Mammoth Mart

Mammoth Mart

Formerly	Mammoth Mills
Company type	Discount store
Industry	Retail
Founded	1956
Founder	Max Coffman and Henry Gornstein
Defunct	1979
Fate	Bankruptcy & bought by King's discount stores
Successor	King's (defunct discount store)
Headquarters	Framingham, Massachusetts Incorporated = Maine
Number of locations	35 stores (1969)
Area served	New England among other states in the North East
Products	Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics, toys and housewares.
Owner	King's discount stores
Website	None

Mammoth Mart was a discount department store chain, located in the northeastern United States, primarily in the New England area. The chain was founded by Max Coffman and Henry Gornstein in Framingham, Massachusetts 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 locations. Other discount department store retailers like K-Mart, Zayre, and Bradlees 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 Energy Crisis of 1973, 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—one of the precursors (along with Chapter X of the 1898 Bankruptcy Act) of today's Chapter 11— on June 17, 1974. The chain was acquired by now-defunct King's Department Stores for $43 million (~$169 million in 2023) on June 15, 1977. The final locations were rebranded to King’s by Spring 1979.