[3] Brothers Paul, Victor, and Charles Baddour opened a dry-goods store named Good Luck in Coldwater, Mississippi, in 1947.

Fred's Inc. had owned and operated two smaller additional chains, Getwell Drug & Dollar and Yazoo Trading Company.

[4] On December 21, 2016, it was announced that Fred's would acquire 865 stores as a result of the Walgreens Boots Alliance/Rite Aid merger expected to close in 2017 for the price of US$950 Million.

Shore retired and was replaced by Michael Bloom, former CEO of Family Dollar, where he resigned after the company was unhappy with financial results.

[8][9] During early 2019, deteriorating performance prompted Fred's to plan to close the vast majority of the stores, shrinking their number from 568 (as of February 2)[10] to just 80 – an over 85% decline – in four waves: However, rather than continuing efforts to remain in business on a greatly reduced scale, the company announced on September 9, 2019 that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and ending operations.