Ann & Hope

Infobox Company
name = Ann & Hope Inc.

type = Privately held companycite news |title=50 discounters belong to 'Over 30' club |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3092/is_n18_v31/ai_12742437 |work=Discount Store News |publisher=Lebhar-Friedman |date=1992-09-21 |accessdate=2007-11-11 ]
genre =
foundation = 1953
founder = Marty Chase
location = 1 Ann & Hope Way
Cumberland, RI 02864-6918
flagicon|US United States
locations = Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut
key_people = Irwin Chase (President)
Fred Looney (CEO)
Jim Hutchinson (CFO)
industry = Retail
owner = Irwin Chase
slogan = We discount prices, not quality!
homepage = http://www.curtainandbathoutlet.com/
footnotes =

Ann & Hope is a Rhode Island-based retailer that has been credited with pioneering many practices that are commonplace today in modern big box stores. [cite news |first=Harold |last=Trager |title=How the discount industry was born in Rhode Island |url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-11006925_ITM |work=Providence Business News |date=2001-03-19 |accessdate=2007-11-11 |quote=It's fair to say that Wal-Mart, Target and all of the other big discount chains around today owe their existence to what the Chases and Ann & Hope created. They innovated and developed the concept and format that all the rest have followed to this day. The operating format just evolved. ] . From 1953 to 2001, it operated department stores in the Northeastern United States [cite news |title=Pioneer Discounter Exits Arena; Refocuses. |url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-693421_ITM |work=MMR |publisher=Racher Press, Inc. |date=2001-01-22 |accessdate=2007-11-11 ] ; today, the company operates a small chain of home fashion outlets, garden outlets and dollar outlets in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. [cite news |first=Paul |last=Grimaldi |title=In death, Ann & Hope has stayed very healthy |url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-17751152_ITM |work=Providence Journal |date=2005-03-19 |accessdate=2007-11-11 ]

History

Early years

Ann & Hope was founded by Martin Chase who was born in 1906 in Kiev, Ukraine, and moved with his family to Providence, Rhode Island at age six. He was the only one of six sons not to work in his father's automobile repair business. Instead, when he was 20, he got a job working at a store called Fintex. After Fintex closed its doors in 1929, Chase worked at Howard's Clothes until 1933. Then he started Chase Clothing, where he undersold other area clothing stores by reducing overhead: for example he did not offer alterations and used inexpensive store fixtures. [cite news |title=Discounting: chronicles of its evolution |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3092/is_n18_v31/ai_12742427 |format= |work=Discount Store News |publisher=Lebhar-Friedman |date=1991-09-21 |accessdate=2007-11-11 ] As World War II approached, the clothing market fell into decline, and Chase began to look for another line of work. In 1946, he purchased the Ann & Hope Mill complex in the village of Ashton in Cumberland, Rhode Island. He split the large, empty mill into several small pieces and rented them individually.

Some time before December 1953, one of the tenants left the Mill, leaving a large amount of ribbon behind. Rather than dispose of it, the Chases opened the area to the other employees of the Mill and sold the ribbon. Chase then had the idea to reopen a clothing store in the Mill, initially on the third floor. By the following spring, the operation had become large enough that it was relocated to the ground floor. Over time more products were added, and by 1969, Ann & Hope was a $40 million per year operation.

ignificance to retail history

Ann & Hope was one of the first self-service department stores, in which customers could look at items without sales personnel, and also was one of the first to use shopping carts in a department store. The original mill location also featured a large parking area, which was not common at the time, as well as a basement level with even more merchandise. A special carriage lift was operated by staff to get store patrons' items from one floor to the other. Other now-familiar features such as having a central checkout area and a liberal store return policy were also pioneered by Ann & Hope.

Ann & Hope also had several features now common to big-box retail facilities. For example, some Ann & Hope stores had full scale cafeterias. When originally constructed, Ann & Hope stores also had an area that was rented to a sub-tenant, with both in-store and outside entrances, a variation of which is a relatively recent introduction in larger Wal-Mart stores. Many Ann & Hope locations had limited success renting to tenants, and before the chain's closing in 2001, many had been converted to store-run garden shops.

Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, visited the Ann & Hope chain in 1961 and got the idea for Wal Mart here. [cite book |last=Fridson |first=Martin S. |title=How to be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth |accessdate=2007-11-11 |year=1999 |publisher=John Wiley and Sons |isbn=047133202X |oclc= p. 84.] , and Harry Cunningham visited Ann & Hope in the process of preparing to launch the first Kmart store.cite news |first=Philip |last=Marcelo |title=A new chapter at Ann & Hope |url=http://www.projo.com/ri/cumberland/content/CUMBERLAND_ANNHOPE_08-19-07_HG66NRS.2cb9079.html |work=Providence Journal |date=2007-08-19 |accessdate=2007-11-11 ]

Present day

Following a slow 1989-90 holiday season, the Seekonk, MA store experienced lay-offs, most notably in the home-wares and rug & blind department. These layoffs were viewed by some as a portent of the difficulties that the Seekonk store (as well as her sister A&H stores) would experience in a cut-throat regional market throughout the 1990s. All of the Ann & Hope department stores closed in the spring of 2001, except for the two Rhode Island stores: the original location in Cumberland and the store in Warwick. [cite news |title=Employees, customers lament loss of R.I. institution |url=http://www.projo.com/cgi-bin/include.pl/business/annandhope/1_5_2001sidebar.htm |work=Providence Journal |date=2002-01-05 |accessdate=2007-11-11 ] High value properties that Ann & Hope owned in Massachusetts were sold off. [cite news |title=Ann & Hope to close Mass. stores |url=http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2001/01/01/daily12.html |work=Boston Business Journal |date=2001-01-15 |accessdate=2007-11-11 ] The two locations that remained open were downsized significantly and turned into off-price "outlet stores." In the years following the closing, new Ann & Hope-branded outlet stores, such as [http://www.curtainandbathoutlet.com/newsletter.htm the Ann & Hope Curtain and Bath Outlet] , were opened. Several of these new Ann & Hope outlet stores occupied space near where Ann & Hope department stores had previously existed.

As of 2007, the original Cumberland property is home to an Ann & Hope Curtain and Bath Outlet and an outdoor Garden Outlet. In August 2007, the owners of Ann & Hope made public their intention to convert the Cumberland mill store to a "mixed use" development of retail and residential space.

Former locations

Massachusetts

*Millis
*Seekonk
*Danvers - Liberty Tree Mall ("now Kohl's")
*Methuen - Methuen Mall (opened 1991, closed 1994)
*North Dartmouth
*Watertown - Arsenal Mall ("now The Home Depot and Linens 'n Things") [cite news |first=Michelle |last=Hillman |title=Harvard, developers putting Watertown back on map |url=http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2005/01/24/newscolumn2.html?jst=s_cn_hl |work=Boston Business Journal |date=2005-01-21 |accessdate=2007-11-11 ]

Rhode Island

*Warwick
*Cumberland, Rhode Island

References

External links

* [http://www.curtainandbathoutlet.com/ Ann & Hope - Curtain and Bath Outlet] official website
* [http://www.geocities.com/zayre88/R_annhope.html Ann & Hope overview]