The Side Project Outlived the Store
The chain operated nearly 400 discount stores before selling every one in 1988. The division it launched on the side is now one of the largest retailers in the world.
The Sign That Blinked and Went Dark
The strip center still has the same flat roof, but the five letters that used to light up above the entrance one at a time have been gone for decades. The supermarket next door is still open, and the parking lot has not changed.
When the store was running, you could see the racks of clothing through the wide glass storefront from across the lot. Shopping carts lined up outside the door in a crooked row.
Inside, a loudspeaker announced fifteen-minute specials while a light flashed somewhere among the aisles. Bins of marked-down goods sat beside shelves of toys, housewares, and shampoo.
The sign above the entrance had spelled it out one letter at a time: Zayre.
Poland is buying more gold than China
Poland's central bank has bought 82 tonnes of gold this year.
China bought less.
Poland has 37 million people. China has 1.4 billion.
Their central banker was asked why he kept buying while the price slid. He said the drops were the point.
Warsaw holds 632 tonnes now. They want 700.
Somebody over there is racing a clock.
It runs out November 30th.
The Store Was Not the Business
To the customer, it was the cheapest option on the strip. Discounted clothing, toys, housewares, electronics, and health and beauty products filled a no-frills building under fluorescent light.
The Feldberg family opened the first store in Hyannis, Massachusetts, in 1956, naming it from a Yiddish word meaning "very." The first location sat beside a supermarket, and the shared parking lot supplied foot traffic from the start. The format spread through strip centers across the eastern half of the country.
But the parent company built a different kind of retail business on the side. The company's most valuable creation was born inside its least profitable division.
In 1977, the parent opened the first T.J. Maxx in Auburn, Massachusetts, selling surplus branded goods at steep discounts. By 1983, T.J. Maxx and a women's apparel chain called Hit or Miss produced nearly 45 percent of the parent's total operating income, up from 14 percent in 1980. The discount stores carried the company's name, but the subsidiaries carried the profits.
Cheap Goods Next to the Groceries
Zayre expanded during the suburban boom of the late 1950s and 1960s. Strip center placement next to supermarkets meant a customer buying groceries walked past the discount store every week without being asked. By the early 1970s, the chain had grown to more than 200 locations.
At its widest reach, the chain operated nearly 400 stores across 26 states. The parent also launched a warehouse club in 1984, adding another retail format to the business.
Urban locations proved especially profitable. By 1983, they contributed a significant share of sales and profits, filling spaces other retailers had abandoned.
Cleaner Stores Took the Same Customer
Through the 1980s, Walmart expanded eastward from the rural South into the same suburban markets. Its stores were larger, its distribution system moved goods at a scale the older chain could not match, and its prices ran lower at the register.
The aging discount stores had grown cluttered and worn. What once looked affordable now looked neglected, and the customers who had come for low prices found lower ones a short drive away.
In the first half of 1988, the discount stores reported $69 million in operating losses on $1.4 billion in sales. The off-price subsidiaries, meanwhile, continued to turn a profit.
Every Location Changed Hands at Once
Zayre Corp sold its discount stores to Ames in 1988 for about $800 million.
In June 1989, the parent merged with its off-price subsidiary and dropped its own name from the business.
Ames closed 74 of the acquired locations immediately and struggled to absorb the rest. By April 1990, Ames itself filed for bankruptcy, partly strained by the cost of digesting a chain almost its own size.
By the end of that year, every former Zayre store had been closed or converted.
The Division That Replaced the Company
The off-price model that the discount chain incubated survived and kept growing. The successor company now operates more than 5,000 stores worldwide, among them T.J. Maxx and Marshalls.
Its annual revenue exceeds $60 billion. The warehouse club the company launched in 1984 now trades independently as a public company.
What survived was the business that never carried the name.
The sign went dark. The side project never closed.
