BZZZZ
You walk into a store
With cheap, quality name-brand clothing on racks
This is:
This Marshalls location is located on 5201 W War Memorial Dr, Peoria, IL 61615 at The Shoppes at Grand Prairie. Previously, this location was home to a Jillian's Sports Grille which had a massive arcade selection. Marshalls decided to move in right away once Jillian's shut down, as it had closed its location at Evergreen Shopping Mall. Marshalls is temporaily closed at the moment due to coronavirus.
Marshalls is a part of TJX Companies, Inc. which is a leading off-price apparel and home fashions retailer in the United States and around the world. TJX is ranked 85 among 500 Fortune 500 companies and as of February 2, 2019, its sales were $39 billion and operated more than 4,300 stores around the world.
Marshalls is an off-price retailer, which offers name-brand products at a cheaper price. So how exactly are they able to get these name-brand items and sell them for cheaper while making a profit? Basically, Marshalls buys overstock, irregular, or returns from name brands. For instance, let's say Nike has an overstock on dri-fit shirts for the 2014 summer season because its sales were lower than expected. Instead of throwing the overstock supply away, they will sell it off to an off-price retailer to make up the cost of manufacturing the shirt (in this case, Marshalls). They will sell the item at an extreme discount that is much lower than retail. Marshalls will then sell these dri-fit shirts in the 2015 summer season. While it is a past-season item, many consumers really do not care for that as just last year they were willing to pay retail for the item.
Let's go into a real example at my local Marshalls:
This shoe is a Women's New Balance 998 'Pink Grey' Made in the USA sneaker. The retail price for this shoe is $260! Marshalls is selling this shoe for $49.99. So how does this happen? There are many different factors that can attribute to this:
-New Balance manufactured some of these shoes that did not make it in time for when the sneaker was released, choosing to sell it off to an off-price retailer
-The shoe did not sell like it was supposed to. So instead of discounting it at a severe price, it ends up here to protect the overall image brand.
-The shoe has a minor defect that happened in manufacturing.
Another question you may be asking is why would Marshalls sell it at such a low price compared to its retail? The answer to that is Marshalls has a preset catalog on how much shoes cost for each brand. For instance, Marshalls favors name-brands like Nike and Adidas and prices them at a higher cost in their own pricing system than a New Balance shoe. A Nike shoe that may only retail for $80 will be at a Marshalls price of $40 because it is a Nike shoe.
Overall, off-price stores have been prospering ever since the 2008 financial crisis because of cheap prices for name-brand goods. However, it will be interesting to see how they respond to coronavirus and its current brick and mortar shopping model.