Channel Home Centers

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Channel Home Centers was the big, bright do-it-yourself destination built from the older Channel Lumber business. Abraham Levy and Morris Charin established the lumber concern in Newark, New Jersey in 1922; Louis L. Slater, Levy’s son-in-law, opened the first retail outlet in Newark in 1948. Eventually, the operation traded lumberyard practicality for the increasingly vast promise of the home center.

Based in Whippany, New Jersey, Channel grew through the 1960s and 1970s, moving beyond its New Jersey roots into surrounding northeastern markets. W. R. Grace & Co. bought the Slater family business in 1977. By 1979, Channel had more than 70 locations—a lot of aisles in which to debate plywood grades, lose a shopping list, and emerge with a new faucet.

In 1986, Channel executives acquired Grace’s home-improvement division in a leveraged buyout that included Channel and other regional operations. Expansion came with a price: Channel filed for Chapter 11 protection in January 1991, planned the closure or sale of 34 stores, and emerged from bankruptcy in March 1992.

Our Channel Home Centers collection celebrates the relentlessly useful spirit of the pre-big-box home center: orange-and-blue-era weekends, lumber dust, impossible repair projects, and the enduring belief that one more trip to the store would solve everything. In August 1994, Eos Partners acquired Channel and Rickel and merged their operations under the Rickel name, retiring the Channel banner.