Ollie's Bargain Outlet Opens Its 700th Store in Maplewood, Minnesota

Ollie's Bargain Outlet cuts the ribbon on its 700th store Thursday, September 24, at 1717 Beam Avenue in Maplewood, Minnesota, an eastern Twin Cities suburb. The 9 a.m. ceremony comes with a donation of 700 books, one for every store in the chain, to Gillette Children's through the Children's Miracle Network. The timing lines up with National Literacy Month, and the books are earmarked for the hospital's new book nook.

Ollie's has been doing this since 1982: buying up closeout merchandise and excess inventory and selling it for up to 70% off under the banner "Good Stuff Cheap." As of August 1, the close of its fiscal second quarter, the chain operated 686 stores across 36 states, according to its own release. Maplewood pushes that total to 700. A lot of that growth has come the same way: backfilling second-generation big-box space instead of building from the ground up. Roughly a fifth of Ollie's stores sit in old Kmart or Toys R Us boxes, and lately the chain has taken to buying leases straight out of bankruptcy proceedings, 11 sites from 99 Cents Only's 2024 collapse, 24 leases out of the Big Lots estate, rather than waiting around to negotiate with landlords after a box goes dark.

Minnesota fits the pattern. This isn't Ollie's leapfrogging into new territory so much as filling in around a base it already has in the region. No further Twin Cities openings have been announced, but the company's stated site-selection criteria, leases at or below market rate in supply-constrained or hard-to-enter trade areas, suggests more infill is coming wherever big-box vacancy has opened a door.

The fiscal second quarter, reported earlier this month, was a strong one: adjusted earnings of $1.42 per share, up 43% year over year, on net sales of $741.3 million, up 9.1%, according to Chain Store Age's coverage of the results. Ollie's opened 15 stores in the quarter and 42 through the first half of fiscal 2026, putting it on track for full-year guidance of roughly 75 new stores. That's well above the 50-to-55-store cadence management had been targeting as recently as fiscal 2024, back when the company was still building out distribution capacity in Pennsylvania and breaking ground on a fourth center in Princeton, Illinois, per Retail Dive's earlier reporting. In 2023, executives said they were confident in reaching at least 1,050 stores over the long haul. They haven't put a new number on that target since.

CEO Eric van der Valk was in a celebratory mood about the milestone. "We are thrilled to celebrate the opening of our 700th store in Maplewood, Minnesota," he said in the release. "Since our start, Ollie's has been passionately committed to serving communities by delivering extreme value on products people want and need." He sounded just as confident talking to analysts on the September earnings call, when the subject turned to real estate: "Real estate availability remains very good. We continue to be ahead of the pipeline and we feel very confident about next year."

Ollie's has built a lot of this growth on other retailers' failures. Kmart, Toys R Us, 99 Cents Only, Big Lots. That supply doesn't refill itself forever, and the next leg toward four figures in store count is going to test how well the model works when sites come from landlords instead of bankruptcy courts. Worth noting too: a 75-store pace for fiscal 2026 is a real step up from the 50-to-55 cadence flagged just two years ago, which says management sees more room to grow than it did during the post-pandemic construction slowdown it was citing back then. And van der Valk's comment that the 2027 pipeline is mostly locked in, with 2028 still open, is a useful marker for anyone in leasing or brokerage trying to gauge how far out Ollie's site-selection team is currently committing. Worth checking back on as the fiscal year plays out.