<P> In 1952 the Melville Corporation acquired the 151 - outlet Miles Shoes chain; by 1955, the company operated 850 stores and 12 factories . In 1960, Melville created Meldisco, which was dedicated to leasing and supplying family shoe departments in self - service discount department stores . By the end of the 1960s, Melville was the largest American shoe retailer, operating 1,400 stores . </P> <P> By the 1980s, Melville was still the largest footwear retailer in the US, but the company had diversified to add such chains as Chess King, Foxmoor and CVS Pharmacy . It began to phase out six of its seven footwear factories in 1983, and in 1985 it closed 72 Thom McAn outlets . In 1988 it purchased the athletic shoe chain FootAction . </P> <P> In 1992, Thom McAn was down to 730 outlets, and Melville announced that it would close 350 of them . In 1996, Melville closed the remaining Thom McAn outlets, converting approximately 100 of the locations to the Footaction USA format . As Melville divested its operations in order to focus on CVS, the remaining footwear operations including Meldisco were spun off into a new company, Footstar . </P> <P> With the closure of the retail outlets, Thom McAn shoes began appearing in Kmart stores, through the footwear departments operated by Meldisco . In 2003, Footstar began selling Thom McAn in 1,500 Walmart stores . </P>

When did thom mcan go out of business