California

John Bullock opened his namesake store in downtown Los Angeles in 1907, and Bullock's became Southern California's premier department store, celebrated for elegant service and the Art Deco landmark Bullocks Wilshire with its luxe Bullock's Wilshire 'tea room.' The upscale Bullock's brand and its sister stores passed through Federated and then a 1988 buyout before the nameplate was retired and converted to Macy's in 1996.

Mervin Morris opened the first Mervyn's in San Lorenzo, California in 1949, building a mid-priced department-store chain that anchored West Coast and Sun Belt malls with brand-name apparel and home goods. Owned for years by Dayton-Hudson (later Target), Mervyn's was sold to private-equity investors in 2004, who saddled it with debt and split off its real estate. Squeezed between Kohl's, Target, and Macy's, the chain filed for bankruptcy and liquidated its roughly 175 stores in 2008.

Founded by a former Del Taco partner, Naugles was a Southern California fast-food chain serving Mexican food around the clock, beloved by night owls for the Macho Combo Burrito and a cult-favorite menu. Naugles merged with Del Taco in 1988, and the Naugles name was retired by the mid-1990s. Devoted fans kept its memory — and recipes — alive so persistently that the brand was legally revived as a small restaurant in 2015.

Russ Solomon grew Tower Records from a corner of his father's Sacramento drugstore into a cultural institution, with vast, stay-open-late stores — the Sunset Strip and Greenwich Village locations chief among them — that treated records as a way of life. Famous for its yellow-and-red logo, knowledgeable clerks, and the magazine Pulse!, Tower was a hangout as much as a store. Crushed by CD downloading, big-box discounting, and heavy debt, Tower liquidated its U.S. stores in 2006.

Webvan was a dot-com-era online grocer that promised same-day home delivery from automated warehouses, backed by hundreds of millions in venture capital and a fleet of branded delivery vans. It expanded into multiple cities and built costly distribution centers far faster than its customer base grew. When the internet bubble burst, Webvan burned through its cash and collapsed in 2001 — a textbook cautionary tale that nonetheless prefigured today's grocery-delivery business.

Wet Seal began in Southern California in 1962 and grew into a national fast-fashion chain aimed at teen and young-women shoppers, with trendy, inexpensive clothing in malls across the country. It thrived in the 1990s and 2000s but was hit hard as teen tastes fragmented and online and fast-fashion rivals surged. After repeated losses and store closures, Wet Seal filed for bankruptcy and shut its remaining stores in 2017.