History Of TSS Stores (Times Square Stores) In NY

Feature Photo: Dragana Gordic / Shutterstock

History of TSS Stores (Times Square Stores) in NY looks back at a discount department store chain that became a familiar name to generations of New York shoppers. Founded by George Seedman in Queens in 1929, TSS grew from an auto-supply business into a regional discount retailer with stores across New York City and Long Island, as well as operations in Puerto Rico. By the late 1980s, however, the company was struggling in an increasingly competitive retail market. Times Square Stores announced that it would close its remaining stores in 1989, and the TSS name disappeared after final liquidation sales in 1990.

How Did Times Square Stores Get Started?

Table of Contents

George Seedman founded Times Square Stores in 1929. Despite the name, the business did not begin in Manhattan’s Times Square. Its early operation was in Jamaica, Queens, where Seedman started with an auto-supply store. The company’s later trademark filings listed 1929 as the first year the Times Square Stores name was used in commerce.

During the years that followed, Seedman expanded throughout Queens. By the end of the 1930s, Times Square Stores had grown from a single location into a small chain with approximately ten stores in the borough.

TSS and the Great Depression

Times Square Stores began at an extraordinary moment in American economic history. The stock market crash of 1929 was followed by the Great Depression, forcing millions of consumers to become far more careful about how and where they spent their money. Businesses that could offer useful merchandise at lower prices had an obvious appeal.

Seedman’s company survived that difficult period and continued expanding. What began as an auto-supply operation eventually evolved after World War II into the discount department store business most New Yorkers would later remember as TSS.

One important part of the TSS business model was its use of leased departments. Rather than operating every department itself, the company allowed outside retailers to merchandise and staff certain sections inside its stores. This reduced some of the costs involved in running such large locations while allowing TSS to offer shoppers a much wider range of merchandise.

TSS Stores in the 20th Century

Over the following decades, Times Square Stores expanded well beyond its Queens beginnings. By the 1980s, Long Island had become one of the company’s most important markets, with large stores in Nassau and Suffolk Counties as well as locations elsewhere in the New York metropolitan area.

By the late 1980s, published retail accounts described a chain with twelve major TSS stores in New York, additional stores in Puerto Rico, and an off-price women’s clothing business known as Finders Keepers. The TSS stores themselves were large discount department stores carrying a broad assortment of merchandise.

TSS also became associated with the Royce Union name, which appeared on sporting goods including bicycles and baseball gloves sold through the chain. For many New Yorkers who grew up during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, TSS was one of those stores where a family could shop for very different kinds of merchandise under one roof.

The company was still looking for ways to grow during the early 1980s. In 1983, Times Square Stores explored an initial public offering on the American Stock Exchange. The company proposed selling 1.2 million shares in a range of approximately $17 to $19 per share. The offering was withdrawn in early 1984 after the market indicated that investors were willing to pay substantially less.

The Price Club Deal That Never Happened

One of the most interesting chapters in the final years of Times Square Stores came in 1987. The Price Company, which operated the growing Price Club warehouse chain, announced an agreement to acquire at least 81 percent of TSS-Seedman’s for approximately $50 million.

At the time, TSS operated twelve large stores in the New York metropolitan area, many averaging around 190,000 square feet. Those locations were attractive to Price because they could potentially be converted into Price Club warehouse stores without the company having to begin every New York-area project from scratch.

The agreement did not last long. In April 1987, Price announced that the acquisition had been canceled at George Seedman’s request. Price had planned to convert many of the TSS locations into Price Clubs, but the deal ended before the transaction was completed.

Serious Problems in the 1980s

By the late 1980s, Times Square Stores had run into serious problems. The company began making dramatic changes in an effort to reduce expenses and improve performance. Stores were downsized, and TSS moved away from some of the leased-department arrangements that had long been part of its business model.

That decision was significant. Leased departments had allowed outside companies to assume responsibility for certain product categories. A 1988 Billboard report, for example, described Trans World Music taking over licensed music and video departments in all twelve TSS locations. The arrangement demonstrated how heavily the chain had relied on outside operators in portions of its stores.

Times Square Stores was also competing in a changing retail world. Regional discount chains faced growing pressure from larger national competitors, warehouse clubs, shopping malls, and other forms of suburban retailing. TSS had survived for six decades, but by 1989 the company was running out of options.

TSS Bankruptcy

In October 1989, Times Square Stores announced that it intended to close all of its stores and lay off its employees by the end of the year. A later federal appeals court decision involving a union benefits fund recorded that TSS employed approximately 1,600 of the fund’s 1,750 participants in fourteen stores at the time the shutdown was announced.

Times Square Stores filed for bankruptcy in December 1989. Most of the stores closed by the end of that year, although several locations remained open into 1990 to complete liquidation sales and dispose of the remaining assets.

By June 1990, the final TSS liquidation operations had ended. The Times Square Stores name, which George Seedman had launched in Queens in 1929, was gone after more than sixty years in New York retailing.

TSS never became a nationwide retail giant, but for generations of shoppers in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Nassau County, and Suffolk County, it did not need to. Times Square Stores was a distinctly New York discount chain, and its disappearance made it part of the same lost retail landscape as Korvettes, John’s Bargain Stores, and Woolworth’s. Readers can also explore our look at the most famous department stores in New York City history.