G. E. M. Membership Department Stores, also known as G.E.X. or G.E.S., was a chain of discount stores in the United States and Canada. The chain extended membership to direct and indirect government employees ; the name was an acronym for "Government Employees Mart."
Appliance and electronics departments in G.E.M. stores were operated by Wards Company, which later changed its name to Circuit City.
The stores closed during the discount store shakeout of 1973.
Canadian pharmacist Murray Koffler was an investor in the G.E.M. chain, bringing the first G.E.M. store to Toronto in 1959. He eventually subleased the G.E.M. drug department in several Toronto area stores. Following the G.E.M. discount model, Koffler later opened one of the first "big box" store chains, Shoppers Drug Mart.
In the Buffalo, New York area, the SuperFlea fleamarket on Walden Avenue is housed in a former GEX building. Locations extended at least as far south as Birmingham, Alabama. In the Washington, DC area in 1970, there were stores in Alexandria, Virginia Beach, Bethesda, Tysons Corner, Suitland, Hyattsville, and Baltimore East and West.
The G.E.M. Store at 9495 W. 75th Street in Overland Park, Kansas, closed in January, 1973. The original building now houses a JC Penney outlet store.
Famous quotes containing the words department stores, membership, department and/or stores:
“While the focus in the landscape of Old World cities was commonly government structures, churches, or the residences of rulers, the landscape and the skyline of American cities have boasted their hotels, department stores, office buildings, apartments, and skyscrapers. In this grandeur, Americans have expressed their Booster Pride, their hopes for visitors and new settlers, and customers, for thriving commerce and industry.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)
“All his works might well enough be embraced under the title of one of them, a good specimen brick, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.” Of this department he is the Chief Professor in the World’s University, and even leaves Plutarch behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When their stores are full, idiots are considered wise.”
—Punjabi proverb, trans. by Gurinder Singh Mann.