Justice History

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The Company Description of Its Time

Justice files itself as the leader in fashion apparel and accessories for tween girls, ages 7 to 14, and as the largest premier tween specialty retailer in the world in its period. The product offer is the subject of this profile: apparel and accessories designed for that specific age group, sold at what the filing calls a great value for mom, through more than 900 retail stores based on 2011 - throughout the United States, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Russia and the Middle East - and online at ShopJustice.com, which extended the store experience to an average of one million monthly visitors. A single-age-group retailer at that scale is a specialisation story: every product decision in the range is made for girls 7 to 14 and for no one else.

From The Limited to Limited Too

The history in the historical record begins a generation earlier. In the 1960s, The Limited revolutionized retail by opening a new store in Columbus, Ohio, which quickly became a fashion destination; the brand built a loyal following, went public and continued to grow. As years passed, the filing says, it became evident that daughters wanted to dress more like their mothers, and a new concept was born: in 1987 The Limited introduced Limited Too, mini-adult European fashions for young girls, initially catering to a wide variety of ages from infants to young adults.

The concept narrowed to its lasting focus in the late 1990s under the direction of Michael Rayden: colourful, interactive stores designed for a new audience - tween girls, ages 7 to 14 - with a new logo and fashion-forward designs. In 1999 Limited Too spun off from The Limited, Inc. with over 300 stores, and marketing took a new dimension with the catazine mailed to tween girls. Online shopping arrived in 2000, the company was named a hot growth company the same year, sourcing offices opened in Hong Kong and Korea, and the chain celebrated 500 stores in 2002. The routes carried on this page lead to the sibling filings historical descriptions named - the dressbarn and maurices profiles - companies serving the adult end of the same family market.

Justice Launches, the Brands Merge, and Ascena

Justice itself entered in 2004, when Michael Rayden introduced it as a value-priced destination for the same tween audience - the same age group served at more affordable prices, beside the Limited Too range. Shopping for Justice online followed in 2008, by which time there were over 280 Justice stores. In 2006 Too Inc. completed its name change to Tween Brands, Inc., and the first Justice catazine was produced. Then, in a historic step in 2008, Limited Too and Justice became one brand - a single vision with a single focus on the tween girl, in the filing's words - retiring the two-range structure in favour of the Justice name alone.

The final corporate step in the filing came in 2009, when Tween Brands merged with Ascena Retail Group, Inc. As part of that group, Justice sits alongside sister brands dressbarn and maurices, which historical descriptions describe as providing fashions to women throughout their lives, from tweens to adult and career women. The filing heads Justice as a division in that family, and this profile preserves the record in that form: a Columbus-born retail lineage that ran from The Limited's 1960s store, through Limited Too's 1987 launch and spin-off, to a single tween brand of over 900 stores under Ascena. For current product information, the official Justice website in the References is the authority.

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