The TJX Companies

The TJX Companies, Inc. is the Framingham, Massachusetts company that leads off-price retailing worldwide: T.J. Maxx and Marshalls (together, Marmaxx) and HomeGoods in the United States, Winners, Marshalls and HomeSense in Canada, and T.K. Maxx and Homesense in Europe and Australia. TJX trades on the New York Stock Exchange under its own name as the ticker, sits in the Fortune 500, and built its model on opportunistic buying — a rapidly changing assortment of quality, brand-name merchandise at prices well below department and specialty stores, with no e-commerce dependence for its core chains and a treasure-hunt store experience.

Company Profile

The February 2019 summary in the record gives the scale at the end of fiscal 2017: over $35 billion in revenues, more than 4,000 stores in nine countries, three e-commerce sites and approximately 249,000 associates, ranked 85th in the Fortune 500. The October 2013 summary records the four-segment structure — Marmaxx and HomeGoods in the United States, TJX Canada and TJX Europe — that still organises the company.

The April 2006 summary in the record names the earlier eight-business portfolio — T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, A.J. Wright and Bob's Stores in the United States, Winners and HomeSense in Canada and T.K. Maxx in Europe — two of which, A.J. Wright and Bob's, were later closed or sold as TJX concentrated on its strongest banners. For the fashion industry TJX is the indispensable customer and competitor at once: the largest buyer of other retailers' and brands' excess apparel, and the store those brands' own customers check first.

The range behind the name is quality, brand-name apparel and home fashions at off prices. Its customers are treasure-hunt shoppers at T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, Winners and T.K. Maxx worldwide. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place The TJX Companies 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 The TJX Companies 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 The TJX Companies sat at a point where fashion meets the public markets: investors following the shares were really following off-price apparel and home fashion spending worldwide. 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.