History
Stein Mart was founded in 1908 by Sam Stein, a Russian immigrant who opened his first store in Greenville, Mississippi. The department store carried general merchandise until Stein's son, Jake, took over the company upon his death in 1932. It was then that the store redirected its focus toward discounted clothing.
The chain targeted customers who shopped department stores on a regular basis, inducing them to purchase goods by offering discounts of 25 to 60 per cent off department store prices. By the late 1970s, Stein Mart was a leading retailer of clothing for the family in the Mississippi Delta.
Under Jay Stein’s leadership, Stein Mart grew from three stores in 1977 to 40 stores in 1990, and then to 123 stores by the end of 1996. In determining the prime locations for new Stein Mart stores, management targeted cities with populations of 125,000 or more and relied on demographic research regarding income, education, and occupation to help predict whether a community might support a discounter of designer merchandise.
In 2002, Jay Stein stepped down but remained as chairman and also the largest Stein Mart share holder to this day. John H. Williams, Jr., served as vice chairman and chief executive officer of the company from September 2001 to February 2003 and still serves on the Stein Mart board.
Michael D. Fisher held the position of president and chief executive officer of the company from 2003 to August 2007. At that time, Fisher resigned and Linda McFarland Farthing was appointed as president and chief executive officer of Stein Mart. Farthing had been a longtime Stein Mart board member and held the president and CEO position for one year. Upon her resignation in 2008, David H. Stovall Jr., served as CEO until 2011. In September 2011, he announced his retirement, leading Jay Stein to take over as the interim CEO.
Read more about this topic: Stein Mart
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)