Ross Stores

Ross Stores, Inc. is the Dublin, California off-price retailer behind Ross Dress for Less, the largest off-price apparel and home fashion chain in the United States, and the smaller dd's DISCOUNTS chain. Founded in 1982, the company trades on Nasdaq under the symbol ROST and sits in the S&P 500, Fortune 500 and Nasdaq-100. Its model has never changed in outline: buy department and specialty store brands opportunistically and sell them at extraordinary savings — bargains, in the company's own word — in an easy, organised treasure-hunt store.

Company Profile

The July 2023 summary in the record states the formula and the scale together: since 1982 the focus has been a constant stream of high-quality department and specialty store brands at extraordinary savings, with fiscal 2022 revenues of $18.6 billion. The February 2019 summary counts 1,483 Ross locations in 38 states, the District of Columbia and Guam as of November 2018, on fiscal 2017 revenues of $14.1 billion — steady, compounding growth rather than reinvention.

The October 2013 summary records the two-brand structure in its earlier form: 1,037 Ross Dress for Less stores in 29 states plus Guam and 88 dd's DISCOUNTS stores in seven states, as of January 2012. dd's, launched in 2004, applies the same off-price buying to a more moderate-income customer and smaller stores; together the two chains made Ross the off-price sector's second giant, behind only TJX.

The range behind the name is department and specialty store brands in apparel and home fashion at off prices. Its customers are value shoppers in Ross Dress for Less and dd's DISCOUNTS stores and online. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place Ross Stores 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 Ross Stores 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 — 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.

The stock record matters because Ross Stores sat at a point where fashion meets the public markets: investors following the shares were really following off-price apparel and home fashion spending. The dated company summaries gathered in this section were written for that audience, recording store counts, sales descriptions and company statements as they stood at the time. Read together with the current status above, they show both halves of the story — the business as it presented itself in its listed years, and what became of it afterwards.