Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Retail |
Founded | 1994 |
Founder | Bernard Cammarata |
Headquarters | Watford, United Kingdom [1] |
Number of locations | |
Area served | |
Products | Clothing, footwear, bedding and domestics, furniture and giftware |
Parent | TJX Companies |
Website | www |
TK Maxx [lower-alpha 1] is a subsidiary of the American apparel and home goods company TJX Companies. Its first store opened in 1994 in the United Kingdom. The chain uses a different name from TJ Maxx stores in the United States to avoid confusion with the British retailer T. J. Hughes. TK Maxx now also operates in Australia, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Austria and the Netherlands. [3]
TK Maxx has 596 stores in Europe and 56 in Australia as of May 2020. [2] The stores are sometimes combined with Homesense, another TJX International subsidiary specialising in homewares.
In 1976, TJ Maxx was founded in Framingham, Massachusetts, United States, by Bernard Cammarata. The first international store opened in Bristol, UK, in 1994. [4] The company modified the name to TK Maxx to avoid confusion with the unrelated British retail chain T. J. Hughes. [5] Opening of stores in the Netherlands between 1999 and 2001 was not as successful as the company wished.[ citation needed ] The first store in Germany opened on October 4, 2007, in Lübeck. [6]
In 2007, TK Maxx began winding down new store openings in the United Kingdom. Focus was given to revamping or relocating older inner city stores.[ citation needed ] The company opened larger "Maxx Maxx" stores to attempt to move from a budget reputation and become more like a department store. [7] In August 2008, TK Maxx opened a store on Kensington High Street, London, England, its first central London store, on a site formerly occupied by Habitat. [8]
In 2009, TK Maxx was denied permission by the Crown Estate to open a store in a unit on its land at Piccadilly Circus, London. In February that year, the company had signed a deal with the leaseholder of the unit, a 20,000-square-foot (1,858 m2) vacant site formerly used by Virgin Megastores, with a rent of £1.55 million per year. [9] The Crown Estate rejected TK Maxx, saying it did not fit its upmarket development strategy for the area. [10] In response, publicist Max Clifford and Look magazine launched a campaign in support of a TK Maxx store on the site. [11] A court appeal by TK Maxx against the decision failed. [12]
In March 2009, the TK Maxx e-commerce site was launched, initially selling only handbags, but later also selling other accessories. [13]
In October 2015, the first Dutch store opened in Eindhoven followed by more stores. In April 2017, the brand was launched in Australia, when it took over the thirty five Trade Secret discount department stores. The stores opened in April in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne with stores in Cairns, Townsville, Toowoomba, Canberra, Newcastle, Wollongong, Albury, the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast by the end of May. [14]
In June 2023, the first store opened in Tasmania, Australia at Northgate Shopping Centre in Hobart. [15]
In 2007 and 2009, TK Maxx in the UK was the sole retailer of Red Nose Day T-shirts, sales of which generated £2 million in 2007 and £3 million in 2009 for Comic Relief. [16] [17]
TK Maxx has been a supporter of the Woodland Trust since 2004, when it held a Christmas card recycling scheme in conjunction with the Trust. [18] [19] From August 2008, TK Maxx introduced charges on plastic carrier bags and donated the proceeds to the Woodland Trust, which used the funds to plant 30,000 new trees on a 15-acre (60,703 m2) site near Elmstead Market, Essex. [20] This was before the 2015 phase-out of plastic bags in the UK, in which charges became mandatory and are now frequently donated to charity.[ citation needed ]
TK Maxx also runs a 'Give Up Clothes For Good' campaign, where customers are encouraged to bring in unwanted clothes for Cancer Research UK. [21]
In Ireland, TK Maxx actively supports Enable Ireland, a charity which helps provide free services to children with disabilities. [22]
Marshalls, Inc. is an American chain of off-price department stores owned by TJX Companies. Marshalls has over 1,000 American stores, including larger stores named Marshalls Mega Store, covering 49 states and Puerto Rico, and 61 stores in Canada. Marshalls first expanded into Canada in March 2011.
Woolworths was a British high-street retail chain. At its height, it operated as Woolworths Group PLC, which included other companies such as the entertainment distributor Entertainment UK, and book and resource distributor Bertram Books.
