[A][4] Zayre was founded in 1919 as the New England Trading Company in Boston, Massachusetts, by brothers Max and Morris Feldberg.

The brothers were Jewish immigrants who fled Russia to escape conscription in the Czar's army, settling in Chelsea, Massachusetts.

[1] An underwear and hosiery wholesaler, the company began as a supplier to full-line department stores and specialty shops.

With its store base in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., Nugents was a natural extension of the company's market area with almost no overlap.

[5] By the early 1950s, company sales leveled off, and it became clear to the Feldbergs that drastic changes were needed for their business to remain viable.

As these companies became more successful, they began to build their own new stores, either free-standing or in shopping centers, allowing greater visibility along with the benefits of custom-built facilities.

Having settled on discounting as the logical direction in which to take their company, the Feldbergs decided to forego the mill building route and launch with a newly constructed store when the opportunity presented itself.

Beginning in 1960, Zayre embarked on a program to open stores in major markets all across the eastern half of the U.S., with a presence in nearly every state east of the Mississippi River by the middle of the decade.

By the end of 1966, Zayre had 92 stores with major concentrations in the Chicago metropolitan area, Miami, and its home turf of Boston.

Medium-sized Zayre markets at the time included Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Cleveland, Columbus, Ohio, Jacksonville, Tampa, and the Providence-area suburb of Warwick.

The first store, which opened in Natick, Massachusetts, in 1965, flourished and grew into a chain so quickly that within four years, it attracted the attention of the much larger Zayre Corp.

During the recession of the 1970s, Hit or Miss's results climbed so rapidly that Zayre Corp. considered expanding its off-price upscale apparel merchandising.

The stores were an instant hit with customers, including middle- to upper-middle-income shoppers, providing the perfect solution to the heightening demand for quality fashions at reasonable prices with an ever-changing fresh assortment.

Hit or Miss and Chadwick's crossover operations allowed customers to handle products before ordering, and brought frequent buyers the convenience of home shopping.

Zayre began to feature appearances from celebrities such as Sherman Hemsley and Robert Guillaume in "Grand Re-openings" of their major stores, but even these events failed to improve their market share.

[4] In June 1987, just ten years after T.J. Maxx opened its first store, The TJX Companies, Inc. was established as a subsidiary of Zayre Corp., with Cammarata serving as president and CEO.

It sold 9.35 million shares of common stock in its initial public offering; Zayre Corp. owned 83 percent of the subsidiary.

Observers blamed technological inferiority, poor maintenance, inappropriate pricing, and inventory pileups, and Zayre appeared ripe for takeover.

The company's transition into an off-price fashion business was relatively smooth, but the Ames preferred stock it received in the Zayre transaction was a problem.