H. C. Prange Co.
H.C. Prange Co. was a regional department store chain begun by Henry Carl (H.C.) Prange in 1887 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The chain was dissolved and the stores converted to the rival Younkers chain after sale in 1992.
Henry Prange was the son of farmers who had immigrated to Wisconsin from Germany following the Revolutions of 1848. Advised by doctors that his health precluded him from farming, in 1876 he began working at Sheboygan's John Plath's general store as a clerk, janitor, and delivery boy. He spent the next eleven years learning the retail business. In 1887 he attempted to purchase a share of his employer's store. Rebuffed, he quit and established his own store on October 4, 1887 with his sister Eliza, and brother-in-law, J.H. Bitter.
The 3,300-square-foot (310 m2) store located in Sheboygan was called H.C. Prange. Prange's offered everything from cradles to coffins and, unlike his local competition, also extended credit to local farmers and purchased their crops at harvest-time. German and English was spoken by all the store's employees from its founding until 1941; Sheboygan had a large German-speaking population served by German-language media until assimilation efforts post-World War I. Soon he was the preferred store for the farming community of Sheboygan.
The store became such a rapid success that in 1898 it incorporated as the H.C. Prange Company. By 1923, a new store was built on the same site with more than 180,000 square feet (17,000 m2) making it the largest store in Wisconsin outside of Milwaukee.
Before Prange's death in 1928, the H.C. Prange Company had become a multimillion-dollar business with hundreds of employees that were referred to as "associates". Upon his father's death, H. Carl Prange, while in his mid-twenties, was given the responsibility of running the company.
H. Carl Prange's goal in 1930 during the stock market crash was to do one million dollars in the grocery business and two million in dry-goods. During the Depression, while still heavily in debt from the purchase of the Hall Dry Goods building in Green Bay, Prange acquired the LM Washburn company of Sturgeon Bay and opened the firm's third store. In 1935 a disastrous fire burned the Sturgeon Bay store to the ground. Five months after the fire a new store was built. The year 1946 saw the purchase of Appleton's Pettibone-Peabody store, one of the oldest retail organizations in the state.
Over the years more acquisitions were made by the H.C. Prange Company, and existing stores underwent continuous improvement to keep abreast of the times.
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