For two decades, San Francisco’s most anticipated shopping event wasn’t a VIP trunk show or invitation-only runway: It required lining up first come, first served before sunrise in SoMa’s South Park neighborhood.

Starting in 1995, the Black Friday sale at Jeremy’s department store offered as much as 60 percent off the already discounted designer and luxury merchandise on the day after Thanksgiving. The scene was a fabulous frenzy. Socialites and fashion-school students competed for Prada and Tom Ford; Pacific Heights residents searched bins of Pucci next to Mission District hipsters. If you wanted something, you had to grab it fast — per the rules of the fashion jungle.

When Jeremy’s closed its South Park store last year, a gasp was heard in the Bay Area fashion orbit. But while clients wrung their hands over the news, Jeremy Kidson, the 50-year-old owner and founder of Jeremy’s, was busy preparing the next act for his almost-30-year-old business. All his customers had to do was wait.

A year later, the wait is nearly over. On a recent afternoon, the sun is streaming through the Tiffany stained glass windows of the former First Church of Christ Scientist in Oakland’s Uptown district. Kidson stands in the 116-year-old house of worship, which he is turning into his latest and grandest location yet. He is overseeing the transformation of the spaces himself, from sacristy and choir balcony to the Sunday-school classrooms.

No detail will be overlooked, from the preservation of historic elements like the grand Romanesque-revival woodwork to the exact hue of gray for the Nevada limestone exterior. It’s an enormous undertaking (the building is more than 10,000 square feet), but Kidson is excited to do it his way. It’s the way he’s always operated, completely hands on and without outside interference; he’s never taken on a business partner or outside funding.

“You wouldn’t be the first person to call me a perfectionist,” Kidson jokes later in his office, his rescue German shepherd Rock-O curled up next to his chair. “I am a perfectionist. At the end of the day, it’s a store with my name on it.”

In November, with the opening of the new Jeremy’s, Kidson is betting he can relaunch the fabulous frenzy, this time in a new city.

Born in San Francisco, Kidson was the youngest of four siblings (two younger half-siblings came later via his mother, Diane Pfaff’s, remarriage). His parents divorced when he was a child, and Kidson says his father was “completely out of the picture” by the time he was 4.

His mother was swept up in the hippie culture of the day, bringing her children with her. “I remember seeing the Grateful Dead at the Winterland Ballroom with her when I was really young,” he says. “My mom didn’t really treat her kids like kids. I think that people who survive difficult environments tend to get independent and stronger early.”

Kidson attended eight schools as his mother moved the family around. He remembers them almost joining a contingent that relocated to Jonestown in French Guiana with the San Francisco-based Peoples Temple. (Thankfully the move never happened due to his mother’s last-minute reservations about the relocation.)

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Though Kidson’s maternal grandfather, Edward Zabel, ran a women’s apparel company in San Francisco under the name Mr. Z, Kidson says that as a youth he never thought of going into fashion or retail. After moving back to Berkeley by himself, he had his first job in fashion at 19, driving a truck for a clothing company. Shortly after he met a sales rep for the Fashion Mart on Market Street in San Francisco.

Kidson admits to “bombing” as a sales rep, but he joined a friend organizing designer sample sales and had what he says were his first serious lessons in business. Ever enterprising, he juggled money for purchases with income from sales and eventually came out in the black.

In 1987, Kidson opened his first store, New West, on Brannan Street. (He changed his business name to Jeremy’s in 1993 after receiving a cease and desist letter from Estee Lauder, which already owned a cosmetics company called New West.) From the beginning, Kidson’s business model focused on designer and luxury fashion at a discount. Sometimes the pieces were samples, sometimes they were pieces with damage or manufacturing issues, and frequently they were unsold lots from a previous season. The labels were some of the biggest in the industry: Gucci, Armani, Saint Laurent, and Brunello Cucinelli in addition to Kidson’s own line, Europa, which he designed and sold in store in the early ’90s. Although stores like Loehmann’s and Filene’s Basement on the East Coast were already selling designer clothes at a discount, Kidson says his highly curated approach was a first in the industry. The store quickly resonated with the public.

