Public | |
Traded as | : DDS S&P 400 Component |
Industry | Retail |
Founded | 1938 |
Founder | William T. Dillard |
Headquarters | Little Rock, Arkansas, U.S. |
Number of locations
|
294 (Q3 2016) |
Area served
|
United States |
Key people
|
William T. Dillard II (Chairman and CEO) Alex Dillard (President) |
Products | Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares. |
Revenue | US$ 6.754 billion (FY 2016) |
US$ 454 million (FY 2016) | |
US$ 269 million (FY 2016) | |
Total assets | US$ 3.865 billion (FY 2016) |
Total equity | US$ 1.795 billion (FY 2016) |
Number of employees
|
21,600 (January 2016) |
Website | Dillards.com |
Dillard's, Inc. is an American department store chain with approximately 330 stores in 29 states and headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas. Currenty, the most amount of stores are located in Florida and Texas as their largest states of operation, while it also has a presence in other states.
Dillard's is the outgrowth of a department store founded in 1938 by William T. Dillard; its corporate headquarters remain located at the eastern edge of Little Rock's Riverdale area, and many of its executives and directors are members of the Dillard family. The family still controls the company through its ownership of Class B Common Stock; the Class A common stock is publicly traded on the .
Dillard sold the original five and dime store in Nashville, Arkansas, to develop a department store in Texarkana, Arkansas, initially as the minority partner in Wooten & Dillard. In 1956, Dillard led an investment group that acquired the Mayer & Schmidt store in Tyler, Texas. This store eventually took on the name "Dillard's Mayer & Schmidt" until 1974, when it was replaced with a mall-based location south of downtown Tyler.
In 1960, Dillard acquired and turned around the failing Brown-Duncan store in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The success of this turnaround was followed in late 1963 by acquiring the Joseph Pfeifer store in Little Rock, Arkansas, and in early 1964 acquiring the other main store in Little Rock, Gus Blass Co. Dillard used this as an opportunity to relocate his headquarters to Little Rock. In 1969, Dillard and his investors took Dillard Department Stores, Inc., public on the .
Thereafter, the chain expanded rapidly as an anchor in suburban shopping malls, and took advantage of market conditions to acquire smaller chains as well as its ability to turn around locations that other companies could not operate profitably.