Big Lots Brand Guidelines: Odd Lots of 1982, a 2024 Bankruptcy & Variety Wholesalers

A Columbus company that bought other firms’ leftovers.

Big Lots grew out of a Columbus, Ohio, business that dates its roots to 1967. English Wikipedia says the company was founded that year as Consolidated Stores; a first-day declaration filed by the company’s chief financial officer in its 2024 bankruptcy case, as summarised by Debtwire on 9 September 2024, names the founder as Sol Shenk and gives the earlier company name as Consolidated International. Both sources place the business in Columbus, where its headquarters stayed.

The closeout format came later. English Wikipedia says the company’s first closeout store, called Odd Lots, opened in Columbus in 1982. Because of a naming conflict with Revco’s Odd Lot Trading Co., stores outside Ohio traded as Big & Small Lots, and the company later brought all of its shops under the Big Lots name. The same source says Consolidated went public in 1985 on the American Stock Exchange and moved to the New York Stock Exchange in 1986.

Growth in the 1990s came through acquisitions. English Wikipedia lists Toy Liquidators in 1994, KB Toys in 1996, later sold to Bain Capital in 2000, and MacFrugals, which traded as Pic ‘N’ Save, in 1998. The CFO’s declaration, as reported by Debtwire, says the company bought a run of closeout chains that traded under different names until 2001, when they were all placed under the Big Lots brand; English Wikipedia says the parent company was renamed Big Lots, Inc. that same year.

Closeouts, furniture and a change of course.

A Big Lots store sold closeout and overstock merchandise next to regular lines. According to the CFO’s declaration summarised by Debtwire, the company described itself in 2024 as a discount home goods retailer selling furniture, décor, kitchenware, groceries and pet supplies, with an online business beside its stores; its furniture included the Broyhill brand. English Wikipedia notes that the name was often styled with an exclamation mark, as Big Lots!.

The company tried other formats along the way. English Wikipedia says it ran a wholesale division for more than three decades under the names Big Lots Wholesale, Consolidated International and Wisconsin Toy, closing it at the end of fiscal 2013, and that it shut its standalone furniture stores in 2005. In July 2011 it bought the Canadian closeout retailer Liquidation World, its first move outside the United States; it opened its first Canadian store under its own name in April 2013 and left Canada in 2014, the same source says.

Its buying strategy changed more than once. Debtwire reported that, according to the declaration, Big Lots began in the mid-2010s to put national brands and everyday items ahead of closeouts and “extreme bargain” lines, a change the CFO said brought higher average prices, fewer shoppers and flat sales; from 2018 and 2019 a new leadership team moved the business back towards discount buying. Retail Dive described the same move away from closeouts and extreme bargains on 30 December 2024, as part of the background to the company’s collapse.

Other pressures came from suppliers and property. The declaration, as reported by Debtwire, said that United Furniture Industries, the main maker of the Broyhill furniture Big Lots sold, shut unexpectedly in November 2022, leaving the retailer to find other vendors, and that in July 2023 the company sold and leased back a California distribution centre and 23 stores it had owned. Supermarket News noted in April 2025 that Big Lots had been known for closeout groceries and consumables and had been looking to widen its grocery and pet food ranges before it filed for bankruptcy.

How discount and variety retailers present themselves.

Discount and variety retailers tend to put their offer into the name itself. Some chains take a price as their name, as Poundland did in 1990 and 99p Stores did after it; others use initials, a family name or a short invented word. When a chain built on a single price begins to sell items above it, the name stays on the fascia while the range changes behind it, and advertising rules can then limit what the shop is allowed to say about its prices.

The fascia carries most of the identity. A shop sign on a high street or retail park usually pairs the name with a short strapline, such as B&M’s “Big Brands, Big Savings,” described by The Grocer in 2020. Inside, the same name and colours tend to repeat on aisle headers, shelf tickets, seasonal end displays and carrier bags, so that a shopper sees one consistent mark from the car park to the till.

Own-label naming is a quieter part of the system. Variety chains often sell well-known brands alongside goods under their own labels, and some suppliers prefer their products to appear under a retailer’s name rather than their own. Formats are named in the same plain way: a home store, a local convenience shop, an express branch, each a variation on the parent name rather than a separate brand.

The corporate side is published separately. Listed or formerly listed chains keep investor pages with dated histories of founders, owners, acquisitions and listings, and those pages, read alongside independent press, are a dependable guide to who owns a fascia at any given time. In this sector ownership changes often, through buyouts, listings, sales and administrations, and the guides in this series give those changes with their dates.

From Chapter 11 to a new operator.

Big Lots filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on 9 September 2024 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, Debtwire reported that day, with a proposed sale to the private equity firm Nexus Capital Management as the opening bid. That sale did not go ahead. Retail Dive reported on 30 December 2024 that, after the Nexus deal failed, Big Lots had begun going-out-of-business sales and had then agreed a sale to Gordon Brothers, which would pass at least 200 and up to 400 stores, and up to two distribution centres, to Variety Wholesalers. English Wikipedia says the bankruptcy court approved the sale on 1 January 2025 and that the remaining stores were to close permanently.

Variety Wholesalers, based in Henderson, North Carolina, runs stores under banners including Roses, Roses Express and Maxway, and said it would keep the Big Lots name, REBusinessOnline reported on 6 January 2025. HomePage News reported on 4 April 2025 that Variety had acquired 219 Big Lots stores out of bankruptcy and was reopening them in waves, with remodelled interiors and closeout deals, starting with nine stores in towns including Asheboro, North Carolina, and Roanoke, Virginia, and adding family apparel and electronics. Supermarket News reported on 29 April 2025 that 132 more would reopen in May across 14 states, with a smaller furniture range and more clothing. English Wikipedia says the old company, renamed Former BL Stores, Inc., converted its case to a Chapter 7 liquidation on 10 November 2025. The Columbus company founded in 1967 has wound down; the Big Lots name now hangs over a smaller group of stores run by Variety Wholesalers.

For a design guide, Big Lots shows how a store name can outlast the company that built it, passing through bankruptcy to a new operator who keeps the sign. Compare Dollar Tree and Five Below, two other US discount chains. For this guide we use a bargain orange, ink and warm white with a heavy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Big Lots’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.