J.Jill is an American womenswear retailer founded in 1955 in Massachusetts. It has been a publicly-traded company since 2017. J.Jill is headquartered in Quincy, Massachusetts. [1]
J.Jill was founded in the Berkshires, specifically in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, as a specialty store, by Karl Lipsky (1914—2009), [2] in 1955, which he named for his wife, Jenifer, and daughter, Jill. [3] Prior to J.Jill, Lipsky had previously founded Jenifer House, a catalog fashion retailer. [2]
In 2006, J.Jill was acquired by rival retailer The Talbots, Inc., ceasing to be a publicly traded company; Talbots topped Liz Claiborne in a "bidding war" for ownership of J. Jill, paying US$517 million for the brand. [4] Despite the high sale three years before Golden Gate Capital acquired the company for a devalued $63 million in 2009. [5]
On March 9, 2017, J.Jill again became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), trading under the ticker symbol JILL. [6] In June 2019, its shares took the biggest percentage decline since its 2017 IPO, plummeting 53.5%, which analysts blamed on design and color issues surrounding its inventory, and a premature move from its catalog model to a digital sales platform. [7]
In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, J.Jill donated $50,000 to First Responders First, through its J.Jill Compassion Fund, and launched a campaign for National Nurses Month, offering a shopping voucher for its newest collection to nurses, first responders, and healthcare workers. [8] [9]
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from which it invests the float in a broad portfolio of subsidiaries, equity positions and other securities. The company has been overseen since 1965 by its chairman and CEO Warren Buffett and vice chairman Charlie Munger, who are known for their advocacy of value investing principles. Under their direction, the company's book value has grown at an average rate of 20%, compared to about 10% from the S&P 500 index with dividends included over the same period, while employing large amounts of capital and minimal debt.
Great Barrington is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,172 at the 2020 census. Both a summer resort and home to Ski Butternut, a ski resort, Great Barrington includes the villages of Van Deusenville and Housatonic.
GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer. The company is headquartered in Grapevine, Texas, and is the largest video game retailer worldwide. As of 28 January 2023, the company operates 4,413 stores including 2,949 in the United States, 216 in Canada, 419 in Australia and 829 in Europe under the GameStop, EB Games, EB Games Australia, Micromania-Zing, ThinkGeek and Zing Pop Culture brands. The company was founded in Dallas in 1984 as Babbage's, and took on its current name in 1999.
HCA Healthcare is an American for-profit operator of health care facilities that was founded in 1968. It is based in Nashville, Tennessee, and, as of May 2020, owns and operates 186 hospitals and approximately 2,000 sites of care, including surgery centers, freestanding emergency rooms, urgent care centers and physician clinics in 21 states and the United Kingdom. As of 2023, HCA Healthcare is ranked #66 on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
Peet's Coffee is a San Francisco Bay Area-based specialty coffee roaster and retailer owned by JAB Holding Company via JDE Peet's. Founded in 1966 by Alfred Peet in Berkeley, California, Peet's introduced the United States to its darker roasted Arabica coffee in blends including French roast and grades appropriate for espresso drinks. Peet's offers freshly roasted beans, brewed coffee and espresso beverages, as well as bottled cold brew. In 2007, Peet's opened the first LEED Gold Certified roastery in the United States. Peet's coffee is sold in over 14,000 grocery stores across the United States.
Golden Gate Capital is an American private equity firm based in San Francisco. The firm makes investments in a number of select industries, including technology, financial services, retail and industrial, through leveraged buyout transactions, as well as significant minority purchases and growth capital investments. As of April 2018, it had over $15 billion in assets under management.
uBid.com was an online auction style and fixed-price shopping website offering goods sold directly by the company and items sold by pre-approved third party uBid-certified merchants. The site specialized in excess new, refurbished and overstock consumer electronics such as computers, electronics, home goods, jewelry, watches and cellular phones.
Geeknet, Inc. is a Fairfax County, Virginia–based company that is a subsidiary of GameStop. The company was formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc.
