Virgil Jackson Elmore opened the first Elmore's variety store, in Clanton, Alabama, in November 1925. A second store was dedicated, in Jasper, Alabama, in 1927. By 1930, five stores were in operation. The concern was incorporated, as V.J. Elmore Stores, Incorporated, in 1935. The corporate offices, in Clanton, Alabama, were moved to Birmingham in 1941.
The store number had risen to thirty-six by 1940, when the first Mississippi unit was dedicated, in Aberdeen. The 1950s started off with fifty-nine Elmore's stores. This total had increased to sixty-five in 1955, when the first store in Georgia opened its doors, in West Point. The chain would eventually operate stores in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee.
S.H. Kress acquired the assets of the seventy-unit V.J. Elmore chain in July 1963. In turn, Nashville's Genesco Corporation engulfed the Kress-Elmore conglomerate in October 1964. Kress and Elmore's stores continued to operate under their respective nameplates. By 1967, there were 103 operational Elmore's units. The Kress-Elmore division was sold to the McCrory Corporation on January 1, 1981. The chain was dissolved soon after.
*SOUTHGATE MALL, Muscle Shoals, AL (1968)
*McFARLAND MALL, Tuscaloosa, AL (1969)
*PERIMETER MALL, Dekalb County, GA (1971)
