Zayre
. The building is now home to the Dubuque ShopKo store.
Zayre was a chain of discount retail stores that operated in the United States from 1956 through 1989. The company headquarters was in Framingham, Massachusetts.
History
The Zayre chain was begun in Hyannis, Massachusetts in 1956 as a discount department store chain. It was initally based out of the northeast but soon expanded to other areas. During the early 1970's the company began the TJ Maxx and BJ's Wholesale chains. These chains were later sold off. Zayre would come to have an image problem, where it would be come to be seen as offering low class and low quality merchandise. Also the stores began to look seriously outdated. In October of 1988 the Zayre stores were sold to Ames Department stores. This doubled the size of the Ames chain, but caused many problems for Ames, and brought about a large loss for that chain. Eventually Ames would close 74 stores, and converted the rest into Ames stores. As a result, some of the remaining Zayre stores would operate under the Ames name until Ames ceased operations in 2002. External LinksA Tribute to ZayreA Zayre Website
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