Christopher & Banks

Christopher & Banks is a women's clothing retailer for customers aged 40 to 60, known for missy, petite and plus (CJ Banks) sizing and classic, colourful styling. Founded in 1956 as Braun's Fashions and headquartered in Plymouth, Minnesota, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2021 and closed all of its roughly 449 stores. Its online business and brand were acquired by iMedia Brands in 2021 and passed to IV Media in 2023; the brand trades online today, with a small number of stores reopened.

Company Profile

The February 2019 summary records the store-era scale: retail, outlet and online businesses operating 455 stores as of February 1, 2019, with Christopher & Banks stores offering missy sizes 4 to 16 and petite sizing in every store, and CJ Banks serving plus sizes. Its customer was loyal and specific — and shopped overwhelmingly in stores, which is why the pandemic closures of 2020 hit the chain so hard.

The January 2021 filing, in the District of New Jersey, launched liquidation sales across the fleet while the e-commerce platform was sold separately. That split — stores gone, website surviving under new owners — is the now-familiar ending for mid-market women's chains of its generation, and the reason the name remains familiar to its customers online.

The range behind the name is women's classic clothing in missy, petite and plus sizes. Its customers are women aged 40 to 60, historically shopping in stores. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place Christopher & Banks 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 Christopher & Banks 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 — Stores closed in 2021 after Chapter 11 — the brand continues online under IV Media — 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 Christopher & Banks 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: stores closed in 2021 after chapter 11.