History
Founders Ken Gjemre and Pat Anderson opened the first store in 1972 in a former laundromat in Dallas, Texas, filling the shelves with 2,000 books out of their personal libraries. The founders believed in offering great products at great prices, selling new and gently-used books, magazines, music, movies, collectibles and game software at half the original price or less.
Pat Anderson’s daughter, Sharon Anderson Wright, is the company’s current President and CEO. In 2009, Sharon's sister Ellen O'Neal stepped up to the position of Chairperson of the Board in order to become more involved with the family business and carry out the mission of her mother.
As committed to employees as it is to profitability, Half Price Books has been generous with employee benefits from its earliest days, including abundant paid vacation, holiday and sick leave, affordable health, dental, vision and life insurance, quarterly bonuses, and a company-matched 401(k) plan.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)