The History of 7-Eleven

7-Eleven is a kind of convenient store where you can buy food, drinks, and other items is a fast, easy and convenient manner rather than going in a grocery or supermarket. But before anything else, we should know the answers to the questions what, why, when and why in the history of 7-Eleven convenience store.

7-Eleven is part of an international chain of convenience stores, operating under Seven-Eleven Japan Co. Ltd, which in turn is owned by Seven & I Holdings Co. of Japan.

7-Eleven, primarily operating as a franchise, is the world's largest operator, franchisor and licensor of convenience stores, with more than 46,000 outlets, surpassing the previous record-holder McDonald's Corporation in 2007 by approximately 1,000 retail stores. The American subsidiary of the Japanese firm has its headquarters in the One Arts Plaza building in downtown Dallas, Texas. Its stores are located in 16 countries, with its largest markets being Japan, the United States, Canada, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Thailand.

The company has its origins in 1927 in Dallas, Texas, when an employee of Southland Ice Company, John Jefferson Green, started selling milk, eggs and bread from an improvised storefront in one of the company's ice houses. Although small grocery stores and general merchandisers were present in the immediate area, Joe C. 'Jodie' Thompson, Jr., the manager of the ice plant, discovered selling convenience items, such as bread and milk, was popular due to the ice's ability to preserve the items. This significantly cut back on the need to travel long distances to the grocery stores for basic items. Thompson eventually bought the Southland Ice Company and turned it into Southland Corporation, which oversaw several locations which opened in the Dallas area.

By 1928, a manager of one of these locations brought back a totem pole from [Alaska] and placed it in from of his store. Due to the attention received by the totem pole, additional totem poles were placed at each of the locations and all the store began operating under the name "Tot'em Stores" (a word play on the totem poles as well as the idea that customers toted away their purchases). In that same year many of the locations also began selling gasoline. Although the Great Depression caused the company to go bankrupt in 1931, it still managed to continue operations.

In 1946, in an effort to continue the company's post war recovery, the name of the stores was changed to 7-Eleven to reflect their hours of operation—7 am to 11 pm, which at the time was unprecedented. By 1952, 7-Eleven opened its 100th store. It was incorporated as Southland Corporation in 1961. In 1962, 7-Eleven first experimented with a 24-hour schedule in Austin, Texas after an Austin store was forced to remain open all night due to customer demand following a University of Texas football game. By 1963, 24-hour stores were established in Fort Worth and Dallas, Texas as well as Las Vegas, Nevada.

In the 1980s, the company encountered financial difficulty, selling off its ice division, and was rescued from bankruptcy by Ito-Yokado, its largest franchisee. In 1987, John Philp Thompson, the CEO of 7-Eleven, completed a $5.2 billion management buyout of the company his father had founded. The buyout suffered from the 1987 stock market crash and after failing initially to raise high yield debt financing, the company was required to offer a portion of the company's stock as an inducement to invest in the company's bonds.

The Japanese company gained a controlling share of 7-Eleven in 1991, during the Japanese asset bubble of the early 1990s. Ito-Yokado formed Seven & I Holdings Co. and 7-Eleven became its subsidiary in 2005. In 2007, Seven & I Holdings announced it would be expanding their American operations, with an additional 1,000 7-Eleven stores in the United States.

Source of History: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7-Eleven

Know more about them. Visit their website at http://www.7-eleven.com.ph/index.php