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Zayre was a chain of discount stores that operated in the eastern half of the United States from 1956 to 1990. The company's headquarters were in Framingham, Massachusetts. In October 1988, Zayre's parent company, Zayre Corp., sold the stores to the competing Ames Department Stores, Inc. chain. In June 1989, Zayre Corp. merged with one of its subsidiaries, The TJX Companies, parent company of T.J. Maxx, which still exists today. A number of stores retained the Zayre name until 1990, by which time all stores were either closed or converted into Ames stores.
The TJX Companies, Inc. is an American multinational off-price department store corporation, headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts. It was formed as a subsidiary of Zayre Corp. in 1987, and became the legal successor to Zayre Corp. following a company reorganization in 1989.
Winners Merchants International L.P is a chain of off-price Canadian department stores owned by TJX Companies. Its market niche is similar to the American store TJ Maxx, and it is a partnered retailer to department stores HomeSense and Marshalls.
In the Republic of Ireland, the retail sector provides one of the largest sources of employment in the economy, representing over 12% of the workforce. As of 2017, approximately 40,000 wholesale and retail businesses employed almost 280,000 people in Ireland, with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment reporting that 90% of these businesses were Irish-owned.
TJ Maxx is an American discount department store chain. It has more than 1,000 stores in the United States, making it one of the largest clothing retailers in the country. TJ Maxx is the flagship chain of the TJX Companies. It sells men's, women's and children's apparel and shoes, toys, bath and beauty products, accessories, jewelry, and home products ranging from furniture and decor to housewares and kitchen utensils.
AJWright was a chain of about 129 American retail/outlet stores established in 1998 and owned by TJX Companies. Like its sister company T.J. Maxx, AJWright sold clothing, domestics, giftware, footwear, accessories, and fragrances at prices between twenty and seventy percent below regular prices. AJWright differed from other TJX chains by refreshing its merchandise on a regular basis. For most stores, new shipments arrived every weekday. In early 2011, TJX closed the chain's remaining stores and converted some stores to other TJX brands.
HomeGoods is a chain of home furnishing stores headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts. HomeGoods sells furniture, linens, cooking products, art, and other home accessories.
HomeSense is a Canadian chain of discount home furnishing stores owned by TJX Companies. It originated in Canada in 2001, and was expanded to Europe in 2008 and the United States in 2017. Outside of the United States, the chain is comparable to the TJX-owned HomeGoods. Within the US, where HomeGoods already operates, it features more big ticket items than its sister store.
Sierra Trading Post, Inc., doing business as Sierra, is an online and brick-and-mortar retailer of off-price merchandise operated by the TJX Companies. The Framingham, Massachusetts–based company offers products in categories such as outdoor recreation, fitness and adventure gear, and apparel, along with footwear, clothing, and home decor. Sierra sells merchandise through 78 retail stores as of November 2022 and a company website. It carries products from approximately 3,000 name-brand manufacturers.
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Bentley Bridge Leisure Park is an extensive modern leisure/retail park located in the village of Wednesfield,Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. It has been developed since the late 1990s, to the south of Wednesfield town centre.
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Smiggle is an Australian-based retail store chain that sells stationery and related accessories. It was founded in Melbourne by Stephen Meurs and Peter Pausewang in 2003 and acquired by the Just Group in July 2007. As of February 2016, the chain has stores located across Australia (135), New Zealand (23), Singapore (17), United Kingdom (100), Hong Kong (14), Malaysia (22) and the Republic of Ireland (3). Smiggle is renowned for its use of vibrant bold colours and quirky graphics on most of its branded products.
Off-price is a trading format based on discount pricing. Off-price retailers are independent of manufacturers and buy large volumes of branded goods directly from them. The off-price retail model relies on the purchase of over-produced, or excess, branded goods at a lower price, thus being able to sell to consumers at a discount compared to other stores which purchased an initial run. Among the largest retailers of this type are TJX Companies and Ross Stores. The model is more common in countries that import fashion-oriented or household goods, as the discount role in producer countries is usually filled by factory outlets or small-scale open-air marketplaces.
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