Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited is a Canadian retail company which operates in the automotive, hardware, sports, leisure and housewares sectors. Its Canadian operations include: Canadian Tire, Mark's, FGL Sports, PartSource, and the Canadian operations of Party City. Canadian Tire acquired the Norwegian clothing and textile company Helly Hansen from the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan in 2018.
Kmart Corporation is an American retail company that owns a chain of big-box department stores. The company is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. The company was incorporated in 1899 as S. S. Kresge Corporation and renamed Kmart Corporation in 1977. The first store with the Kmart name opened in 1962 in Garden City, Michigan. At its peak in 1994, Kmart operated 2,486 stores globally, including 2,323 discount stores and Super Kmart Center locations in the United States. As of April 16, 2022, that number was down to nine, including just three in the continental United States. From 2005 through 2019, Kmart was a subsidiary of Sears Holdings Corporation. Since 2019, Kmart has been a subsidiary of Transform SR Brands LLC, a privately held company that was formed in 2019 to acquire assets from Sears Holdings.
Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began as a mail ordering catalog company migrating to opening retail locations in 1925, the first in Chicago. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box discount chain Kmart, which upon completion of the merger, formed Sears Holdings. Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. In 2018, it was the 31st-largest. After several years of declining sales, Sears's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. It announced on January 16, 2019, that it had won its bankruptcy auction, and that a reduced number of 425 stores would remain open, including 223 Sears stores.
Big O Tires, LLC., is a tire and auto service shop headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Big O Tires is one of North America's largest retail tire franchisors, with more than 450 independently owned and operated locations extending through 23 states primarily in the Western and Midwestern United States. It has been a wholly owned subsidiary of TBC Corporation since 1996.
Pep Boys is an American automotive aftermarket service chain. Originally named Pep Auto Supply, the company was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1921 by Emanuel "Manny" Rosenfeld, Maurice "Moe" Strauss, W. Graham "Jack" Jackson, and Moe Radavitz. Pep Boys is headquartered in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
Western Auto Supply Company—known more widely as Western Auto—was a specialty retail chain of stores that supplied automobile parts and accessories. It operated approximately 1,200 stores across the United States. It was started in 1909 in Kansas City, Missouri, by George Pepperdine and Don Abnor Davis. Pepperdine later founded Pepperdine University. Western Auto was bought by Beneficial Corporation in 1961; Western Auto's management led a leveraged buyout in 1985, leading three years later to a sale to Sears. Sears sold most of the company to Advance Auto Parts in 1998, and by 2003, the resulting merger had led to the end of the Western Auto brand and its product distribution network.
DieHard is an American brand of automotive battery and parts owned by Advance Auto Parts and sold exclusively at Advance, Carquest and Sears stores. Advance bought the DieHard brand from Sears in December 2019.
Carquest Corporation was an American automotive parts distribution network that was sold and currently owned and operated by Advance Auto Parts via independent retailers associated with the network as "Carquest Auto Parts". As of October 4, 2014 Advance operated 5,305 stores, 109 Worldpac branches. Advance Auto Parts and Carquest Auto Parts employs approximately 75,000 employees.
Midas International, LLC is an American chain of automotive service centers headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. In its North American main and home market, Midas stores are company-owned or franchised. In the 17 other countries it operates in, the service centers are either licensed or franchised. Midas is one of the world’s largest providers of automotive services, offering brake, maintenance, tires, exhaust, steering and suspension services at more than 2,100 franchised, licensed and company-owned Midas shops in 13 countries, including nearly 1,300 in the United States of America and Canada. Midas also owns the SpeeDee Oil & Auto Service business, with more than 150 auto service centers in America. Midas has ranked #150 on Entrepreneurs top Franchise 500.
O’Reilly Automotive, Inc. is an American auto parts retailer that provides automotive aftermarket parts, tools, supplies, equipment, and accessories to professional service providers and do-it-yourself customers. Founded in 1957 by the O’Reilly family, the company operates more than 6,000 stores in 47 states and Mexico.
Advance Auto Parts, Inc. is an American automotive aftermarket parts provider. Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, it serves both professional installer and do it yourself (DIY) customers. As of April 2022, Advance operated 4,687 stores and 311 Worldpac branches in the United States and Canada. The company also serves 1,318 independently owned Carquest-branded stores in the U.S., Mexico, The Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and British Virgin Islands.
Monro, Inc. is an automotive services company founded and headquartered in Rochester, New York, U.S. As of 2021, Monro has 1,288 locations making them the second-largest automotive services company in North America after Driven Brands by number of locations and by revenue.
Sears plc was a large British-based conglomerate. The company was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It was acquired by Philip Green in 1999.
TBC Corporation (TBC) is an American corporation and marketer of automotive replacement tires.
Sears Holdings Corporation was an American holding company headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. It was the parent company of the chain stores Kmart and Sears and was founded after the former purchased the latter in 2005. It was the 20th-largest retailing company in the United States in 2015. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018, and sold its assets to ESL Investments in 2019. The new owner moved Sears assets to its newly formed subsidiary Transform Holdco LLC and after that, Sears Holdings Corporation was closed.
Merchant's Tire and Auto falls under the acquisition of Tire Kingdom by TBC Corporation. There are approximately 120 stores nationwide as of 7/17/2015.
Tire Kingdom is a large American tire store chain located primarily in the southern part of the United States. In 2000, it became a subsidiary of TBC Corporation.
Express Oil Change & Tire Engineers is an American automotive maintenance brand, with services including its signature 10 minute oil change, in addition to full-service mechanical, tires, brakes, and more general service offerings. The company is headquartered in Birmingham, AL, where it was founded in 1979.
Transform SR Brands LLC is an American privately held company formed on February 11, 2019, to acquire some of the assets of Sears Holdings Corporation. The new company is owned by ESL Investments. Following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of Sears Holdings on October 15, 2018, Transformco purchased the surviving assets owned by Sears Holdings for $5.2 billion.
