Monroe Milstein

Monroe Milstein was a merchant from a family wholesale coat business in the New York garment trade before he opened the first Burlington Coat Factory store in 1972. His approach, branded goods at discount prices in plain, low-cost stores, still defines the company.

Monroe G. Milstein grew up in his family's wholesale outerwear business in New York. In 1972 he bought a coat outlet in a former factory building in Burlington, New Jersey, and sold brand-name coats there at discounts, a low-overhead, store-first approach that became the template for the off-price chain. He widened the range into year-round apparel, shoes, baby products and home goods, took Burlington Coat Factory public in 1983 and ran it as a family-controlled company until Bain Capital acquired it for about $2.06 billion in 2006. The company dropped 'Coat Factory' from its consumer name around its 2013 return to the stock market, but the discount-merchant culture he built remains its core.