Product Code Database
Winners Merchants International L.P. is a chain of off-price Canadian owned by TJX. Its market niche is similar to the American chain TJ Maxx, and it is a partnered retailer to department stores HomeSense and Marshalls.
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 Online shopping.
Since late 2001, Winners stores have been paired with HomeSense, a home accessory retailer, modelled on TJX's American HomeGoods 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.
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.
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