Fresno Famous

goodbye Gottschalks you screwed up!

I remember shopping at the Fulton mall Gottschalks store with my mother in the 1970 i remember this was back when there would be ashtrays near the dressing room waiting area. I remember when my uncle got a job programming their computer database system in the 1980s when they went to a bar code point of sale setup. I kind of remember when the downtown store closed in 1986 or 88 and I kind of remember when the downtown distributing warehouse for Gottschalks stores moved to Madera. I remember having a few shares of Gottschalks stocks given to me as a birthday gift when they went public. I did sell them when it peeked a few years ago.
i remember learning about Joe and Sharon Levey and even the Blums being some of the family's that owned the store.
What did they do wrong... I think they expand to much wasting a lot of money and did not keep their downtown Fresno roots. If they would have they could have downsized and still be here today but now they will be another store in the past. Macy's came to Fresno in the 1980s but did they open and close stores and remodel all the time like Gottschalks did? Nope they are in the same place and they only took over the old Fashion Fair Gottschalks location for a men's department. Putting in a Gottschalks at Fig Garden Village and then closeing it and bulding one at Riverpark to me seem like major wastes of money, talking over other former store locations like Weinstock was smart but opening a closing stores all over Fresno over the years just proved that Gotschalks was a whore spreading it self around town and dumping it's ex-locations.
Too bad they did not follow Macy's business ethic.

http://www.gottschalks.com
It's funny that the website still has jobs listed.

I'll guess that the new RiverPark Gottschalks can be used now just like the original downtown store location is used today a mostly vacant empty shell with a Discount Swap Mall on the ground floor.