Tom Vellios

Tom Vellios possesses an incredibly deep, highly rigorous background in mass-market retail merchandising and aggressive corporate expansion. Having successfully navigated the intense operational complexities of large-scale retail as the CEO of Zany Brainy and a senior executive at Caldor, this massive background in complex inventory logistics provided the exact strategic blueprint required to architect Five Below.

Tom Vellios is a highly prominent American retail executive and the co-founder of the massive specialty discount chain Five Below. Born in Greece, Vellios spent decades aggressively climbing the corporate ladder of the American retail industry, holding massive executive roles at Caldor and serving as the CEO of Zany Brainy. In 2002, he partnered with his former Zany Brainy colleague, David Schlessinger, to completely reinvent the discount retail space. Launching Five Below, they targeted the highly lucrative tween and teen demographic with trendy merchandise priced strictly under five dollars. Serving as CEO until 2015 and subsequently as Executive Chairman, Vellios was absolutely critical in scaling the company from a single store in Pennsylvania into a multi-billion dollar public retail empire with hundreds of highly profitable locations nationwide.