Monroe Milstein, Burlington Coat Factory Founder, Dies at 98

Monroe Milstein, who turned a $75,000 investment in a derelict New Jersey garment plant into the nation’s third-largest discount retailer, Burlington Coat Factory — which he would sell in 2006 for more than $2 billion — died on May 9 at his home in Bal Harbour, Fla. He was 98.

The cause was complications of dementia, his grandson Samuel Milstein said.

Mr. Milstein’s career was not quite a rags-to-riches story, unless the word “rags” is synonymous with garment center merchandise in general.

In 1972, he and his wife, Henrietta Milstein, ventured her savings as a Long Island teacher and transformed a former factory in Burlington, N.J., which they had bought for $675,000, into a mecca for busloads of frugal customers. They lured their patrons from the Philadelphia metropolitan area and beyond to buy marked-down designer and brand-name coats for women and, later, linens, men’s wear, baby clothes and shoes.

By the time they had divested themselves of their family-run company, it was operating 367 stores in 42 states and had recorded sales of $3.2 billion annually.

The Milsteins sold their shares for $1.3 billion.

“I’m a very average fella,” Mr. Milstein said on his 80th birthday. “I got lucky.”

The Burlington Coat Factory — which was not affiliated with the fabric maker Burlington Industries — thrived by placing large orders for merchandise directly from manufacturers, for department stores’ unsold seasonal items and for other surplus products, and then selling the goods at a 20 to 60 percent discount from retail prices.