Groceteria.com

A newspaper in Toronto has published an article on the now-defunct GEM chain featuring two vintage ads.
http://torontoist.com/2010/08/vintage_t ... _store.php

GEM operated one store in Cleveland for a short time in the mid '60's, on Miles Road in Warrensville Heights. I think that people who were union members were also permitted to join, because my dad was invited. (He never did join.) The store did not last very long, maybe 3-4 years. It then became a Value City that had an extremely long run, lasting to the end of Value City operations.

There was also a store called FAME which was on Broadway and McCracken roads in Garfield Heights. I think it was the same concept. I was a kid then and my parents never went there so maybe someone else from Cleveland can elaborate on this.

GEM and similar stores originally used the membership model to get around "fair trade" practices which allowed manufacturers to constrain distributors from selling to stores that sold below manufacturers' list prices. A membership group or association was a loophole in these practices, because they were not open to the general population. The use of government employees was probably based on PXs (post exchanges) that WWII and korean War vets would have known in the Armed Forces. Government employees also were a large easily verifiable base for setting up an "association". Union members would have been another. Fair Trade practices were struck down in the courts and the membership model became uncompetitive. Usually, this was dropped or made so loose as to be no longer functional. FEDCO, in LA moved to a very broad government contractor criterion that made it possible for just about anyone to join. Stores like COSTCO were based on a related model that started with small businesses, based on large volumes of limited assortments.

I remember GEM and Fame. My grandfather once worked for Hawthornden State Hospital (now North Coast Behavioral Healthcare). As a State Of Ohio employee, my grandfather and his family (including my mother and grandmother) had membership privileges for GEM and Fame. I remember that Fame was destroyed by a fire in 1964, and GEM opened a few months after that. Thing is, sometimes GEM's prices weren't that much lower than Uncle Bill's, Atlantic Mills, or Giant Tiger...which were the dominant discounters in the Cleveland area at the time. GEM closed in the late 1960's, and Value City took over shortly afterward.