Jamesway: When Kitsch Gets Out of Hand - Post-Mortar

[@PostMortar]

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[@DavidJudy-i8v]

I worked for Jamesway in the mid 90s. This video hit it right when they said the employees where the ones who grieved the most. To this day I am still heart broken and still remember my old coworkers. We where family. I still have my name tag in my lockbox.

[@PostMortar]

I understand that. Jamesway was one of those unique companies that are hard to find nowadays.

[@joevonloser00]

Excellent job. My hometown (Middletown Pa) had a Jamesway. Best store I can remember growing up. Loved that store.

[@PostMortar]

Thank you! Jamesway was great back in the day.

[@UMAMIMAMU]

R.I.P. Jamesway & Saturday's Market. 😭😭😭

[@joevonloser00]

@@UMAMIMAMU I'll never find pumpkin roll as good as the ones at Saturday's Market 💯

[@UMAMIMAMU]

@@joevonloser00I miss the broasted chicken stand that was right to the left when you walked in the main entrance. That and the Korean restaurant all the way in the back. That place kicked ass.

[@joevonloser00]

@UMAMIMAMU I don't even know who you are but if you were a fan of that place like me, then you're ok in my book 💯

[@thetinysideoftiny7625]

Thank you SO MUCH for creating this wonderful documentary! I grew up with Jamesway in Latrobe Pennsylvania. It was a cornerstone in my childhood. I bought my first Star Wars figure there in 1977 and my first Stomper truck. I would agree that the atmosphere was like a big family. We knew all the employees and they knew my entire family. The Jamesway diner was my favorite restaurant in town. Millie and Teresa would serve us breakfast...2 eggs, hash browns, and toast for 99 cents. Endless awesome memories from Jamesway.

[@genegjr]

I remember shopping at the Jamesway in New Castle Delaware at the New Castle Square mall it was a store that was affordable

[@thefool2007]

Wow that was excellent. I was child when my mom and I shopped at the Souderton, PA store off route 113. It was a nice store and I remember liking it quite a bit. The competition up the street was Woolco (which was formerly a Grants).

[@ap70621]

We had one near where I lived in Wantage, NJ. It became an Ames after Jamesway's 1995 bankruptcy.

[@juliewheelerMOOGIE]

I worked there. The day we had our grand reopening after a remodel....they told our manager we were closing. He waited until after the weekend to tell us. I was sad to see it go.

[@jetman80pops]

Thank you for doing Jamesway finally. It was my favorite retail store growing up in Jersey during the 80s. Helped that they had a better toy section then the local Kmart did. I vividly remember getting Star Wars GI Joe and transformers there. It was the anchor store at the smaller indoor mall here. When it went out in 95 sat empty for a year or so then Walmart moved in.

[@trentpettit6336]

This must have been at Ledgewood Mall, am I right?

[@jetman80pops]

@@trentpettit6336 you're right

[@sheepfish1]

I remember shopping at the Jamesway in Valley Forge Mall in Phoenixville. It was a nice store that got replaced by Ames and then Redners grocery. Back then the mall was all indoors. Now it's the Shoppes at Valley Forge.

[@danl.4565]

Great video. Grew up with Hills, Jamesway, Ames and K-mart. Sad to see we're basically just left with Walmart and Target....

[@oliverjones1845]

I’m new to this channel. Keep it up you earned a subscriber!

[@appalachianwoman561]

There were no Jamesway stores near me in southwest Virginia but I really appreciate your videos and taking a look back at least to the 1980s when I was a kid. Around me, well an hour away in the place my family used to go shopping it was Hills that I loved. Also at one time before they all closed there were 4 Kmart stores within an hour drive of my home and at one of them I got a bowling ball as they actually used to carry stuff like that in their sporting goods.

[@boballmendinger3799]

We had a great Jamesway in Clarion PA. Many still miss both it and the Burger Chef that was next to it!

[@jasonmango5232]

You need to do a show on G.C. Murphy, another 5 & 10 store that was based in the Northeast.

[@MarkYarton]

At jamesway we care about you

[@Brisbanesdaddy]

The M O'Neil Co. It was the most profitable division of the May Department Stores Co. O'Neil's was based in Akron Ohio and had a 600000 SQ foot store and many mall stores and other free standing stores. O'Neil's closed in 1989 after a 100 year run. There was also another fabulous downtown Akron major department store called Polskys that was owned by Allied Department Stores and also had a fairytale story along with Yeagers Federmans Kreskies. Akron was the former rubber capital of the world and had hundreds of thousands high paying factory jobs and many higher end retailers. There would definitely be a good story for you about the Akron Ohio retail history particularly of O'Neil's and Polskys

[@liquidsatan666]

Great video! My mom worked for Jamesway in the 80s, an as a kid in the 90s, we used to go there all the time. Kinda still miss it, honestly

[@trentpettit6336]

Which location did she work at?

