Mickey Monus

Michael I. "Mickey" Monus (born in 1947) is the former president of Phar-Mor, Inc., a defunct deep-discount drug and grocery retail chain that established a strong national presence before declaring bankruptcy in the early 1990s. Accused of perpetrating a $350 million fraud and embezzlement scheme, Monus was fired from the company and faced criminal charges. He was born in Youngstown, Ohio, which is where Phar-Mor was headquartered.

Monus was born into a prominent family on the north side of Youngstown, Ohio. His father, Nathan H. Monus (1921–2016), was a prominent businessman and the estranged younger (and last surviving) brother of Mike Monus and Al B. Monus (1918–?). Mickey's mother, Frances Tamarkin Monus, was a housewife. Mickey attended the Rayen School and University School, a boys preparatory school in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Monus returned to Youngstown, where he worked for a family business. His return coincided with the collapse of the community's core steel industry, and Monus became intrigued with the possibility of launching a retail enterprise whose operations stretched beyond the borders of his hometown.

Monus partnered with David Shapira, to launch Phar-Mor, a "deep discount" drugstore which used a strategy of aggressive buying to provide customers with tremendous savings, if fewer selections. With startup money provided by Giant Eagle, Inc., the supermarket company in which Shapira's family members were large shareholders, the Phar-Mor discount drug chain became enormously successful. In 1988, the chain featured 100 stores, and Monus was described in the media as one of the nation's leading entrepreneurs. In an effort to revitalize his hometown's deteriorating retail district, Monus located the company's national headquarters in a remodeled former department store in downtown Youngstown. A notoriously tough negotiator, he was able to keep retail prices low; and by 1991, there were 200 Phar-Mor outlets across the country.Sam Walton once called Monus the only retailer that he feared, since he couldn't understand how Phar-Mor grew so rapidly in a short time. In addition, Monus and another Youngstown businessman, John Antonucci, were the original majority owners of Major League Baseball's Colorado Rockies; they'd even secured the financing for what would become Coors Field.

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