Belk - Partnership Names

Partnership Names

Beginning in 1921 with the Leggett Bros. stores of South Boston, Virginia, the Belk family formed various partnerships with other merchandisers in different markets. (This complex story is chronicled in a book about the evolution of the company.)

This unusual corporate ownership structure resulted in dual or hyphened names on many of their stores (and resulted in over 300 separate legal entities, each store having differing ownership interests), which in the 1990s threatened the company's very existence, as a combination of Belk family squabbles (one side wanting to keep the structure, while the other side saw it to be a hindrance in the modern retail era) and a wave of retail industry consolidation resulted in several partnerships (where Belk did not hold controlling interest) selling their interests to competitors (for example, the heirs of John G. Parks, majority owners of the Parks-Belk chain, sold their interests to Proffitt's; the Belks would quickly follow suit, though Belk would later purchase the Proffitt's chain).

Eventually John and Tom Belk would gain control of the company, just in time to salvage the company when the Belk-Leggett partnership was threatened (the chain comprising about 20 percent of the overall company's revenue; the Leggetts themselves were involved in their own family squabbles, and once again competitor Proffitt's had made an offer) did two of the family members (John and Tom Belk) take action by forming a new company in 1996 to purchase the Leggett interests.

In 1998, the company formed a new entity (Belk, Inc.) from its 112 existing Belk companies, and over time eliminated the dual-naming convention in favor of the Belk name (however, certain well-established partnership names, such as Hudson Belk in the Triangle region of North Carolina, remained in place until Belk's logo change in the fall of 2010).