Shopko
former chain of retail stores
Shopko Stores, Inc. (stylized as SHOPKO, formerly stylized as ShopKo) was a chain of department stores based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. All locations closed on June 23, 2019, with the exception of the Shopko Optical locations, which continue to operate.
The company was founded in 1962 by James Ruben as ShopKo Corporation (with upper-case "K"). It opened its first store in 1962 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
From 1991 to 2005, the company was publicly held, with stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SKO. In December 2005, the company was acquired by an affiliate of Sun Capital Partners and reverted to private ownership. Starting that year it opened a number of smaller stores named ShopKo Express. In June 2007, the company changed its name to Shopko Stores Inc. (with lower-case "k").
In 1999, Shopko purchased Pamida, a regional discount chain that operated mainly in smaller communities of 3,000 to 8,000 people.
The public source identifies “Shopko” as former chain of retail stores. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Shopko, former and chain.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7501155. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019, 1962, 1991 and 2005.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shopko” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.