{"id":1760,"date":"2010-04-02T00:42:29","date_gmt":"2010-04-02T05:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=1760"},"modified":"2010-05-21T02:22:07","modified_gmt":"2010-05-21T07:22:07","slug":"the-bankers-note-trenholm-plaza-1990s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=1760","title":{"rendered":"The Banker's Note, Trenholm Plaza: 1990s"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

OK, you knew you were going to be seeing these pictures<\/a> again, right?<\/p>\n

Frankly, until I saw the old pictures, I had completely forgotten there was ever a store called The Banker's Note<\/i> in Trenholm Plaza, and even after seeing them, I had no idea what it was, or what it sold.<\/p>\n

As you can see, the store was east of the A&P<\/i> and more or less where the current Books-A-Million<\/i> is. From this shot, it's unclear to me if it included the corner location where the plaza dips north.<\/p>\n

Doing a bit of googling turns up this information:<\/p>\n


\nTen years ago last month Suchik opened the first Banker's Note store in Roswell, Ga., outside Atlanta. In 1981 he took the four-unit operation public to repay his manufacturer-partner, with profits. Two years ago there were 32 of the units averaging 4,000 sq. ft. One year ago there were 42 Banker's Note stores. At this writing, there are 72 units with 18 more planned by the end of the current fiscal year.<\/p>\n

The five year plan, Suchik said, calls for year plan, Suchik said, in sales by the fiscal year ending Feb. 1, 1991. For the year ended Feb 1, 1987, sales hit $34.8 million. Wall Street sees the chain pulling in a volume of $47 to $53 million for the current fiscal year.<\/p>\n

In the next five years, store expansion will be concentrated in the nine southeastern states The Banker's Note already operates in from North Carolina down to Florida and Westward to Tennessee and Texas. The chain possibly will invade adjacent markets in Oklahoma and perhaps Arkansas, Suchik added.
\n....
\n....
\nIts ambitious expansion plans, the proliferation of off-pricing and discounting by traditional stores continue to force constant adjustments. \"In this business no one can afford to rest on his laurels,' said Suchik.
\n<\/a><\/blockquote\n\nIt appears that by 1997<\/a> the firm had renamed itself to VSI Holdings, Inc.<\/i>. I'm a bit unclear as to whether a change of ownership happened then, but I don't think so, as the HQ was still in Smyrna.<\/p>\n

It appears that VSI had wider ambitions than just clothing, and that in 1999<\/a> they made a move into the software business. Maybe that didn't go so well, because by 2001<\/a> the owners were shopping the company around, looking for a buyer. It looked as if SPX would do the deal, but the deal unexpectedly fell-through later that year<\/a>. Apparently after that, the company tried to wind down in an orderly fashion, but in late 2002<\/a> a lawsuit by \"recalcitrant creditors\" forced them into an unplanned Chapter 11.<\/p>\n

One thing I don't see anywhere is any mention of why they ever called themselves The Banker's Note<\/i>. It's certainly not a name that suggests apparel. I'm not sure when this store closed, but it was definitely gone by 1998.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, you knew you were going to be seeing these pictures again, right? Frankly, until I saw the old pictures, I had completely forgotten there was ever a store called The Banker's Note in Trenholm Plaza, and even after seeing them, I had no idea what it was, or what it sold. As you can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[55,96,5,4,31,98],"class_list":["post-1760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-clothes","tag-forest-drive","tag-historic","tag-stores","tag-trenholm-plaza","tag-trenholm-road"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}