Winners
 | |
| Company type | Department store |
|---|---|
| Industry | Discount |
| Founded | 1982 |
| Headquarters | Mississauga, Ontario |
| Products | Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewellery, beauty products, and housewares. |
| Website | http://www.winners.ca/ |
Winners is a chain of Canadian department stores owned by TJX Companies. It offers brand name clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, fine jewellery, beauty products, and housewares. All merchandise is 20 - 60% below regular department and specialty store prices. The company operated 190 stores at the end of 2006. Winners is modeled after its American sister store Marshalls.
History
In 1982, Winners was founded in Toronto, Ontario. It was one of the first off-price department stores in Canada. In 1990, Winners merged with TJX Companies, the world's largest off-price department store owner.
Since late 2001, Winners stores have been paired with Homesense, a home accessory retailer owned by Winners Merchants, modelled on TJX's American HomeGoods stores. Winners acquired the struggling "Labels" brand from Dylex in 2001. Labels was meant to compete with Winners, but never succeeded. Most Labels stores have been turned into Homesense stores.
In 2005, HBC opened a similar concept under the Designer Depot banner, and Les Ailes de la Mode opened a similar concept under the Labels banner after Winners did not renew their trademark on the name.
Controversy
When Winners opened up a brand new location in the prestigious Bloor Yorkville area in downtown Toronto in the fall of 2005, community residents were upset because they felt that Winners was too "cheap" to blend in with the upscale stores of the street like Tiffany & Co. and Louis Vuitton.