 1962. In 1976, it was bought by Pay-N-Save, and beginning in 1984, Bi-Mart's corporate parents were bought and merged into other companies several times, culminating with the 1996 purchase by Rite Aid.
In 1997, Bi-Mart's senior management and a Portland-based venture capital firm bought the company; they sold it to its employees as of March 1, 2004 for $94 million, which included $12.5 million contributed from their 401(k) plan.
Lucky Number Tuesday
One of the special features of a Bi-Mart membership is that you are eligible to win on their Lucky Number Tuesdays. Each store chooses approximately 50 card numbers from among their own store's membership numbers to win a variety of prizes, from the "Big Prize" (up to $300 value; only one of these is chosen) to the small prize in which only the last number of your 6 or 7 digit Bi-Mart number must match (small prizes such as a box of tissues, a jar of honey, etc.).
External links
- Official website
- Smaller and steady win the race, a December 2004 article from The Oregonian