Silo Electronics

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Founded in Philadelphia in 1946 by World War II veteran Sidney Cooper, Silo began as a door-to-door installment business before becoming a discount seller of televisions and appliances. Its first retail store opened around 1951 in Manayunk. The Silo name combined the first two letters of Sidney and his wife Lorraine’s names—an unusually tidy origin story for a chain built on noisy bargains.

Operating as Silo Discount Centers and later Silo/Audio World, the company grew through the Philadelphia region and beyond. It purchased Denver’s Downing’s stores and Arizona’s Appliance-TV City outlets in 1970, launched Audio World in 1972, and built a national footprint around TVs, stereo systems, major appliances, hard-driving advertising, and the eternally urgent implication that a sale was happening right this second.

Cyclops Corporation acquired Silo in 1980. Following the 1987 acquisition of Cyclops by Alleghany Corporation, Silo became part of Britain’s Dixons Group. Silo also acquired 26 Federated Group stores in Southern California in 1989. In 1993, Dixons sold a controlling stake in the then-183-store chain to Fretter for $45 million; all remaining Silo stores closed by the end of 1995.

Our Silo Electronics collection celebrates the age of giant speaker stacks, VCR aisles, fluorescent price cards, and retail commercials delivered at maximum volume. It is a salute to Philadelphia’s discount-electronics specter: part appliance palace, part audio playground, all bargain-bin thunder.