Several Roses Discount Store locations have shut their doors recently, and local headlines are making it sound like the whole chain is collapsing. That concern is understandable. But based on what’s actually been reported, the full picture is more straightforward than the headlines suggest.
This article covers who owns Roses, what’s really happening with recent closures, why individual store shutdowns don’t equal a chain-wide failure, how to check if your local store is affected, and how to avoid mixing up Roses with other “Rose” businesses in the news.
What Roses Discount Stores Is and Who Runs It
Roses is a regional discount store chain headquartered in Henderson, North Carolina. It operates across 15 states, mostly in the South and Mid-Atlantic regions. The chain is owned by Variety Wholesalers, Inc., a private company that also runs other discount retail brands.
The brand started as Rose’s 5¢ 10¢ 25¢ Stores and eventually grew into a full-format discount and variety retailer. Because Variety Wholesalers is privately held, detailed financial information isn’t publicly available. That makes it harder to assess the company’s overall health — but it also means you shouldn’t assume the worst without solid evidence.
What we do know is that Variety Wholesalers has been active enough to take over retail leases from other chains, which points to a company that’s still operating, not winding down.
The Difference Between a Store Closure and a Chain Shutdown
This is the part that matters most. A store closure means one location stops operating. It could be due to a lease ending, a landlord redeveloping the property, or that particular store not performing well enough to keep open.
A chain shutdown is a completely different situation. It typically involves bankruptcy filings, liquidation sales across all locations, and significant coverage in the national business press. Think of what happened with Bed Bath & Beyond or Tuesday Morning — those companies filed for bankruptcy, announced chain-wide closures, and held liquidation sales in every store.
None of that has happened with Roses or Variety Wholesalers. No credible source has reported a Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing. No chain-wide liquidation has been announced. The closures getting attention right now are individual locations, each with its own specific reason for shutting down.
A simple way to think about it: closing a few stores is like pruning branches on a tree. Going out of business is cutting the whole tree down. Current evidence points to pruning, not collapse.
Which Roses Stores Have Actually Closed — and Why
Looking at the specific closures that have made the news, each one has a distinct, local explanation.
Lower Burrell, Pennsylvania
A Roses location in Lower Burrell closed in January. Local TV station WPXI covered the closure as a specific store event, not a signal of broader company trouble. No chain-wide context was reported alongside it.
Ocean City, Maryland
This closure gets a lot of attention because Roses had been a long-standing shopping spot in the area. But the reason it closed isn’t about the chain struggling — the mall property owner has plans to redevelop the 17-acre site, and the building where Roses operated is slated for demolition. That’s a landlord-driven real estate decision, not a corporate retreat by Roses.
Marion, North Carolina
A Roses store in Marion closed in August after more than 70 years in the community. Local news covered it with a sense of nostalgia, which is understandable. But a long history doesn’t protect any store when local demographics shift, competition increases, or lease economics no longer work. Long tenure and business viability are two different things.
Mercer Mall, West Virginia
This one is particularly important to understand correctly. The Roses at Mercer Mall didn’t simply close — it relocated to nearby Princeton after the lease at the mall wasn’t renewed. That’s a relocation, not an exit from the market. A Facebook post from the mall itself clarified this, noting that a different business would eventually take over that space.
The pattern across all four examples is clear: each closure has a specific, local cause. None of them point to a company-wide decision to shut down operations.
Why Retail Chains Close Some Stores Without Failing
Closing individual stores is a normal part of running a retail chain. It’s called store portfolio management, and every major retailer does it. Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and similar discount chains regularly close specific locations while opening or moving others. That doesn’t make headlines the same way because people aren’t searching for those closures the same way.
Roses operates primarily in smaller cities and rural markets. Those communities see real shifts over time — population changes, new competition moving in, older mall properties falling out of favor. When a store’s location no longer makes financial sense, closing or relocating it is the responsible business decision, not a sign of failure.
Variety Wholesalers’ history of taking over leases from other chains also matters here. A company that’s actively acquiring retail space is not behaving like one that’s preparing to shut down. It’s behaving like one that’s still making moves.
How to Find Out If Your Local Roses Is Affected
If you’re worried about a specific Roses location, here’s a practical approach to getting a real answer:
- Search your city’s name plus “Roses store closing” in Google News to find any local coverage.
- Check social media pages for your local mall or shopping center — closure announcements often appear there first, as the Mercer Mall example showed.
- Call the store directly. If they’re open, they can confirm their status.
- Watch for in-store signage. Liquidation sales, going-out-of-business signs, and marked-down inventory are the clearest signals that a specific location is wrapping up.
Don’t rely on headlines from other towns to draw conclusions about yours. Each closure has its own cause.
Don’t Confuse Roses Discount Stores With Other “Rose” Businesses
Search results around “Is Roses going out of business” can pull up news about completely unrelated companies. Two of the most common sources of confusion are worth addressing directly.
Rose Inc — the Beauty Brand
Rose Inc is a cosmetics brand co-founded with model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Its joint venture partner, Amyris Inc, declared bankruptcy in August 2023, which disrupted Rose Inc’s operations. The brand’s assets were later sold at auction to AA Investments in December 2023. This has nothing to do with Roses Discount Stores. Different industry, different company, different situation entirely.
The Rose Growing Industry
Coverage of rose flower growers going bankrupt or consolidating has circulated in business press. Again, this refers to agricultural producers in the cut flower business — not the Roses retail chain. A 2012 Los Angeles Times piece on the rose growing industry is one example of this type of coverage that can surface in searches and mislead readers.
If you’re researching Roses Discount Stores specifically, make sure the articles you’re reading actually mention the retail chain, Variety Wholesalers, or locations in the South and Mid-Atlantic. If they’re talking about beauty products or flower farms, you’ve landed on the wrong story.
What a Real Chain-Wide Shutdown Would Look Like
For context, here’s what it actually looks like when a retail chain goes out of business. You’d see public bankruptcy filings with a court, announced liquidation sales across all stores, a shutdown of the company’s website and customer communications, and significant coverage in national business publications.
None of those signals are present for Roses or Variety Wholesalers right now. The closures making the news are local stories, not a company-wide event. If that changes, it will be obvious — bankruptcy filings are public records and liquidation sales are hard to miss.
For more business coverage on retail trends and company news, you can visit Bloom Business Mag.
What We Don’t Know — and Why That’s Worth Acknowledging
Because Variety Wholesalers is a private company, there’s no public financial data to review. We can’t say with certainty how profitable Roses is, how its overall sales are trending, or what its long-term expansion plans look like. Retail is a tough, margin-thin business, and discount retailers face ongoing pressure from chains like Dollar General that have spent years building dense store networks in rural and small-town markets.
What the current evidence does support is this: some Roses locations are closing or relocating for specific local reasons, and the chain as a whole continues to operate across 15 states. That’s a meaningful distinction from going out of business.
The Bottom Line
Roses Discount Stores is not going out of business as a chain — at least not based on anything that’s been reported. Individual stores have closed in Lower Burrell, Ocean City, and Marion, and one relocated from Mercer Mall to Princeton. Each of those decisions has a specific, traceable reason: a landlord redeveloping property, a lease not being renewed, or local market conditions shifting.
That’s normal retail. It happens at every major chain, discount or otherwise. The closures feel significant at the local level because these stores have often been community anchors for decades. But local significance and corporate collapse are two different things.
If you want to know whether your specific Roses is staying open, check local news, contact the store, and look for any in-store announcements. That’s the most reliable way to get a straight answer — not reading headlines from a different state.
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