| Type | Public (NYSE: TJX) S&P 500 Component |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1956 as Zayre (Framingham, Massachusetts) |
| Headquarters | Framingham, Massachusetts |
| Products | Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares. |
| Revenue | US$21.9 billion (2010)[1] |
| Employees | 154,000 |
| Website | www.tjx.com |
The TJX Companies, Incorporated (NYSE: TJX), is the largest international apparel and home fashions off-price department store chain in the United States. Based in Framingham, Massachusetts, the company originally evolved from the Zayre discount department store chain, founded in 1956, which opened its first branch of T.J. Maxx in 1976 and its first BJ's Wholesale Club in 1984. In 1988, Zayre sold their own nameplate to Ames, a rival discount department store chain, and the company renamed itself to The TJX Companies, Incorporated.
Since at least 2004, the company has been led by Chairman Bernard Cammarata, and the company's headquarters has been located at 770 Cochituate Road in Framingham, Massachusetts.[2]
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Stanley Feldberg was one of the 1956 founders of Zayre Corp. He served as president of the company until 1978, and afterwards remained on the Board of Directors, until he retired in 1989.[2] Once the company had sold off the "Zayre" name, the company consisted of its one core remaining store brand, T.J. Maxx.[2] The next year, in 1990, TJX expanded into an additional store brand division, and at the same time it first went international, as it entered the Canadian market by acquiring the five-store Winners chain.[2] Two years later, it launched its third brand, HomeGoods, in the United States.[2] TJX's expansion beyond North America came in 1994, when the fourth brand division, T.K. Maxx, was founded in the United Kingdom, and then expanded into Ireland.[2]
In 1995, TJX doubled in size when it acquired Marshalls, its fifth brand. T.J. Maxx and Marshalls later became consolidated as two brands under a single division, The Marmaxx Group.[2] The following year, TJX Companies Inc. was added to the Standard & Poor's S&P 500 Composite Index, which consists of 500 of the largest companies in the United States.[4]
TJX launched a sixth brand, A.J. Wright, in 1998 in the eastern U.S. The brand went national in 2004 when it opened its first stores in California on the west coast.[2] The company's seventh brand division, HomeSense, formed in 2001, was a Canadian brand modeled after the existing US brand, HomeGoods. [2]
In 2002, TJX revenue reached almost $12 billion.[2] In mid 2003, TJX acquired an eighth brand division, Bob's Stores, concentrated in New England. In Canada, TJX began to configure some Winners and HomeSense stores side-by-side as superstores. The superstores feature open passageways between them, with dual branding. TJX's revenue in 2003 reached over $13 billion.[2] TJX began to test the side-by-side superstore model in the United States in 2004, combining some of each of the two Marmaxx brand stores with HomeGoods. The company reached 141st position in the 2004 Fortune 500 rankings, with almost $15 billion in revenue. That year was also marked by the death of retired Zayre founder Stanley Feldberg.[2]
In April 2008, TJX launched the HomeSense brand in the UK, with six stores opening throughout May. The brand is more upmarket than its Canadian namesake. Later that year, in August, TJX sold Bob's Stores to Versa Capital Management and Crystal Capital.[5]
In December 2010, TJX announced that the A.J. Wright stores would be closed, cutting about 4,400 jobs, and that more than half of them would reopen under other company brands.[6]
On January 17, 2007, TJX announced that it was the victim of an unauthorized computer systems intrusion. It discovered in mid-December 2006 that its computer systems were compromised and customer data was stolen.[7] The hackers accessed a system that stores data on credit card, debit card, check, and merchandise return transactions.[8] The intrusion was kept confidential as requested by law enforcement. TJX said that it is working with General Dynamics, IBM and Deloitte to upgrade computer security.
By the end of March 2007, the number of affected customers had reached 45.7 million [9] and has prompted credit bureaus to seek legislation requiring retailers to be responsible for compromised customer information saved in their systems. In addition to credit card numbers, personal information such as social security numbers and driver's license numbers from 451,000 customers were downloaded by the intruders. The breach was possible due to a non-secure wireless network in one of the stores.[10]
Eleven men have been charged in the theft, and one (Damon Patrick Toey) has pleaded guilty to numerous charges related to the breach. [11] One man, Jonathan James, professed his innocence and later committed suicide, apparently out of the belief that he was going to be indicted.[12]
The alleged ringleader Albert Gonzalez was indicted in August 2009 with attacking Heartland Payment Systems in which 130 million records were compromised.[13]
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