No, Hills was on the ropes in 1998 when they were acquired by Ames. They had filed their second Chapter 11 filing, and if Ames hadn't bought them at that time they would have liquidated, probably after the 1998 Christmas season. I remember reading in the paper at the time that Ames was going to pay 55 cents on the dollar of Hills debt to buy the company, but Hills creditors objected to that and Ames eventually raised its bid to 70 cents on the dollar to get the deal done. Personally, I think that's what put the nail in Ames coffin. Ames wasn't exactly a financially strong company either. Yes, they were profitable, but barely, considering how many stores and sales they had at the time. Even at the time I remember thinking to myself, wow, this is like Zayre all over again, Ames didn't learn a thing. If Ames couldn't acquire Hills at a lowball offer, they should have watched Hills liquidate and then bid on the most desirable locations / assets in the bankruptcy process. Then Ames could have cherry-picked only the locations they absolutely knew would be cash cows. But you know, "empire building" in the executive suite. That's basically what Ames did when Jamesway went belly-up at the end of 1995. There was rampant speculation that Ames would buy out Jamesway especially since Ames' CEO Joseph Ettore had previously had a long career at Jamesway, including CEO. But Ames held back, and ended up acquiring 10 of Jamesway's best locations after the company went out of business. Presumably Joseph Ettore had the inside information from being CEO of Jamesway, he would know which stores had been profitable and which ones weren't.

Hills really seemed like a class act. “The Anti-Inflation Store” really was just that, even into it’s final days. Ames should’ve waited for them to liquidate before buying them out, and given the chain a respectful phasing out. Great video.

No former store I miss more than this one by far !

I’ll never forget that “Hills is where the toys are”. The fall like that of Sears, etc rests in the greedy hands of private equity.

Seems to me that Mike Bozic and his team got Hills turned around from their first bankruptcy and healthy and profitable again, then Dickstein Partners (Private Equity firm) came in and started all that turmoil (battle for control of the company) so management had to concentrate on all that infighting instead of dealing with Wal-Mart, etc which they SHOULD have been doing. Once Bozic and his people were forced out, the end was all but ensured . . . once one of these "Private Equity" firms gets control of the company . . . . Well, if you watch a lot of these types of videos, you'll see that's a common theme, not just with chain stores, but all kinds of businesses, once the "Private Equity" people come in, they load up the company with debt, pay themselves massive bonuses, sell off the profitable parts of the business, real estate holdings, etc, pocket that money too, and leave the carcass to crash and burn in bankruptcy.

I used to shop at the Fort Oglethorpe location until they closed