Stein Mart
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stein Mart NASDAQ: SMRT is a chain of department stores that sells boutique, apparel, footwear, linens and home decor.
Stein Mart, Inc. is based in Jacksonville, Florida, and describes itself as "a hybrid between a better department/specialty store and a traditional off-price retailer."
The company reported approximately $1.5 billion in sales in its 2006 year and that it has 261 stores.
Stein Mart's target customer is 30 years old and above with many senior shoppers. The majorty of locations are in the South.
[edit] History
Stein Mart was founded by Sam Stein, a Russian immigrant who opened his first store in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1902. Under Stein, the store remained a general merchandise department store, providing basic goods to the residents of Greenville. Upon his death in 1932, Stein's son Jake took over the store and redirected its focus toward discounted clothing.
A focus on discounted clothing was certainly timely as the country was at the height of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The original Stein Mart department store withstood the Depression and enjoyed moderate success during the postwar period, when a return to full employment increased the purchasing power of consumers.
Stein Mart offered customers the same ambience as a regular department store with discounted prices. In doing so, it helped to define "off-pricers" as a new category in retail. Stein Mart targeted customers who shopped department stores on a regular basis, inducing them to purchase Stein Mart goods by offering discounts of 25 to 60 percent off of department store prices. By the late 1970s, Stein Mart was the leading retailer of clothing for the family in the Mississippi Delta.
Under Jay Stein, Stein Mart pursued a steady expansion program, growing from three stores in 1977 to 40 stores in 1990 and to 123 stores by the end of 1996. The chain first tackled new markets in the Southeast, establishing stores in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Later, Stein Marts began cropping up in the Midwest, with stores in Indiana, Ohio, and Missouri. 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.
According to Stein Mart's early 1997 10K report, the company planned to open between 26 and 28 stores in 1997, some in states new to the company, such as California, Nevada, Iowa, and Wisconsin. After 75 years of existence as a single store, Stein Mart's accelerated growth between 1977 and the 1997 could only be regarded as phenomenal. By creating a new niche between discount and department stores while funding growth internally and keeping costs down, Stein Mart was extremely successful. With its concept of upscale discounting, Stein Mart hoped to meet an internal goal of 600 stores by the end of the decade according to an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Given the intense competition and fragmentation in the retail industry, reaching this goal would present a challenge.
