Who Owns T.J. Maxx?

T.J. Maxx opened its first stores in 1977, created inside Zayre Corp. by executive Bernard Cammarata. Zayre ran a conventional discount department store chain, and T.J. Maxx was its answer to a different opportunity: selling brand-name apparel below department store prices by buying manufacturers' overstocks, closeouts, and past-season goods.

The concept worked almost immediately. While the Zayre nameplate faded, T.J. Maxx grew through the 1980s into the chain's growth engine. In 1988 Zayre sold its department store business to Ames, and in 1989 the reorganized company took the name The TJX Companies, making the T.J. Maxx identity the corporate center of gravity.

The 1990s brought scale. TJX merged T.J. Maxx operations with Marshalls, acquired in 1976 by Zayre, into the Marmaxx buying organization and took the format abroad. When TJX expanded into the United Kingdom in 1994, the banner was renamed TK Maxx to avoid confusion with the unrelated British discount chain T.J. Hughes. TK Maxx later spread across Ireland, Germany, Poland, Austria, the Netherlands, and Australia.

In the United States, T.J. Maxx passed the 1,000-store mark in the 2000s and kept adding locations even as department stores shrank. The brand resisted e-commerce longer than almost any major retailer; its tjmaxx.tjx.com site operates at deliberately modest scale because the treasure-hunt assortment drives store traffic that online channels cannot replicate.

Through the 2020s T.J. Maxx benefited directly from consumers trading down amid inflation. Marmaxx comparable sales grew consistently, and in fiscal 2026, ended January 31, 2026, the parent posted net sales of $60.4 billion with every division delivering at least 4 percent comp growth.