[@liquidsatan666]

@@trentpettit6336 The one on Rt 9 in Freehold NJ, which is now a Burlington

[@EricBohsr]

Bethlehem pa loved it... rented Nintendo games there

[@brian_david]

Another absolute banger of a video, keep it up man!!!

[@eromitlabhitw]

When my family lived in northern Virginia in the 80s, we had a Jamesway on Route 7 in Sterling. It was never the place you wanted to be seen or be wearing clothes from; being a "Jamesway jammer" was yet another reason to be excluded from "the cool kids".

[@markstrouse3101]

Great great great video. I used to work for jamesway

[@trentpettit6336]

Which location did you work at?

[@DJProfessorB]

When I was a kid I met Shawn Michaels at a Jamesway with my mom. He signed a WWF t-shirt that I was wearing, of which I stupidly threw away several years later in middle school because it “wasn’t cool anymore” to like wrestling. 😂

[@trentpettit6336]

Which location was this?

[@DJProfessorB]

@@trentpettit6336 From what I remember it was either Peekskill or Yorktown, NY. Around that area, which is a part of Westchester County. There were several popular WWF wrestlers of the time there for the signing, but I only gave a crap about Jake the Snake and Shawn Michaels as a kid.

[@mst3kanita]

Outdated-ness is in the top 5 killers for these discount stores it seems.

[@undergroundretail]

Great Video!!! 🔥 We can all say Walmart killed a lot of companies… Walmart and now Amazon & Target are all juggernauts.

[@User0000000000000004]

Ha! That Ross Perot sticker!

[@trentpettit6336]

Fun fact… that was the Jamesway in Thorndale, Pennsylvania (next to Coatesville, which is about halfway between Philadelphia and Lancaster) which later was an Ames, and now is a Kohl's store. The original Jamesway/Ames building was completely demolished, but Kohl's today uses the Jamesway roadside sign structure for their roadside sign!

[@famousprod1]

Whatever happened to the brick and mortar Bill Knapps? I know they are online store now. Did they see a trend and get ahead of it or, we’re they forced into that life?

[@agent_skully]

I'd like to see Showbiz Pizza, Otasco or TG&Y.

[@American-Motors-Corporation]

Okay so the computer segment I can certainly say that that was basically Kmart's problem Walmart did invest in the computers but Kmart did not especially because Kmart had embezzlement problems even in the late '70s well at the same time they're stock paid one hell of a dividend to shareholders and by the time the late '70s rolled around Kmart gained a reputation for having basically ghetto stores because they failed to really do any maintenance. So yeah I can see why a lot of the retailers didn't want to invest in computer technology I mean they knew that it would most likely help their business after all the barcode system that existed at the time for the railroad definitely helped the railroad get their shit together so I think they knew that a technically worked but as far as they were concerned the system they already had in place worked and it wouldn't cost them any more money to gain one more ounce of efficiency was not really a priority back then frankly you could survive Kmart had a lot of other problems that kind of screwed them The logistics was one of the biggest but to be honest you know they probably would have done fine through the '80s had they have not ended up with at least a couple of more embezzlement problems at the top. So I can understand why a regional discounter would blow off computers quite frankly I think most probably would have back then.

[@American-Motors-Corporation]

Well woolco is it interesting Wednesday basically had an inconsistency problem they had a bad habit of building huge stores in tiny towns well at the same time they would do the opposite in bigger towns they were not consistent with square footage and square footage makes a breaks a store in fact w.t Grant actually had that problem. Yeah WT Grant was not just a situation where they got stuck in downtown areas they were also a huge situation that when they did build stores outside of the downtown areas they were not consistent with the size of those stores. And they too had a habit of building too big of a store for too small of an area and vice versa. Woolco what is of course say spin-off of Woolworths but Woolworth the five and dime company had zero idea how to run a big department store they hired some decent management at least at first but it was quickly determined that that management that is going to be ahead of woolco, will not function autonomously and they will basically take direct orders from senior management of Woolworth basically they hired decent experienced managers only to put them in yes man positions and they were basically just to carry out whatever orders they were given and they had virtually no say in what went on so the company was actually prevented from running the way it should have been they had the business to a degree it was just simply they did not know what the hell they were doing and they wouldn't let the people that didn't know what they were doing actually do something.