Burlington Stores (Burlington Coat Factory)

Burlington is an American off-price department store retailer selling clothing, shoes, accessories and home goods at discount prices, known for decades as Burlington Coat Factory. Bain Capital acquired the business in a take-private transaction in 2006; it returned to the stock market in 2013 as Burlington Stores, Inc. (NYSE: BURL) and has since grown into one of the largest off-price retailers in the United States, with its headquarters in Burlington Township, New Jersey.

Company Profile

The October 2013 summary captures the private-equity chapter: Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corporation, a national department store retailer for clothes and shoes with over 500 stores in 44 states and Puerto Rico as of 2012, acquired by Bain Capital in 2006 and headquartered in Burlington Township. Despite the name, coats became a minority of the business — the assortment broadened into a full off-price offer across apparel, footwear, baby products and home.

Off-price retailing — buying brands' excess and cancelled stock and selling it below department-store prices — proved one of the most durable models in American clothing retail, and Burlington's post-2013 growth is a central example. The store name was shortened to Burlington to match that wider assortment.

The range behind the name is off-price coats, clothing, shoes, baby products and home goods. Its customers are bargain hunters buying brand names below department-store prices. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place Burlington Stores (Burlington Coat Factory) in the industry: it explains the company's costs, its competitors and the kind of news that moved its shares when it had them. A change in either half of the combination, a new product category or a new customer, is usually the first sign that the business described in the older summaries is turning into something different.

Scale should be read from the dated summaries with their dates attached. Store counts, sales descriptions and market positions quoted there were the company's own account of itself in that year, and they are the right basis for comparing Burlington Stores (Burlington Coat Factory) with the other companies in this section — a component supplier against a retailer, or a catalogue house against a mall chain — as long as each figure is compared with figures from roughly the same period.

For current dealings, the snapshot at the top of this page is the place to start: it gives the company's present status — Operating — returned to the stock market as Burlington Stores, Inc. — and links to the official website, which is where current product ranges, store information and investor or corporate contacts are maintained. Anything in the dated summaries that conflicts with the snapshot should be read as the older position: summaries describe the year they are dated, and the snapshot describes the company as it stands now.

Company summaries of this kind were the working tool of the apparel trade as much as of investors: a buyer, landlord or supplier checking Burlington Stores (Burlington Coat Factory) could see its scale, its headquarters and its own description of its business in a few paragraphs. Those dated descriptions are kept with their dates, because a store count from 2013 or a strategy statement from 2019 is evidence about that year, not about today. The current position is the one given in the snapshot: operating.

History in Brief

Burlington Coat Factory was acquired by Bain Capital in a 2006 take-private transaction, operated more than 500 stores as of 2012, and relisted in 2013 as Burlington Stores, Inc.