From a single shop in Clanton in 1925, V. J. Elmore’s 5¢-10¢ Store grew to more than 100 locations in multiple states. Through changing styles and shopping trends, through earth-shaking economic change and war, the store never experienced an annual net loss.
Virgil J. Elmore was born on a Coffee County farm in 1887. But the Wiregrass soil did not long hold him. At 21, he moved to Elba, intent on starting a life in business. He found success as a partner in a general store, catering to area farmers, the kind of people he knew well. In 1916, the restless young entrepreneur moved again, this time north to Clanton, where he opened a clothing store. The following year, he set aside his business interests and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served at Camp McClellan in Anniston as part of the Quartermaster Corps, a fitting assignment for his procurement skills.
During his military service, Elmore placed his Clanton business interests in the care of a trusted and successful older partner. Returning to Chilton County, Elmore opened a military surplus store nearby. Over the next several years, he adapted his line of merchandise to the variety-store model. In November 1925, he rebranded as V. J. Elmore’s 5¢-10¢ Store. That year, Chilton County patrons purchased almost $33,000 of his merchandise.
Based on the success of his Clanton store, Elmore expanded. In 1927, he opened a second location in Jasper, followed by a third the next year in Wetumpka. To oversee the launch of the new stores, Elmore turned to young Ocie Webb. Similar rural upbringings had united the two men across a generational gap. By the time Webb’s career with the business concluded, he had risen from a high school stockboy to one of its chief executives.
Elmore’s offered the residents of smaller Alabama towns the same wares available in larger cities. The two-story Elmore’s location in Greenville, for example, became an important commercial establishment for many people who lived between Montgomery and Mobile.
The company’s mixture of non-perishable goods and inexpensive household necessities helped it weather the effects of the Great Depression, which doomed many higher-end competitors. A 1933 sales ad for the Wetumpka store offered a 1000-yard spool of thread or a thick pad of school paper, each for just 9¢. A similar ad from the Andalusia store invited patrons to “save the difference at Elmore’s” and offered fabric for 15¢ a yard and heavy-duty men’s work shirts for 50¢. At the start of the Depression, there were four store locations. Over the next decade, the number steadily grew to 31 stores employing 1,200 people with a combined annual sales volume of more than $1 million. The company paid its stockholders regular dividends.
The company’s practice of purchasing and renovating older buildings meant that no two Elmore’s were exactly the same. But despite differences of size and shape, each location featured the same large glass storefront, framed with a bright red top and crowned with the company name. Inside, stores were packed with a standard inventory of 4,500 different items. Racks with comics and paperback books crowded around the door. A sea of tabletops filled with clothing, linens and gleaming appliances awaited. Some stores even suspended items like sunhats, umbrellas and lawn chairs from the ceiling.
In 1940, after 15 years of expansion within the borders of Alabama, Elmore’s opened its first out-of-state location in Aberdeen, Mississippi. That same year, Virgil Elmore relocated company headquarters from Clanton to Birmingham and opened a new 36,000-square-foot distribution center.
When he sat down to pen his annual letter to stockholders in February 1942, Elmore presided over 44 locations and a sales volume of $2.2 million. Writing weeks after Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the Second World War, though, the businessman was stoic. “With the prospect that victory can only come after arduous painful months, and perhaps years, brings the realization that, for the duration, all considerations must be subordinate to the military necessities of our nation.” The executive’s prescient letter predicted rationing, loss and personal sacrifice. As he wrote, three of his store managers had already been called to active duty. More would follow.
But Virgil Elmore did not live to welcome these employees home from war. Early on the morning of September 12, 1942, he was killed in an automobile accident in downtown Birmingham when a young, inexperienced delivery truck driver collided with his car at an intersection. The five-and-dime entrepreneur left behind a wife and two children, including his 11-year-old namesake. In a letter to stockholders a few months later, Ocie Webb paid tribute to the “broad-gauge character” of Virgil Elmore, “his singularly accurate business judgement, his courage, indefatigability, and tenacity of purpose.”
Olive Elmore served as president of the company begun by her husband for many years thereafter. The couple’s children later served on the board as well. The family presided over the continued growth of Elmore’s. Sales topped $10 million in 1961, the same year the company renovated many of its older stores and expanded into new spaces in shopping malls. There were then 68 locations spread across three states. There was even an Elmore’s in Maycomb, Nelle Harper Lee’s fictional Alabama town in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It was at Elmore’s that Jem Finch bought his strong-minded sister Scout a coveted sequin-bedecked twirling baton for 17¢. The purchase quickly served a dastardly purpose, however, when Jem snatched it from her grasp and wielded it like Excalibur against the unsuspecting camelia bushes of the pugnacious and spiteful Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose.
Soon after one of Alabama’s most celebrated 20th-century authors wrote the company into literary history, Elmore’s was acquired by the larger variety-store empire of S. H. Kress & Co. In 1972, global retailer Genesco Inc. merged the operations of the two chains under a combined division. Within a decade, both storied five and dime chains were relegated to history, literature and memory.
Historian Scotty E. Kirkland is a freelance contributor to Business Alabama. He lives in Wetumpka.
This article appears in the November 2024 issue of Business Alabama.
