BJ's Wholesale Club, Inc. (NYSE: BJ) is a membership-only warehouse club chain operating
on the United States East Coast, as well as in the state of Ohio. The company
is also ranked 287 on Fortune magazine's 2007 listing of America's 500 largest
public corporations.
The company was started by Zayre, a discount
department store chain, in 1984, on the Medford/Malden border in Massachusetts.
This was and still is the company's flagship store.
When Zayre
sold their own nameplate to rival discount chain Ames, TJX Companies was formed.
TJX spun off their warehouse division, consisting of BJ's and now defunct HomeClub
(later known as HomeBase, then House2Home), to form Waban, Inc. Later, Waban
spun off BJ's to become an independent company headquartered in Natick, Massachusetts.
The
letters B and J stand for Beverly Jean, a daughter
of one of the founders. They are commonly misinterpreted to stand for Berkley and
Jensen, a brand name sold in their stores.
As of April 2008, BJ's
operates 178 BJ's clubs in 16 states and employs over 19,500 Team Members (both
full and part-time). Its major competitors are Costco and Sams Club. |
