global-retail
(4)
Circle K
How three El Paso grocery stores became a 29-country, 149,000-employee machine for selling gasoline, coffee and the two-minute stop.
Abercrombie & Fitch Co.
Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE: ANF) is a Columbus, Ohio-based global specialty apparel retailer that operates a family of brands - Abercrombie & Fitch, abercrombie kids, Hollister, Gilly Hicks, Social Tourist and the YPB activewear line - across roughly 840 company-operated stores, a franchise network and a digital business that accounts for close to half of revenue. Founded in 1892 as a Manhattan outfitter that supplied Theodore Roosevelt's safaris and counted Ernest Hemingway among its customers, the company spent the 2010s dismantling the exclusionary teen-mall identity it had built in the 1990s and 2000s. Under CEO Fran Horowitz, who took over in 2017, it split its two flagship brands into distinct demographic lanes - Abercrombie for millennials in their twenties and thirties, Hollister for teenagers - shrank store footprints, and rebuilt merchandising around a lean-inventory 'chase' model that reads early demand signals and reorders fast. The approach produced record fiscal 2025 net sales of $5.27 billion, a third straight year of double-digit operating margin, and one of the more complete reputational reversals in modern American retail.
The TJX Companies, Inc.
The TJX Companies, Inc. is the world's largest off-price retailer of apparel and home fashions, operating more than 5,200 stores across nine countries under brands including T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, HomeSense, Sierra, TK Maxx, and Winners. Headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts, TJX buys excess inventory, closeouts, and canceled orders from thousands of vendors and sells brand-name and designer merchandise at prices typically 20% to 60% below full-price retailers, creating a rotating 'treasure hunt' assortment. The Fortune 100 company surpassed $60 billion in annual sales in fiscal 2026.
PatPat
PatPat is a global direct-to-consumer children's and family apparel brand founded in 2014 by two engineer-fathers, Albert Wang and Ken (Can) Gao. It uses a data-driven, mobile-first model to deliver affordable, trend-forward kids' clothing, family matching outfits, and proprietary innovations like the stain-resistant Go-Neat fabric and the light-up Go-Glow line to more than 23 million customers across 140+ countries.