On 23 October 1958, William Amthor and Lincoln Bartlett opened the first Cost Plus Imports store at 2552 Taylor Street on
Fisherman's Wharf in
San Francisco,
California. Amthor and Bartlett worked at Amthor's family's import business in San Francisco, which had imported a surplus of
wicker furniture. Unable to offload the pieces via wholesale, they rented of warehouse space in the Fisherman's Wharf area. The imported furniture sold quickly, and Amthor began a new business as a retailer. When the first store opened in 1958, it was devoted to wicker and rattan that the company had imported. The store was named Cost Plus after their strategy of pricing the imported goods at cost, plus ten percent. The stores featured an eclectic mix of imported furniture and home furnishings, displayed in the style of a bazaar. In 1962, with the help of the
Tandy Corporation (the owner of
Radio Shack), Cost Plus Imports incorporated and opened its first franchise location in
San Mateo, California. From 1962 to 1965, Cost Plus opened 15 franchised locations in California and Texas. While Cost Plus owned the brand name and imported the merchandise, the franchise stores themselves were owned by Tandy. In 1965, the management of the franchise operation had decided that the business model of Cost Plus was too oriented toward sales from their large store in San Francisco, which Tandy viewed as not well-suited for smaller franchises. They gave Cost Plus 12 months notice that they would be starting their own operation and in 1966, the franchises were successfully importing their own products and had rebranded as
Pier 1 Imports, run as a division of Tandy Corporation. The two companies would remain competitors for many decades. In 1968, Cost Plus would open a third location in
Mayfield Mall in
Mountain View, California. The chain would eventually grow to 258 stores across 39 states and Washington, D.C. The Fisherman's Wharf location would have a floor size of 40,000 square feet at its peak and remained Cost Plus's
flagship store for many years, The company's profits declined during the 1980s, but a significant reorganization of the company's stores and product line during the early 1990s turned the company's fortunes around, and it began a round of expansion, expanding to over 100 stores by the end of the decade. In 2012, Cost Plus was acquired by
Bed Bath & Beyond for $495 million. In 2014, Cost Plus World Market launched an online
crowdsourcing-model marketplace, Craft by World Market. The website posts items for one month at a time, and sells only products that attract enough pre-orders to be worthwhile. In October 2019, Bed Bath and Beyond announced pending closure of 40 Bed Bath and Beyond stores and 20 stores of World Market and other subsidiaries, including the original store at Fisherman's Wharf. The company sold Cost Plus World Market to Kingswood Capital Management in February 2021. ==References==