Dylex
| Industry | Retail |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1966 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Founders | Jimmy Kay and Wilfred Posluns |
| Defunct | 2001 |
| Subsidiaries | NBO Stores, Inc. |
Dylex Limited was one of Canada's largest retailers during the 1970s and 1980s, where it operated a number of specialty retail stores, including women's wear, menswear, and family stores, including BiWay, a large, and now defunct, Canadian discount chain.
Dylex was formed in 1966 as a holding company for the purchase of Tip Top Tailors through a partnership between Jimmy Kay, a decorated World War II veteran and businessman, and Wilfrid Posluns, a former stockbroker. The company name was an acronym for "Damn Your Lousy Excuses." It absorbed Posluns' company and Kay's Fairweather stores. From the start the company maintained retail and manufacturing operations. After a year, the company's sales at its meanswear stores had reached $37 million.
In 1984, Dylex purchased 50% of NBO Stores Inc., a 28-store chain of men's clothing discounters founded in Yonkers in 1971 as National Brands Outlet by Leon Atkind. In 1988, it purchased the remaining 50% from Atkind for $25 million (equivalent to $50,626,000 in 2016) in cash. At the time, the company was generating $100 million-a-year in sales.
The company's strategy was to purchase clothing stores but to leave the running of the company in its current management's hands.
The company later purchased Harry Rosen Inc. from its founder, Harry Rosen. Rosen later bought back his company in 1992. The company recorded explosive growth during the 1970s and 1980s operating 17 chains with more than 2,700 stores in the United States and Canada at its peak. In 1980, its annual sales reached $650 million.
At one point, the company had five business divisions: BiWay, a major discount basic apparel and general merchandise, Thriftys (denim and other jeanswear and accessories), Tip Top Tailors (mid-priced men's suits and sportwear), and its women's wear group, made up of Fairweather (women's career and casual clothing), Big Steel Man (aka Big Steel and in its final days Steel), and Braemar (women's tailored clothing and accessories). The company operated 638 stores across Canada.
In 1999, Dylex created a new chain offering off-price brand name clothing and accessories named Labels, in an attempt to have a chain competing with the current leader of that category, Winners. This new venture was not successful, and by the end of 2000, the chain was purchased by the TJX Companies Inc (operators of the TJ Maxx and TK Maxx stores in the United States and Europe), and then folded into their Winners/HomeSense chain.
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