If you’re a bargain hunter on the lookout for brand-name goods at prices lower than average, chances are you’ve visited a TJ Maxx or Marshall’s at some point. These discount retailers, both owned by the parent company TJX Companies (TJX), along with other brands like HomeGoods, Home Sense, and Sierra, collectively boast over 4,800 stores across nine countries. (In the United Kingdom, the equivalent store is known as TK Maxx.)
Even if you haven’t visited one of these stores recently, you’ve likely noticed their presence in your area, often taking over storefronts previously occupied by legacy strip mall retailers such as Barnes and Noble or Joann Fabrics.
TJX has seen significant popularity growth in recent years, partly due to the struggles faced by other retailers. Many major retailers are closing stores and consolidating operations as they grapple with challenges such as high mall rent payments and declining consumer interest. For example, Macy’s announced plans in late February to shutter 150 stores nationwide after rejecting a privatization attempt. Decreased foot traffic in malls and waning interest in mid-tier fashion labels at full price have contributed to Macy’s decline, with sales from in-store private labels dropping from 16% to 15% over the past year.
Part of TJX’s success lies in capitalizing on the failures of these legacy retailers. Instead of creating and promoting their own brands, TJX sources excess wholesale merchandise—such as apparel, jewelry, shoes, and accessories—from other retailers and sells them at discounted prices compared to their original sticker prices.
This approach allows shoppers to access familiar brands found in malls or online without experiencing sticker shock or needing to make a trip to the mall.
TJX keeps growing and iterating
Pair recent high inflation with TJX’s winning retail model and it creates a recipe for high growth.
TJX is constantly tweaking its stores and making changes. If you go into a TJ Maxx at the beginning of the week, chances are, a few days later that store looks awfully different, since it’s always sourcing new inventory and customers buy outsized amounts of merchandise when they’re in there, thanks to the treasure hunt shopping model.
In March, TJ Maxx announced it would be making another change, not to its physical footprint or brand sourcing, but rather to its actual brand — something that rarely gets touched thanks to its familiarity and pull.
Traditionally, TJ Maxx used the Helvetica font to emblazon its logos both at the front of its buildings and on every tag and label it attached to its merchandise items. But in March, the retailer rebranded, opting for a brand new, custom font and changing the appearance of its logo.
The idea to rebrand came from a spur-of-the-moment idea; TJ Maxx hadn’t been in the market for a font change. But after speaking with marketing and advertising agency McCann New York, executives decided they wanted to make the logo pop and look “more iconic,” — and since Helvetica is a cookie-cutter font that anybody with a word processor can access, it wasn’t going to fit the bill.
McCann then sourced Jeremy Mickel of MCKL Type and Design to help develop a custom font.
“Anything we tried in Helvetica reminded us of other brands,” McCann design head Matt van Leeuwen said, adding that the TJ Maxx logo still remained recognizable, so they didn’t want to stray too far from the original font.
“It is so full of character and lovely idiosyncrasies, and as we started to apply that in big and bold ways in the design system we are developing, we simply had the bright idea to turn the letter shapes of the logo into a font,” he said.
So they worked to round out some of the letters and give others more quirky characteristics. For example, the ‘m’ is now completely rounded out, while the ‘a’ gets a stem.
“We set out, at the beginning of the project, to bring iconicity to the brand,” van Leeuwen added. “The store experience of TJ Maxx can feel like a discovery, an array of so much apparel and home fashion, and we wanted to cut straight through the noise and get to the core of their identity, with radical simplicity.”
The new font will roll out soon, and TJ Maxx will start using it in everything from in-store branding to TV commercials. It comes in four weights: light, regular, medium, bold, and utilizes the double XX branding that’s now so closely associated with TJ Maxx, so expect to see a lot more of that in the coming months.