Pic ‘N’ Save CEO wants to buy and revive 99 Cents stores in SoCal

An executive for Pic ‘N’ Save Bargains is recruiting investors hoping to buy 143 defunct 99 Cents Only Stores across Southern California in what could be a boon to commercial landlords.

Mark Miller, CEO of the Culver City-based discount chain and former president of Big Lots and the original Pic ‘N’ Save brand, has put together a group of investors to save the local 99 Cents Only stores, Los Angeles Magazine reported.

“It’s a passion for me to try and do this deal because I think it’s such an iconic brand name and has such a great feel for Southern California,” Miller told the magazine.

He said his group is hoping to move very fast to buy the 143 stores. Terms of a pending deal were not disclosed.

The Commerce-based 99 Cents Only announced Friday, April 5, it would close all 371 stores, ending 42 years of bargain-basement merchandise sales in California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas.

99 Cents Only Stores was founded in 1982 by Dave Gold, who opened its first store in L.A’s Ladera Heights, according to his 2013 obituary in the Los Angeles Times. Gold, who’d been working at a liquor store owned by his father, found that marking down surplus goods to 99 cents caused them to sell out “in no time.” 

Miller, who didn’t disclose the backers of his plan to buy up 143 stores across the Southland, said he’d close the stores for about 90 days after the going-out-of-business sales. 

He’d then win customers back by returning the shopping experience to the “treasure hunt” style that made 99 Cents Only and other bargain stores popular in the first place.

As the current chairman, president and CEO of Pic ‘N’ Save Bargains, Miller has two stores in Anaheim and Whittier. The original Pic ‘N’ Save, founded in 1950, was bought by Consolidated Stores in 2002, then converted to Big Lots. Miller revived the brand in 2020.

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Miller, a friend of Gold, has put together a team that includes former 99 Cents Store executives, and they believe they can turn the stores around by focusing on the shopping experience instead of expansion, according to Los Angeles Magazine.

The discount chain veteran said he believes it’s crucial to communities across Southern California that 99 Cents Only stores continue to exist.

“This group of customers is priced out of other chains,” Miller said. “It stretches their buying power. Especially today. That’s why this is a passion for me.”

— Dana Bartholomew