The history of one of the leaders of fashion industry is rooted in the 1926 Leningrad, when a Sewing Vocational School (the renamed Girls’ Handicraft School opened in 1880 under the patronage of Empress Maria Alexandrovna ) was turned into a factory producing women’s clothes and named after Muntsenberg. In 1935 it was there that the first Soviet sewing conveyor was launched. 13 years later the factory was renamed the State Leningrad Sewing factory “Pervomayskaya”, and in 1964 it was called “Pervomayskaya Zarya”.
In 1990 the factory’s personnel rented out production facilities from the state, and in 1991 the employees bought the shares of the company, and thus the closed joint-stock company Pervomayskaya Zarya was created. It was then that the first independent steps were made in the women’ s clothes market. A new model-construction department was launched at the factory. Their products were sold in the first Zarina shop owned by the Company. In a few years there were already three shops under the same brand name – the chain got established. At the same time clothes under the Zarina brand were actively sold in the regions of Russia. The Zarina trademark was officially licensed in 1997. In 2002 the logotype was upgraded and the modern “ZARINA” has come into being since then.
Still in 1993 Pervomayskaya Zarya launched a product line for corpulent women, the first presentation went under the slogan “Big is beautiful”, and the mass production started under the brand name “Zarina Plus”.
In 1996 the Company sold part of its shares to the Swedish firm Kurt Kellermann. A year later, in order to promote clothes under the KELLERMANN brand name, a subsidiary company Kurt Kellermann St Petersburg was created. Since 2002 Pervomayskaya Zarya has invited foreign investments. An investment agreement was signed with EAST CAPITAL - a Swedish investment fund and the first three-million-USD tranche was disbursed to the Company. In the same year the retail chain manifested its growth by launching into the market an ‘umbrella-brand” shop called “befree”. The first Moscow befree shops appeared in Mega and Golden Babylon. The new befree project was managed by Kurt Kellermann St Petersburg.
In 2004 the Management of Pervomayskaya Zarya came to the conclusion that in order to increase efficiency and transparency of the main fashion business of the Company and a newly started real estate development operations, the Company must be divided into two separate ones. Thus, in 2005 the de-merger was made, and two companies appeared – the OAO Melon Fashion Group dealing solely with women’s clothing, and Pervomayskaya Zarya, focusing on its own real estate development and management of the business center it was creating in the former industrial premises. OAO Melon Fashion Group had two subsidiaries then: Zarina and Kurt Kellermann St Petersburg. Production was moved to Ostrov (Pskvo region), where now 30% of the Company’s products are manufactured at the sewing factory Pervomayskaya Zarya Ostrov, that is now the Company’s subsidiary.