W.T. Grant Turned a Profit for 68 Straight Years. Two Years Later, It Was Gone

From its first store until 1974, W. T. Grant ended every single year with a profit. Less than three years later, all of its stores were gone. How? In 1906, a salesman named William Thomas Grant put the thousand dollars he had saved into one store in Lynn, Massachusetts, a shoe-factory town north of Boston. It sat between the five-and-ten and the department store: the Twenty-Five Cent Store, where customers paid cash at the register. By 1972 there were about twelve hundred Grant's stores, with lunch counters, canaries in cages and school clothes, a Grant's coupon book or charge card in kitchen drawers across the country, and a headquarters high in a new tower on Times Square. Then came 1973, the biggest sales year in the company's history: $1.85 billion. That same year, profit fell by more than three-quarters. Each share earned 59 cents, and Grant's paid its shareholders $1.50 a share anyway. The warning had been printed in the company's own annual reports for years, in one plain line: the money customers still owed the store. And within months, Grant's future would rest with people who had never worked behind a counter. This film follows that line from the first coupon books to credit quotas, dollar-a-month payment plans stretched over three years, 143 banks, and the last 359 stores in the winter of 1976. It draws on Grant's own annual reports, federal court records, a tax court case that laid out how the coupon book worked, reporting from the time, a scholarly study of the bank testimony, and the memories of people who worked in the stores. And it tries to be fair to everyone in the story: the founder, the store managers, the families who bought on credit, many of whom paid every dollar, and the clerks who stayed until closing day. What to make of it is up to you. Chapters: 0:00 Padlocked in Westerly, 1976 3:59 A Quarter Store in Lynn 7:31 Main Street, a Quarter at a Time 11:38 A Book of Paper Money 16:07 Saturday at the Grant's Counter 20:47 The Storekeeper Becomes a Lender 25:08 A Tower on Times Square 28:55 $1 a Month for Three Years 33:02 1973: The Biggest Year 36:35 The Line Nobody Added Up 41:41 143 Banks Take Charge 45:44 Negative Net Worth 50:58 The Last 359 Stores 55:55 Sixteen Cents on the Dollar 59:20 What Really Killed Grant's 1:02:27 The Card in the Drawer Selected sources: James A. Largay III and Clyde P. Stickney — Cash Flows, Ratio Analysis and the W.T. Grant Company Bankruptcy, Financial Analysts Journal (1980) W. T. Grant Company — Annual Reports, 1936–1974 (Internet Archive collection) Davita Silfen Glasberg — The Power of Collective Purse Strings (1989) U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit — In re W. T. Grant Co., 699 F.2d 599 (1983) U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit — In re W. T. Grant Co., 620 F.2d 319 (1980) U.S. Tax Court — W. T. Grant Co. v. Commissioner, 58 T.C. 290 (1972) Time — Grant Surrenders (1966); Grants Cuts Back (1975); Grant Goes Under (1975) William T. Grant Foundation — Known for Values: William T. Grant on His 150th Birthday, interview with Eric A. Johnson (2026) Maine Historical Society — Notes from the Archives: Grants Department Store (2014) Florida Division of Historical Resources — 1960 Civil Rights Demonstration, historical marker (2001) Joan Concilio — Sharing memories of W.T. Grant department stores, York Daily Record (2018) This is a documentary about history, not financial advice. Some scenes are illustrated with reconstructions. #WTGrant #RetailHistory #BusinessHistory About this film: some scenes are AI-generated reconstructions, used only where no original footage or photographs exist, and they are marked on screen as reconstructions. The narration is an AI voice. The script is researched and fact-checked against the sources listed above.