Dress Barn (dressbarn)

Dressbarn was a national women's apparel chain founded in 1962 by Roslyn and Elliot Jaffe in Stamford, Connecticut, built to dress women entering the workforce on a budget. It became the founding brand of what grew into Ascena Retail Group. In 2019 Ascena announced the wind-down of the chain: all of its roughly 650 stores closed that year, and Dressbarn's intellectual property was sold, with its e-commerce business transitioning to a subsidiary of Retail Ecommerce Ventures. The brand continues online as dressbarn.

Company Profile

The February 2019 summary in the record describes the parent at that moment: Ascena Retail Group, a national specialty retailer offering apparel, shoes and accessories for women across its Premium Fashion segment (Ann Taylor, LOFT and Lou & Grey), its Plus Fashion and Kids Fashion segments and the dressbarn Value Fashion business. Within months of that summary, Ascena decided dressbarn itself would not continue as a store chain.

The October 2013 summary records the earlier structure: Ascena operating through wholly owned subsidiaries the dressbarn, maurices and Justice brands, with 3,800-plus stores group-wide as of July 2012. Dressbarn's own position in that portfolio was value fashion for women aged roughly 35 to 55 — work and occasion dressing at moderate prices, in suburban strip centres rather than malls.

The range behind the name is women's work and occasion dresses, separates, shoes and accessories at value prices. Its customers are women aged roughly 35 to 55, formerly in suburban stores and now online. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place Dress Barn (dressbarn) 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 Dress Barn (dressbarn) 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 2019 — the brand continues online after the sale of its intellectual property to a subsidiary of Retail Ecommerce Ventures — 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 Dress Barn (dressbarn) 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 2019.