Kohls Corporation is an American department store retail chain. The first Kohl store was a supermarket founded in 1946, and the first Kohl department store was founded in 1962. In 1972, British-American Tobacco Company took a controlling interest in the company and the Kohl family left the management of the company in 1979. A group of investors purchased the company in 1986 from British-American Tobacco and later took it public in 1992. It is the second largest department store by retail sales in the United States after Macys.