Science Fair Project Encyclopedia A department store organizes
its goods by departments, such as women's clothes, home
furnishings, electronics, and the like. Department stores range
from collections of elaborate, fancy shops to practical outlets
for ordinary merchandise. They differ from ordinary stores
principally because of their size and range of merchandise. In
the United States, there are a number of classes of department
store. Discount stores, such as Kmart, Wal-Mart or Target were
sometimes called junior department stores in contrast with more
full-fledged stores like Sears or Macy's. This distinction
doesn't exist to the same extent outside of the USA where
Department Store tends to mean the latter fully-fledged variety.
Though the Hudson's Bay Company of Canada (which began
operations in 1670) was the first store with departments, it is
not clear when it could be classified as a department store. In
Paris in 1838 Aristide Boucicaut started the emporium that
developed into Bon Marché by 1852, the fi