Winners Merchants International L.P. is a chain of off-price Canadian

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store under one roof, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store mad ...

s owned by TJX Companies. Its market niche is similar to the American chain TJ Maxx, and it is a partnered retailer to department stores HomeSense and Marshalls.

History and format

Winners was founded in 1982 by David Margolis in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, Ontario. It was one of the first off-price department stores in Canada. In 1990, it merged with off-price department store owner TJX Companies. Winners offers brand-name clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, fine jewelry, beauty products, and housewares. Products are at a 20-60% discount rate, and the stores generally do not carry the same merchandise for an entire season. The discounts are in large part due to the company buying excess or end-of-season merchandise from other stores, as well as its connections with TJ Maxx. The firm does not sell online. Since late 2001, Winners stores have been paired with HomeSense, a home accessory retailer, modelled on TJX's American

HomeGoods HomeGoods is a chain of home furnishing stores headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Midd ...

stores. Winners acquired the struggling "Labels" brand from Dylex in 2001. Labels had been meant to compete with Winners, but never succeeded; most of its stores have been turned into Homesense stores. Les Ailes de la Mode opened a similar concept under the Labels banner after Winners did not renew its trademark on the name.

Controversy

In 2016,

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV, or simply CBC) is a Television in Canada, Canadian English-language terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcasting, p ...

's '' Marketplace'' investigated Winners' "compared at" pricing and found that retail price of the manufacture could be misleading and inaccurate. For example, one pair of pants was "on sale for $29.99, with a 'compare at' price of $80, or more than 60 per cent off. But next to the tag asanother tag with the manufacturer's suggested retail price: $29.99, the same amount that Winners was charging." Winners responded by defending their "compared at" prices as accurate and fair, but acknowledged that "sometimes errors can occur" due to the volume of merchandise received by stores. In a follow-up letter to ''Marketplace'', Winners was able to verify every "compared at" price for 20 of the 21 items that ''Marketplace'' had investigated, by finding the items at the "compared at" prices at a comparable retailer. For the remaining item, Winners admitted that it was an error on their part and pledged to fix the mismatch.

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1982 establishments in Ontario Companies based in Mississauga Canadian brands Department stores of Canada Discount stores of Canada Retail companies established in 1982 TJX Companies 1990 mergers and acquisitions

History and format

Controversy

See also

References

External links