Too, Inc. (Tween Brands / Justice)

Too, Inc. was the tween-girls' retailer behind Limited Too, spun off from The Limited as an independent public company in August 1999 and built into a chain of more than 560 stores selling apparel, swimwear, sleepwear, footwear and lifestyle products to girls aged 7 to 14. The company renamed itself Tween Brands, Inc. in 2008 and converted its stores to the Justice banner; Dress Barn — later Ascena Retail Group — acquired Tween Brands in 2009. After Ascena's 2020 bankruptcy, the Justice intellectual property was sold to Bluestar Alliance, and Justice continues as an online brand, including sales through Walmart.

Company Profile

The April 2006 summary in the record states the mission in the company's own terms: to be a world-class brand for the tween girl, through two divisions creating 'magical places' — Limited Too, with more than 560 stores in 46 states and Puerto Rico, a catalogue at key tween shopping times, and e-commerce. It also records the corporate origin: a fully independent public company from August 1999, spun off to shareholders of The Limited, which had created Limited Too in 1987 beside its own stores.

The short summary at the head of the record completes the listed story: Tween Brands, formerly Limited Too and Too, Inc., operating Justice and Brothers stores for the tween market, and part of Ascena Retail Group from 2009. The Brothers boys' concept was short-lived; Justice — brighter, cheaper and aimed a little older than Limited Too's pastel era — was the durable brand, and the one that survived two parents' bankruptcies as a name worth buying.

The range behind the name is apparel, swimwear, sleepwear, footwear, lifestyle and personal care products for tween girls. Its customers are girls aged 7 to 14 and their parents, formerly in Limited Too and Justice stores and now online. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place Too, Inc. (Tween Brands / Justice) 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 Too, Inc. (Tween Brands / Justice) 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.

Because Too, Inc. (Tween Brands / Justice) no longer operates independently, there is no current company website to link from the snapshot, and enquiries that would once have gone to its head office belong with the successor named in the status line — or, where the business closed entirely, the record here is the end of the trail. The dated summaries remain useful to researchers precisely because the company can no longer update its own account of itself.

Company summaries of this kind were the working tool of the apparel trade as much as of investors: a buyer, landlord or supplier checking Too, Inc. (Tween Brands / Justice) 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: brand operating online.