Express, Inc. is an American Mutli fashion retailer whose portfolio includes Express, Bonobos and UpWest. The Company operates an omnichannel platform as well as physical and online stores. Grounded in a belief that style, quality and value should all be found in one place. The company consists of the brands Express, Bonobos, and UpWest, and is traded on the NYSE under the symbol EXPR.
Khosla Ventures is an American venture capital firm founded by Vinod Khosla, focused on early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, financial services, agriculture, healthcare and clean technology sectors. Some of its most successful investments include Affirm, DoorDash, Square, Impossible Foods and Instacart.
Oriental Trading Company is a direct merchant of value-priced party supplies, arts and crafts, toys, novelties, and school supplies. It was founded in 1932 as one of the United States' first wholesaling companies. Oriental Trading has been recognized as one of the top 100 Internet retailers and one of the top 50 catalog companies. It is based in Omaha, Nebraska, and is owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Alternative known names for Oriental Trading Company include "Oriental Trading" & "OTC".
CyberArk is a publicly traded information security company offering identity management. The company's technology is utilized primarily in the financial services, energy, retail, healthcare and government markets. CyberArk is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts. The company also has offices throughout the Americas, EMEA, Asia Pacific and Japan.
TowerBrook Capital Partners, L.P. is an investment management firm headquartered in London and New York City. TowerBrook spun out of Soros Fund Management in 2005 and became known for acquiring majority stakes in companies such as Jimmy Choo. Managing $13.7 billion in a number of private equity funds and structured opportunities funds, TowerBrook listed 30 active investments on its website as of 2020.
Verisk Analytics, Inc. is an American multinational data analytics and risk assessment firm based in Jersey City, New Jersey, with customers in insurance, natural resources, financial services, government, and risk management sectors. The company uses proprietary data sets and industry expertise to provide predictive analytics and decision support consultations in areas including fraud prevention, actuarial science, insurance coverage, fire protection, catastrophe and weather risk, and data management.
Eastern Bank is a bank based in Boston, Massachusetts. Before de-mutualizing in 2020, it was the oldest and largest mutual bank in the United States and the largest community bank in Massachusetts. With 95 branches, Eastern had a 3.2% market share in Massachusetts in 2016. It was founded in 1818 in Salem, and then moved to Lynn, Massachusetts. The company began an aggressive expansion campaign near the end of the 1990s and moved its headquarters to Boston's Financial District. In 2020, Eastern Bank announced plans to de-mutualize and become a publicly traded corporation.
Block Inc. is an American financial technology company founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey. It is a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Huron Consulting Group, commonly known as Huron, is a management consulting firm offering services to the healthcare, life sciences, commercial, and higher education industries.
Wayfair Inc. is an American e-commerce company based in Boston, Massachusetts that sells furniture and home goods online. Formerly known as CSN Stores, it was founded in 2002, and currently offers 14 million items from more than 11,000 global suppliers. It has offices and warehouses throughout the United States and in Canada, Germany, Ireland, China and the United Kingdom.
The technology company Facebook, Inc., held its initial public offering (IPO) on Friday, May 18, 2012. The IPO was one of the biggest in technology and Internet history, with a peak market capitalization of over $104 billion.
Michaels Stores, Inc., more commonly known as Michaels, is a privately held chain of American and Canadian arts and crafts stores. It is North America's largest providers of arts, crafts, framing, floral and wall décor, and merchandise for makers and do-it-yourself home decorators. The company is part of The Michaels Companies, founded in 2014 and headquartered in Irving, Texas. In addition to Michaels stores, The Michaels Companies operates Aaron Brothers Custom Framing store-within-a-store, and Artistree, a manufacturer of custom and specialty framing merchandise. The company also develops over a dozen private brands sold in Michaels stores, including Recollections, Studio Décor, Bead Landing, Creatology, and Ashland. As of January 2021, there were 1,252 Michaels stores in 49 out of 50 states in the U.S., and Canada, with approximately $5.362 billion in sales for fiscal 2020.