 Known for its apparel, home goods, accessories and children's wear, the downtown Hartford flagship store was considered a smaller but respected rival to the larger and dominant G. Fox & Co. store a block away.Sage-Allen participated in the wave of post-World War II suburban expansion much earlier than G. Fox and first opened in a number of smaller village center locales prior to the more modern shopping centers and mall locations it would later occupy.The company began a slow decline in the mid to late 1980s which was accelerated by the severe economic recession that hit the region in the early 1990s.