Mammoth Mart was a discount department store chain, located in the

northeastern United States The Northeastern United States (also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast) is List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau. Located on the East Coast of the United States, ...

, primarily in the

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

area. The chain was founded by Max Coffman and Henry Gornstein in

Framingham, Massachusetts Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex County and the MetroWest subregion of the Greater Boston ...

in 1956, and was something of a prototype for the large, downscale department store, selling housewares, hardware and clothing in stark, unfussy buildings, usually in suburban

shopping center A shopping center in American English, shopping centre in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English (see American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, spelling differences), shopping complex, shopping arcade, ...

locations. Other discount department store retailers like

K-Mart Kmart ( ), formerly legally registered as Kmart Corporation, now operated by Transformco, is a department-store chain and online retailer in the United States and its territories. It operates four remaining Kmart big-box department stores � ...

Zayre Zayre () was a chain of discount stores that operated in the eastern half of the United States from 1956 to 1990. The company's headquarters were in Framingham, Massachusetts. In October 1988, Zayre's parent company, Zayre Corp., sold the store ...

, and

Bradlees Bradlees Department Store, more commonly known as Bradlees, was a discount department store chain based in Braintree, Massachusetts, which operated primarily in the Northeastern United States. Bradlees sold various retail items in its stores, inc ...

would subsequently expand on this concept. Their advertising mascot was Marty the elephant, a smiling, blazer-wearing mammoth.

History

In 1956 Max Coffman and Henry Gornstein opened the first Mammoth Mart (at the time known as Mammoth Mills) in Framingham, MA. It was originally called Mammoth Mills due to the first store being in a mill building that used the same name. The name was changed to Mammoth Mart in 1962. By 1969 the chain had 35 stores. In March 1970 Mammoth Mart diversified their holdings by acquiring the eight-unit Boston Baby chain of juvenile merchandise stores, eventually expanding the division to fifteen stores. This venture was a failure, and the chain liquidated in 1973. In September 1970 Mammoth Mart acquired two locations from Key Stores. The cost of liquidating Boston Baby, combined with the economic effects of the

1973 oil crisis In October 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) announced that it was implementing a total oil embargo against countries that had supported Israel at any point during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which began after Eg ...

, rising inflation, increased shrinkage and Phase IV of the Nixon Administration's program of Wage and Price Controls, forced the company to file for bankruptcy protection under Chapter XI of the

Bankruptcy Act of 1898 The Bankruptcy Act of 1898 ("Nelson Act", July 1, 1898, ch. 541, ) was the first United States Act of Congress involving bankruptcy to give companies an option of being protected from creditors. Previous attempts at federal bankruptcy laws had l ...

—one of the precursors (along with Chapter X of the 1898 Bankruptcy Act) of today's

Chapter 11 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, w ...

— on June 17, 1974. The chain was acquired by now-defunct King's Department Stores for $43 million (~$ in ) on June 15, 1977. The final locations were rebranded to King’s by Spring 1979.

References

Companies based in Massachusetts History of New England Economy of the Northeastern United States Defunct discount stores of the United States Defunct department stores based in Massachusetts Retail companies established in 1956 Retail companies disestablished in 1978 1956 establishments in Massachusetts 1978 disestablishments in Massachusetts {{US-retail-company-stub