Younkers Inc. (/ˈjɒŋkərz/) [2]is an American online retailer and former department store chain founded as a family-run dry goods business in 1856 in Keokuk, Iowa.

The chain itself was sold by the late 1990s, with ownership transferring out of state, and its Des Moines-based headquarters closed by 2003 as a part of a corporate consolidation.

[3] The company was founded by three Polish Jewish immigrant brothers Lipman, Samuel, and Marcus Younker,[4] who opened a general store in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1856.

The future novelist and newspaper editor Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd worked as a clerk at the Younkers store in Des Moines in 1889.

[5] In 1899 the Younker brothers' main store in downtown Des Moines was moved to 7th and Walnut Streets, and it operated at the same location for 106 years before closing on August 12, 2005.

It also installed Iowa's first escalator, known as the "electric stairs," in 1939.A series of additions, enlargements, and mergers resulted in the company changing its name to Younkers Incorporated.

[8] In the early hours of March 29, 2014, a fire ravaged the former Younker Brothers Department Store in downtown Des Moines while it was under renovation.

[15] After a hostile takeover bid by Carson Pirie Scott was rejected in 1995, Younkers' shareholders agreed to a friendly merger by Proffitt's, Inc., of Knoxville, Tennessee.