From communism to capitalism: Tallinna Kaubamaja – Estonia's department store

ABSTRACT Tallinna Kaubamaja opened its door in July 1960, and is the oldest and largest (in terms of sales) department store in Estonia. Tallinna Kaubamaja (Estonian for ‘Tallinn Trading House’, but known in English as Tallinn's Department Store), has gone through a number of changes over the past sixty years, both in terms of physical renovations, but also in terms of management and retail practices. Tallinna Kaubamaja is an exemplar of one of the few traditional department stores that had opened during the Soviet period, continued to exist during the re-independence period in the early 1990′s, the privatization period in the mid 1990s, and a period of expansion and greater competition through the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The focus of this historical review is to address the following questions; how did this traditional department store manage to succeed for six plus decades through such change, and what is the legacy of being a Soviet era store located in country that was vehemently opposed to being a Republic in the USSR?