Tailored Brands, the owner of Men’s Wearhouse, is preparing to return to public markets six years after bankruptcy, but its pitch to investors goes beyond a simple stock listing.
The menswear retailer is also making an aggressive bet on physical stores.
Tailored Brands, which also owns Jos. A. Bank, Moores, and K&G Fashion Superstore, sees room for hundreds of new physical stores over the next decade as it makes its latest pitch to investors.
This is a striking reversal for a company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy during the pandemic and ultimately shuttered more than 400 stores.
The expansion comes as retailers across the U.S. continue to rethink their physical footprints and traditional department stores lose ground.
And in Tailored Brands’ view, it creates an opening for specialty retailers like them to offer services difficult to replicate online.
Men’s Wearhouse owner files for IPO
Tailored Brands publicly filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering and plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “MENW.”
The company has not yet determined how many shares it will offer or the expected price range.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Jefferies are serving as lead bookrunning managers for the proposed offering, according to the company.
More Retail:
- Coca-Cola quietly hints at reinventing previously failed flavor
- Bath & Body Works quietly gains a competitive advantage
- Dollar General brings back old prices
Tailored Brands plans to use proceeds from the offering in part to repay debt, with the remainder available for general corporate purposes, including working capital, operating expenses, and capital expenditures.
Silver Point Capital, which acquired a significant stake following Tailored Brands’ bankruptcy, is expected to remain the company’s controlling shareholder after the IPO.
But the planned listing also marks a dramatic change from where the retailer stood in 2020.
As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many offices closed, disrupting weddings and other events.
Consequently, demand for suits and formalwear collapsed.
At the time, Tailored Brands warned it could close as many as 500 stores before finally filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 2020.
The company ultimately shuttered more than 400 locations during that period.
Now, after its relatively quick exit from bankruptcy in December 2020, Tailored Brands operates more than 1,000 stores across North America and is also preparing to expand again.
Tailored Brands plans more than 500 additional stores
Tailored Brands expects to open about 20 stores in fiscal 2026 and more than 35 in fiscal 2027, before ramping up to more than 50 openings annually in the near term, according to its IPO filing.
Over the longer term, the retailer says it sees potential for more than 500 additional locations across 100-plus markets.
That plan stands out in a retail environment, where closures still exceed openings overall, even though the pace of closures is improving and openings are rising
CNBC reported that Coresight Research expects U.S. retailers to:
- Close about 7,900 stores in 2026, down 4.5% year over year.
- Open about 5,500 stores, up 4.4%.
This makes the projected store closures the lowest in three years.
More importantly, Tailored Brands believes some of that disruption could work in its favor.
In its IPO filing, the retailer pointed specifically to the retreat of department stores, which historically held a major position in suits, dress clothing, and other apparel categories.
The company, citing U.S. Census Bureau data, said the number of department stores fell by more than 40% between 2018 and 2023.
Tailored Brands argues that as department stores disappear, spending is shifting toward specialty retailers.
“We believe our focus on menswear, our high-touch service and our offering with unparalleled expert advice and fit solutions position us favorably to continue capturing share from department stores and competing effectively against e-commerce and off-price retailers,” reads the SEC filing.
Its own stores are also largely insulated from the struggles of enclosed malls.
More than 90% of Tailored Brands’ locations were outside malls at the end of fiscal 2025, and the company said its entire store fleet was profitable on a four-wall basis.
Now, the company is using customer data, trade-area demographics, results from its existing stores, and competitor information to identify markets for expansion.
Weddings and rentals remain key
Tailored Brands is also betting that stores still matter for purchases that require more service than a typical apparel transaction.
Suits and formalwear often require measurements, alterations, and styling, while weddings can bring entire groups of customers into stores for fittings and rentals.
That rental business gives Tailored Brands a particularly strong position.
The company said in its SEC filing that it is the leader in the U.S. men’s apparel rental market, capturing roughly half of the market annually since 2018 and nearly 60% more recently.
Rentals are also a high-margin part of the business.
Tailored Brands reported rental selling margins of 85.5% in fiscal 2025.
But Tailored Brands is no longer relying solely on traditional suits.
Since its restructuring, the company has modernized its assortment, expanded its casual and flexible clothing offerings, and increased its reliance on products sold under its own brands.
Private brands accounted for roughly 88% of its assortment by the end of fiscal 2025.
Those changes are important as workplace dress codes have become more casual, and fewer consumers need traditional business suits every day.
Instead, Tailored Brands increasingly depends on a mix of weddings, celebrations, job interviews, professional events, and other occasions to bring shoppers into its stores.
That creates another challenge revealed in its IPO filing: getting those customers to come back.
Nearly 70% of Tailored Brands’ customers are classified as new or reactivated shoppers, and the company attracted roughly 6 million new and reactivated customers in fiscal 2025.
Customers averaged only 1.6 visits per year.
Tailored Brands sees converting even part of that large group into repeat shoppers as a major growth opportunity.
Tailored Brands posts higher sales ahead of IPO
The retailer is returning to Wall Street with a significantly different financial profile than when it entered bankruptcy.
Tailored Brands generated about $2.5 billion in net sales and $217 million in net income in fiscal 2025.
Its gross margin reached 48.2%, and the company said its menswear market share increased by about 70 basis points between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2025.
The latest quarter showed continued sales growth.
Revenue increased 5.8% to $681.8 million for the three months ended May 2, compared with $644.4 million a year earlier.
Net income, however, declined to $44.9 million from $50.7 million during the same period a year earlier.
The planned IPO will therefore serve more than one purpose.
It gives Tailored Brands access to public equity markets as it prepares for a major expansion, while also allowing the company to direct some proceeds toward debt reduction.
Retail IPO market remains difficult
Tailored Brands is also trying to return to Wall Street during an unusual period for consumer companies.
The broader U.S. IPO market has surged in 2026, but retail has largely been left behind.
Only five U.S. consumer and retail IPOs had priced so far this year as of July 22, the lowest year-to-date number in a decade, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters.
That could soon change.
Jersey Mike’s and fashion retailer Reformation have both moved forward with IPO plans and together are seeking to raise more than all U.S. consumer and retail IPOs completed so far this year.
Reuters identified Tailored Brands as one of the retailers waiting in the IPO pipeline that could benefit if those offerings perform well.
For Tailored Brands, however, the bigger test goes beyond whether investors are ready for another retail stock.
Six years ago, the company was closing hundreds of stores as demand collapsed.
Now it is asking investors to back the opposite strategy.
A return to public markets, hundreds of additional stores, and a bet that the decline of traditional department stores has left room for a specialty menswear retailer to grow.
Related: 75-year-old giant auto parts company files Chapter 15 protection
