History
Outlet Malls first appeared in the Eastern United States in the 1930s. Factory stores started to offer damaged or excess goods to employees at a low price. After some time, the audience expanded to non-employees as well. In 1936, Anderson-Little (a men's clothing brand) opened an outlet store independent of its existing factories. Until the 1970s, the primary purpose of outlet stores was to dispose of excess or damaged goods.
In 1974, Vanity Fair opened up the first multi-store outlet center in Reading, Pennsylvania. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Outlet malls experienced strong growth. The average outlet mall is opened with between 100,000 to 200,000 square feet of retail space. This can gradually increase to up 500,000 to 600,000 feet. The average outlet mall has an area of 216,000 feet. In 2003, outlet malls generated $15 billion in revenue from 260 stores nationwide.
The number of malls in the 90's increased from 113 in 1988 to 276 in 1991 and to 325 in 1997.
Outlet malls are not an exclusively American phenomenon. In Europe, retailer BAA McArthurGlen has opened 13 malls with over 1,200 stores and 3 million square feet of retail space. Stores have also been emerging in Japan since the mid to late 1990s.
Read more about this topic: Outlet Store
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)