What was autozone before

In , the company changed its name to AutoZone after being sued by Radio Shack for trademark infringement. Hyde was able to keep AutoZone and set up its own corporate structure outside of the now-defunct grocery wholesaler. They started copying our store layout and pricing. But none of them could copy our culture.

Today we have 5, stores. Today, the company is the largest aftermarket automotive parts retailer in North America. Since , AutoZone has called downtown Memphis home, with a ,square headquarters that employs more than 1, Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Louis, Missouri, boasting a 17,square-foot selling floor. By AutoZone had expanded into two additional states, opening stores in Utah and Indiana, for a total of outlets. The company also broke ground for a distribution center in Lafayette, Louisiana, to serve its expanded geographical operations and introduced another line of its specially manufactured items, Deutsch filters.

The 3. Under the structure of the stock offering, KKR retained its ownership stake in AutoZone, as investment partnerships run by KKR retained 68 percent of the company. AutoZone managers kept 16 percent of the company, and former managers retained another six percent, leaving ten percent for the public at large.

With the ten percent of stock offered, AutoZone reduced its bank and mortgage debt and also invested in general company operations. In the five months following AutoZone's stock offering, the price of the company's shares rose dramatically, fueled by enthusiasm for the company's rapid growth and financial prospects.

In September KKR announced that it would sell an additional 2. While AutoZone's financial fate was being determined on Wall Street, the company's operations and expansion continued apace. Its fifth distribution center, in Lafayette, Louisiana, was opened in , as were an additional 53 stores, including the first outlets in Colorado. Also in , AutoZone introduced an electronic Store Management System that allowed prices to be bar-coded and scanned at checkout counters, thus speeding up customer transactions.

In addition, the system allowed electronic credit card and check approval. It refined inventory control and automated in-store accounting procedures. Relying on demographics indicating that the Midwest contained a large pool of blue-collar workers who repaired their own cars both as a hobby and to save money, AutoZone began to plot its expansion into this area of the country.

In the company upped its number of stores to and made its first move into Wisconsin. More openings were made in another Midwest state, Michigan, in To distribute products to its new customers, the company opened distribution centers in Illinois and Tennessee.

As AutoZone continued its rapid and aggressive expansion, its revenues continued to rise as well. To better serve customers, AutoZone in installed Flexogram, a satellite-based system designed to customize store inventory according to local demands and to facilitate communications between store locations.

The company, which opened an average of new retail stores a year, including its 1,th store in , did not slow its blistering pace in the s. Although AutoZone was quickly emerging as the industry's retail leader, the market was becoming increasingly competitive, and the company believed that restricting itself to selling only auto parts would limit its potential.

It was for this reason that AutoZone began to aggressively explore new businesses and opportunities, especially through acquisitions. In AutoZone expanded its consumer target to include commercial customers, such as professional automotive technicians and service stations.

The company introduced a commercial program that provided credit and delivery to mechanics and technicians. Shareholder KKR sold its 13 percent share in the company in , and by Hyde had divested the majority of his interest in AutoZone, although he continued to serve on the board of directors. AutoZone made several important acquisitions in fiscal year , which ended August 29, In February the company bought Auto Palace, a retailer with stores in six states in the northeastern United States.

The purchase allowed AutoZone to move easily into a new market, and within a year all Auto Palace shops had been converted to AutoZone stores. In May the company purchased TruckPro L.

The acquisition provided AutoZone with a doorway into the truck parts business, a fragmented industry with no clear leader and thus similar to the auto parts industry when AutoZone had first begun. The company planned to strengthen TruckPro's business and make it the industry leader. The acquisition significantly expanded AutoZone's presence in the critical California market by increasing the number of AutoZone stores in that state to about , up from one store the previous year.

Although AutoZone was busily involved with acquisitions, the company still managed to open new AutoZone stores during fiscal In December the company opened its first international store, in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, across the border from Texas. By the end of fiscal the company had opened five additional stores in Mexico and had remodeled and reopened 96 of the Express stores as AutoZones.

AutoZone was in strong shape as it celebrated its 20th anniversary. The company planned to continue building its heavy-duty truck parts business and its commercial account division until AutoZone was the leader of both categories.

The company also intended to continue seeking out new opportunities, particularly in international markets. Research by AutoZone pointed to international demand, and the company believed that international markets could support AutoZone stores comparable in number to those in the United States.

In addition, to serve smaller U. Through good purchasing practices, quick inventory turnover to keep prices low, mass advertising, accessible locations, and uniformity, the company was able to build the auto parts do-it-yourself business. In the same year, the auto parts retailer began to register customer warranties in a computer database. In , the company started using a satellite system to broadcast information from store to store. The system is used to help the customers get parts from another store when they and cannot get them from the local store.

These improvements helped the company to expand even more; in in Louisville, Kentucky, AutoZone opened its one-thousandth store. The s brought more improvements for auto parts retail.