From Beall’s Fabric Stores to Bunulu, Bradenton business kept innovating

BRADENTON -- When Bealls Inc. announced it would launch a new store called Bunulu, it marked another venture in a long line of Bealls experiments.

Bradenton has always been a laboratory for the 100-year-old retailer and whether the stores or ideas succeeded or failed, the company learned important lessons.

"I think it's necessary that we don't know which ones are going to be the winners and which ones the losers and how they can morph into something different," said R.M. "Bob" Beall II, Bealls Inc. chairman.

Bealls long had the drive to try new stores.

An ad in the Manatee River Journal advertised a Dollar Limit Store in Sarasota in 1922, said Bill Webster, director of public and government affairs for Bealls Inc. "It was located on the corner of Main Street and Palm Avenue," said Webster, brother-in-law to Bob Beall. "It was successful from 1922 through 1926 but when the boom in Florida ended precipitously in 1926, Sarasota was really hit hard." It appears Beall closed the store in 1927 and consolidated it with the Bradenton store, Webster said, adding

the discovery surprised some family members.

Beall even tried his hand outside Florida, said Conrad Szymanski, Bealls Inc. board member and grandson of founder R.M. Beall.

"R.M. Beall Sr. had a branch store in Moultrie, Ga., kind of a family home town store," said Szymanski, a retired Bealls Outlets president. "That lasted less than a year in the 1930s."

When Bealls moved from downtown to the Westgate Shopping Center in 1956, the Westgate store served as its one-time headquarters with offices on the second floor, which included a post office. From the 1970s to 1991, Bealls leased its shoe department to H. Butler Footwear, which supplied shoes and staffed the Bealls stores. The Butler family operated The Bootery downtown and grew with Bealls during the business relationship, Webster said.

Bealls experimented with food in 1997 opening a coffee shop in the back of the store staffed by Bealls employees, long before Starbucks entered Florida. Bealls had about six stores with coffee bars.

"We thought at that point in time coffee was a destination and if we approached it as more of a convenience we might have still had coffee bars," Szymanski said.

Concept stores

Starting concept stores and full ventures really took off in the 1980s for Bealls but the first true concept store was a standalone fabric store in the 1960s and 1970s.

R.M. Beall was an expert in fabrics and it was the store's No. 1 department during that time, Webster said. Dates are somewhat fuzzy but a Herald archive photo shows a sign for Beall's Fabric, Linens at its downtown Manatee Avenue store in 1965. Beall's Fabric Store opened in the former Woolworth's downtown and lasted through the 1960s. Another location opened in Winter Haven in the mid-1970s, he said. The fabric stores were folded into the department stores after demand for sewing waned, Szymanski said.

In 1983, Bealls launched Junior Images and Just Labels. In a way, Junior Images was a precursor to Bunulu.

Just Labels mainly failed but the company retooled it to later launch Bealls Outlets, recalled Szymanski, grandson of founder R.M. Beall. He served as president for Bealls Department Stores and Bealls Outlets during his 33-year career with the company.

"Junior Images was where we tried separating the junior and young men's chains having a separate entrance for them," Szymanski said. "In the end, it ultimately was included in the main store because we got focused on that customer. We got better at what we're doing."

Bealls focused on Florida retirees for the most part and as Bradenton and Sarasota grew closer together. As lines blurred and ages lowered, Bealls had to find new customers. The boxes expanded and repositioned Bealls from a 35,000-square-foot department store to an 80,000-square-foot store that included juniors and young men's and later other offerings.

"When we deployed that merchandise and merchandising concepts in the main store, it made the main store much more attractive," Szymanski said.

Just Labels was admittedly a failure, Bealls' leaders have long said.

People really didn't understand, per se, off-price at that point in time," said Szymanksi, who served as a retail historian for the family. "Nor did they understand the merchandise we were trying to offer them."

Just Labels cut its losses by turning half the company over to a management team, which ultimately failed. The other stores were retooled and were replaced with Bealls Outlets signs in 1987.

"When we took those Just Labels signs off those stores and put the Bealls Outlet signs up, the sales went up significantly," Szymanski said. "Because a name like Bealls had such tremendous name recognition in the state of Florida. People read the sign and said: 'I get it. I'm going to get Florida-centric merchandise at an affordable price."

Outlets out West

Looking to differentiate itself from an unrelated Beall's furniture store chain based in Texas, Bealls created the Burkes name in 1998 to establish Burkes Outlets in the Lone Star State.

"Essentially, the reason we can't use our name is that a company with the same name already exists there," former Bealls Outlets President Paul Galizia told the Herald in a 1999 interview. "We chose the name of Burkes because it contains the same number of letters as Bealls and allows us to use the same graphics."

Burkes ended up opening its fist store in Minette, Ala., and now operates in 13 states including Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, West Virginia and Virginia. In July 2001, Burkes Outlet opened a handful of stores in Tampa Bay to test the name locally and see if different merchandise could influence what's sold in Bealls Outlets. The test ended promptly.

"It really went by the boards pretty quickly," Beall said.

Gift horse

Galizia also launched Out and Out Gifts in 1994, which became My Gift Cottage in 1998 with its own online store.

"He had a passion for collecting collectibles and there's a number of different lines of collectible items people would by in the hopes they would be more valuable in the future," similar to Department 56 items, Szymanski said. "...We were never able to make a profit."

The Internet changed the collectible market, the pricing of valuables and the way people sell them.

"Instead of having this mystique of we can pass it off to the kids and it may be more valuable in the future, it all of a sudden brought the reality that this thing you paid $56 for is worth $5.47," he said.

In 2003, 30 My Gift Cottage stores closed and 15 Bealls Home Outlet stores opened, similar to a HomeGoods store. It still carried some of the decorative gift items for Gift Cottage. The last Bealls Home Outlet closed in 2009 in Ellenton.

In November 2003, Bealls started its Coastal Home by Bealls concept in Osprey, Naples and Melbourne offering home decor and housewares items and some small accent furniture. The store targeted customers looking for affordable and trendy products.

"The Coastal Home test really contributed to helping us find those products customers down here would respond to and be successfully incorporated into our big stores," Syzmanksi said.

In 2005-2006, Bealls had its shortest-lived concept, Bealls Kids Outlet. The only store opened in the DeSoto Square mall in July 2005, replacing a Bealls Home Outlet, and closed in January 2006.

Bealls officials at the time blamed the neighborhood demographics and location. DeSoto had a healthy portion of teens as its shoppers then shopping for their own clothes and the outlet was meant for young mothers of infants and children.

Like many of its other concepts, Bealls Kids merchandise was incorporated in the department stores and outlets as the stores were repositioned.

For its 100-year-anniversary, Bealls is launching an upscale boutique called Bunulu offering casual clothes and activewear. Three 4,000-square-foot stores will open in the fall as a test but the company expects the venture to be a permanent fixture and its own division.

"Who knows what the next one is going to do?" Beall said. "Bunulu might be perfect the way it is. It might need to evolve. We're going to let the customer lead us."

This story was originally published March 4, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "From Beall’s Fabric Stores to Bunulu, Bradenton business kept innovating."