“I used to bike around SoMa on the weekends and I used to go to the Esprit outlet and New West,” early Jeremy’s customer Maureen Fitzgerald says. “I’d probably spend about $10 on something. New West felt like a secret treasure that always had a little treat for me.”

Kidson moved the store to South Park in 1993, and while already a multimillion dollar-a-year business, the move pushed Jeremy’s to a new level. The clientele ranged from workers in the then-burgeoning tech industry to local socialites and celebrities like Naomi Campbell, Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone and Winona Ryder. Jeremy’s also opened a second location in Berkeley on College Avenue, a store that will also close to consolidate in Oakland.

By 2015, however, Kidson felt that the South Park neighborhood “no longer served the needs of Jeremy’s, and Jeremy’s didn’t serve the needs of the tech community either,” as the store’s new startup neighbors did most of their shopping online and were less interested in designer deals. Kidson began hunting for a new home for the store.

“I told the broker if there was ever a church, school or a mortuary available I was interested,” Kidson says. “I wanted something unexpected and unusual, a place that had a story. I also knew I wanted to be in Oakland. Many of my customers who used to be in San Francisco were suddenly commuters from there.”

In January, he got a call about an unlisted property in Oakland: An old church on Franklin Street whose congregation had shrunk to fewer than 20 people. When Kidson saw the Uptown church, he fell in love with it.

“I got goosebumps; it had a feeling of drama in the right way,” Kidson says. “It told a story, but in a secular, timeless way. I love the idea of trying to make it a little more modern while keeping everything intact.” Kidson says one of the reasons the congregation sold to him (he paid $2.6 million for the building) was because he wasn’t going to gut the building. “The round rotunda space is one of the most beautiful spaces I’ve been in — how could you gut that?”

The new Jeremy’s is the perfect stage for what Kidson calls “the grand experience” he wants to bring to his customers. It isn’t just about quality merchandise at a fraction of the price, but about giving people a reason to get out of the house instead of shopping online.

The old main chapel of the church, with its domed stained glass ceiling and windows, will become the primary shopping area with dressing rooms along one wall and checkout across the other. The disassembled organ pipes are being salvaged into custom clothing racks. The choir loft, which looks out onto the main floor, will be a place for DJs and bands for events and during extended hours during Oakland’s First Friday’s Festival in the neighborhood. A combination cafe and wine/beer bar are also part of the plan.

It wasn’t just the space that Kidson fell for, it was also the community.

“Oakland is not only where a lot of my customers were suddenly coming in from to shop at South Park,” he says. “It’s also a place where things are happening. The energy here, the scene — it’s all very ‘now’ the way it’s evolving. I saw this place not only as a great location but a great destination, a place you could spend a whole day.” Convenient for customers from outside the East Bay, there’s a nearby garage and the 19th Street BART Station a block away.

“As someone who loves Oakland’s historic architecture and shopping locally,” says Oakland Mayor Libby Schaff, “Jeremy’s respectful re-imagination of the First Church of Christ Scientist as a much-needed major retail outlet is a win-win for our community, local business growth and historic preservation. I can’t wait to start shopping.”

The perfectionist in Kidson loves planning out that grand experience for his clients. From the hunt for the bargain to on-site tailoring and the cafe and entertainment, Kidson says the new space is conceived not just for today but “for the next 30 years.” Fittingly, the next 30 years will begin on the busiest shopping day of the year, as Kidson plans the reopening on Black Friday.

“What experience do you want when you’re shopping?” Kidson asks. “It’s like recorded music verses hearing it live. With Jeremy’s, I just want to do something where people are happy. I want it to be perfect.”

Kidson suddenly stops midsentence and considers his words. “Well, if not perfect, I want us to be the very best at what we do.”

With Black Friday just around the corner, it’s never too early to start lining up.

Tony Bravo is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tbravo@sfchronicle.com

Jeremy’s Oakland

1701 Franklin St.

Opening Nov. 25, 2016

www.jeremys.com