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May 7, 2024 · The Kresge Foundation - A Century of Impact. Founded in 1924 to promote human progress. Expanding equity and opportunity in American cities today. Dive into the history and stories of The Kresge Foundation as it celebrates a century of grantmaking. The foundation was established in Detroit by Sebastian Spering Kresge, whose retail empire, the S ...
S. S. Kresge Company1907–1925. Industry: Retail. Era: 1900. Kresge built the precursor to K-Mart, one of the first mass discounters. He started with ten-cent stores and developed full-fledged variety stores. By his retirement, his chain had almost 600 United States stores, a Canadian subsidiary, and annual sales of $156 million.
The official S.S.Kresge Company, bringing Kmart and Sears back in business
S. S. Kresge. Born: July 31, 1867. Bald Mount, Pennsylvania. Died: October 18, 1966. East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Entrepreneur and philanthropist. S. S. Kresge worked hard, spent his money only when necessary, and saved it wisely. This penny-pinching attitude, which began early in life, led him to become an extremely successful businessman ...
The American business executive S.S. Kresge (1867–1966) was the founder of the discount store chain that bore his name. The S.S. Kresge Company eventually spawned the Kmart chain of discount stores, adapting the discount-store model to the strip-mall merchandising so popular during the late 20th century.
Kresge's personal life is more tragic than his business life, in which he was a constant success. Kresge was married three times. His first two marriages, to Anna Harvey from 1897 to 1924 and to Doris Mercer from 1924 to 1928, ended in divorce. Both women claimed that Kresge's penny-pinching was one of the major contributors to the divorces.
The S.S. Kresge Company was 25 years old in 1924. Sebastian S. Kresge himself was 57. To commemorate the anniversary of his growing company, on June 11 he established The Kresge Foundation in booming Detroit, where the auto industry, also 25-years old that year, had spawned rampant growth and widespread prosperity.
