Valu-Mart was a chain of discount stores founded in Seattle in 1958. Its parent company was Weisfield's Jewelers. For many years Weisfield's was a store that carried jewelry, as well as televisions (many Seattle residents purchased their first television set from them), radios, stereos, and other consumer electronics products. Once Valu-Mart was put into place, Weisfield's strictly became a jewelry store. The chain also had stores in Oregon, where they originally were named Villa-Mart. Separate grocery sections in the stores featured curbside grocery (or parcel) pickup by placing the grocery bags into numbered bins that rolled onto a conveyor allowing the customer to drive up to the front of the store to pick them up by giving the attendant a plastic card with the numbered bin they used. The groceries were then loaded into the car usually by store employees.
The stores were a direct competitor to another Seattle based membership chain founded by Joe Diamond called Gov-Mart/Baza'r. When Joe Diamond sold Gov-Mart/Baza'r to new owners that relocated the company to Portland, this was the start of Valu-Mart becoming more upscale shedding the discount store image while Gov-Mart/Baza'r continued as a full service discount store with both chains using the curbside pickup of groceries at the front of the grocery sections of their stores. Both companies eliminated the membership policies by the mid-1960s while having a major presence in Washington and Oregon until Fred Meyer aggressively expanded into both markets during the mid-1970s.
The store chain grew to 21 locations with most locations in Washington and Oregon (known in Oregon as Villa-Mart at first) covering every major area from Bellingham to Eugene and Eastern Washington. Locations were also constructed in Anchorage, Reno, and Great Falls Montana. During 1973, some older stores were replaced in the Seattle/Tacoma area when Weisfield's acquired White Front locations after the chain closed most of the Puget Sound locations.
In 1974 (after Gov-Mart/Baza'r would be acquired by PayLess/House of Values) the Valu-Mart name was eliminated and changed to Leslie's to compete with other retailers such as Fred Meyer and neighboring malls by providing a more upscale format that didn't work so well as the result of the mid 1970s inflation concerns while Fred Meyer continued to increase their presence in the Puget Sound region with bigger stores, lower prices, and updates to their current Marketime locations (Fred Meyer locations acquired in the Seattle area during the 1960s without a grocery section) including leasing Valu-Mart locations and other smaller market discount and department stores while K-Mart would expand further in the area with newly built stores (including acquiring the former North Seattle White Front location in 1977) as well as acquisitions of the PayLess (before the chain was considered a drug store) House of Values, and Value Giant (the names used in locations in Pierce, Kitsap, and Thurston counties where the PayLess brand overlapped the original Tacoma drug store brand founded by the Skaggs family) stores during the 1980s.
Both discount chains (Fred Meyer and K-Mart) would have control of the Seattle/Tacoma market until Target would locate in the late 1980s.
History
Started as membership stores (similar to Costco), the requirement would disappear by the mid-1960s as the stores would try to switch from a no-frills warehouse look to a full-service and more upscale look, taking efforts to change its status as a junior department store. By the 1970s, space was being leased to other companies with hopes of acquiring the space at a later time focusing on general merchandise needs only. Each store contained clothing, variety, toys, sporting goods, pet (mostly fish), home and garden, electronics, appliances, notions, pharmacy, groceries (in most locations), a sweet shop, automotive (with repair), a restaurant, beauty salon, and a jewelry department (similar to Weisfield's).
The original stores were built in Seattle (in Georgetown off of Corson St.), Tacoma (off 35th St.), Spokane (5204 East Sprague), North Seattle (185th and Aurora), Yakima (905 E Mead), and Bellevue (140th NE and Bel-Red Rd). The Georgetown location served as the flagship store for the chain until 1973, when the chain acquired a former White Front store in Burien and relocated its offices to the new site and shut down the Seattle location.