The original Ames concept was «To bring discounts to the under-served rural areas» and they have done that very well. Ames began in 1958 when two Connecticut brothers, Milton and Irving Gilman, opened their first store in the Ames Worsted Textile Co. mill in Southbridge, Mass. In its first year of operations, the store generated $1 million in sales, encouraging a third Gilman brother, Herbert, to join the Company in 1959. The Company began opening stores in upstate New York and northern Vermont as it followed a business strategy of bringing discount stores to under-served smaller towns and rural areas in the Northeast. In 1962, the company went public as Ames Department Stores, Inc., and by 1970, there were 23 Ames stores in operation, with $50 million in annual sales.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Company expanded its store base both organically and through the acquisition of other chains in the Northeast. Acquired companies included: Joseph Leavitt and K&R Warehouse in 1972; Davis Wholesale in 1978; Neisner Brothers' in 1978; King's in 1984; G.C. Murphy's in 1985; and Zayre in 1988. While the acquisitions between 1972 and 1995 helped the Company grow into a leading player in the discount retail market, its 1988 acquisition of Zayre proved disastrous. After closing 74 Zayre stores, the company began converting the remaining 318. The effort went slowly and proved to be very costly. The Company sold the Zayre shoe concession to J.Baker in May 1989, and sold 130 G.C. Murphy stores and 25 Bargain World stores in September 1989. Even after recouping approximately $137.6 million from the sale of the G.C. Murphy and Bargain World stores, the cumulative effects of the Zayre's acquisition drove the Company to reorganize under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code in April 1990, as unpaid vendors refused to ship new merchandise to the Company. In October 1989, the 11 Zayre stores in NH were renamed Ames. At that time here was 27 Ames in the state and 632 stores nationwide.

During its Chapter 11 case, the Company sold its wholesale sporting goods division, Mathews & Boucher, in 1992. That same year it sued the investment banking firm that had advised it to buy the Zayre chain, alleging it paid too much based on receiving "inaccurate and misleading information and self-interested advice." The suit was settled in 1994 for $19 million (after Ames' emergence from its reorganization case). During its Chapter 11 case, Ames closed 370 stores, successfully exiting bankruptcy late in 1992. In early 1993, the Company decided to close an additional 60 stores, not previously slated for closure during the bankruptcy reorganization case.

Ames underwent a major growth spurt in 1998, increasing their store count by 50% with the purchase of the 155 Hills Department Stores chain and ten former Caldor sites. Ames operated 456 stores in 19 states and the District of Columbia in 1999. Ames had a unique program offering special discounts for customers 55 and older, the 55 Gold® Savings Card. No matter what the size of the community they continued to carry out the original mission of the Gilman brothers in providing quality service to the under-served, time-starved customer looking for great value. After the Hills acquisition, Ames quickly went from 301 to 456 stores and became the nation 4th largest discount chain behind Walmart, Kmart and Target. It was the nation's largest regional full-line discount retailer with annual sales of over $4 billion.

A slow and painful demise...

In March 1999, Ames closed 8 stores in markets where its Ames stores and its newly acquired Hills units overlapped. In November 2000, Ames closed 32 stores, 31 of which were acquired from Hills. In August 2001, Ames closed another 47 stores and filled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Ames closed 16 stores and a distribution center in November that year. In December 2001, Ames closed an additional 54 stores leaving the chain with 333 stores. Ames closed 6 more stores in June 2002. Ames finally announced on August 14 2002 it would go out of business closing its last 327 stores after 44 years of operation.