Off-price retailers are likely to do effectively when the economic system doesn’t.
“It’s a dynamic time right now, and off-price is a good place to be in retail because consumers want the best value,” Chris Miller, group senior vice chairman of selling and technique, stated earlier this month on the Burlington company campus in Burlington Township.
At round 20,000 sq. ft, new shops in locations like Clifton Heights, Pennsylvania, will probably be about one-third the dimensions of a typical Burlington location of a decade in the past. The corporate has been steadily downsizing the sq. footage of its new shops since 2017.
The corporate is increasing into underserved markets, together with city downtowns. A Burlington retailer opened final 12 months on Broad Avenue within the coronary heart of Newark, New Jersey.
In the meantime, the layouts and different options of some present shops, just like the one anchoring the japanese finish of the Trend District in Philadelphia, are being “refreshed,” in accordance with firm officers.
“We don’t have an e-commerce presence. We’re strictly bricks and mortar,” stated Miller, 51, who joined Burlington in 2017. He beforehand served in advertising and model improvement capacities on the Contemporary Market and Goal chains.
With web gross sales of $10.6 billion in 2024, the Fortune 500 agency has 1,108 shops in 46 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, together with 39 within the Philadelphia area.
“Our primary focus has always been on our physical stores,” Miller stated. “With e-commerce, when you fully account for the cost of merchandising, processing, shipping, and accepting returns, it’s very difficult to manage … the price points in the businesses that we compete in.”
About 4,700 folks work on the company campus and warehouses in Burlington County, New Jersey, and one other 2,100 are employed within the Philly space shops.
He famous that Burlington’s friends, together with Ross and TJ Maxx, are considerably bigger, with 1,847 and 1,327 shops, respectively.
However dimension isn’t the whole lot. Miller stated Burlington “has evolved … to offer brands people recognize at prices that really amaze them.”
Realizing the purchasers
Burlington’s smaller-format method continues to middle the treasure-seeking, bargain-hunting procuring expertise strongly recognized with off-price retailing.
The compact shops and shorter aisles, together with the refreshes, intention to offer buyers with clearer, quicker routes to their most well-liked manufacturers.
“We love that our customers love the experience of coming in to the store and looking for treasure,” stated Lyndsay Parker, 35, a neighborhood district supervisor who joined Burlington as a seasonal, part-time gross sales affiliate in 2012.
“They need to see the merchandise, touch it, and try it on,” she stated. “And they’re very value-conscious. They don’t want to break the bank.”
Pete Fader, a professor of selling on the Wharton College, stated a deep information of its prospects appears to be guiding the corporate’s method.
“The experiential treasure hunt aspect is real, and the smaller stores may be a good move,” he stated. “Experiential shopping is like looking for a needle in a haystack, and offering smaller haystacks could be more appealing to more people.”
Philly-area retailer managers “are really good at getting to know the community,” Parker stated. “They know the brands and the trends and the need to pull that merchandise forward.”
The deep roots of off-price
The anticipation of discovering high-quality gadgets at lower-than-prevailing costs was born within the main division retailer “bargain basements” of the late nineteenth century. Wholesalers like Burlington’s predecessor agency, which was established in 1924 to promote ladies’s clothes direct to the general public, later discovered success as effectively.
However off-price actually took off in the course of the inflationary Seventies and ‘80s, when huge “warehouse stores” and “factory outlets” beckoned Philly-area cut price hunters to board buses for Studying, Pennsylvania, which started calling itself the Outlet Capital of the World.
What’s now Burlington Shops was very a lot part of that growth; the primary Burlington Coat Manufacturing facility opened on Route 130 in Burlington Township in 1972, and dozens extra shortly adopted.
By 1993, the opening of a 130,000-square-foot Burlington retailer on the outlet-focused Franklin Mills (now Philadelphia Mills) Mall in far Northeast Philly featured “20,000 coats,” in accordance with a narrative in The Inquirer.
The way in which ahead
The unique Burlington Coat Manufacturing facility retailer on Route 130 closed in 2008. The corporate went public in 2013 and within the final decade shed the “coat factory” portion of its identify.
“Certainly we still carry coats,” Miller stated. “But we’re leaning more into styles and trends.”
The corporate additionally is continuous its neighborhood partnerships domestically in addition to throughout the nation.
Among the many firm’s nationwide companions is the nonprofit Undertake a Classroom, by way of which Burlington lately made a $20,000 donation for buy of faculty provides at Fountain Woods Elementary College in Burlington Township.
The corporate additionally has had a long-standing relationship with the Burlington Township Meals Pantry.
After the nonprofit misplaced its lease in 2017, it was given house, rent-free, in a Burlington warehouse close to the company campus.
And in 2022, Burlington donated and helped renovate the constructing because the pantry’s everlasting house.
“When we rebranded Burlington Coat Factory, we made a conscious decision to make the B in [the new Burlington logo] a heart,” stated Miller. “The heart conveys our culture, how we treat our customers and our associates, and how we want to give back.”
