found the shopping center location successful and quickly went on to open stores in newly constructed centers throughout its marketing area. Early shopping center stores include No. 127 in Greenville, South Carolina's Lewis Plaza; No. 130 in Raleigh's Cameron Village; No. 132 in Greensboro's Summit Center, and No. 135 in Jacksonville, North Carolina's New River Plaza. Each of these stores was larger than the previous, leading the company in the direction it would take in the 1960s. When a shopping center location opened in Spartanburg's Pinewood Plaza in 1961, the building had around of floor space and advertised itself as a "discount department store". Other similar stores opened in Greensboro, Louisville, Roanoke and Virginia Beach before a prototype store that opened in High Point, North Carolina. In 1965, Roses opened a store in Morristown, Tennessee. From this point on until the 1990s, Roses began replacing smaller stores with these large shopping center locations. These shopping centers stores upgraded the lunch counters that had been a feature in most of the older downtown stores with cafeterias. In the late 1970s, the upscale PHR Center Shops (about six remained) were merged into the main operation while the remaining small stores were grouped into a division called "P.H. Rose Variety Stores", which the company continued to operate until it sold the remaining 50+ locations to Variety Wholesalers in 1984 to concentrate on their larger stores. Struggles and later developments When Wal-Mart first moved into the region in the early 1980s, its larger store format seriously diminished Roses' market share and profitability. Roses filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1993, and had emerged from it by May 1995. In 1997, Roses was purchased by Variety Wholesalers, which dates back to the 1932 opening of Pope's 5 & 10 cent stores in Fuquay-Varina and Angier, North Carolina. There were 106 Roses stores in operation when Variety completed the purchase. Variety quickly returned the Roses stores to profitability and soon began an expansion program that has doubled the number of stores. Rose's Stores, Inc. was renamed Variety Stores, Inc. in 2001 but the stores have continued to operate under the Roses name. Roses has begun opening stores in Jacksonville, Florida, again in 2011 and 2012. They are located on Arlington Road and on Lem Turner Road in an old K-Mart store. In the early 1970s Roses had been recognized as one of the nation's most rapidly