Ernie Herrman
Chief Executive Officer and President at TJX Companies
Thanks, Scott. Looking ahead, I'd like to highlight the opportunities that we believe will allow us to drive sales and traffic in the second half of the year. First, we are convinced that our relentless focus on value is a tremendous advantage and an inflationary environment, we believe, even more consumers will be seeking out value. We are confident that our value position will be a very attractive option for consumers looking to stretch their dollars without sacrificing on quality and brands.
Second, we are excited about our store and online merchandising plans for the back half of the year, especially the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons. The marketplace is loaded with a great selection of apparel and home merchandise across good, better and best brands. We have enormous confidence that our teams will execute on these initiatives to bring consumers the right brands and fashions at the right values every day.
Next, we are planning exciting marketing campaigns for television and digital media for the fall and holiday season. We believe these campaigns will help us continue to attract new shoppers and stay top of mind with our existing customers. Each of our divisions will showcase our differentiated shopping experience by reinforcing our value leadership while also highlighting discovery, fashion and quality. Further, in an ever evolving media landscape, we continue to learn and adapt to new digital outlets so that we can broaden our consumer reach and ensure we are connecting with shoppers on the platforms where they are spending their time. Additionally, our research tells us that overall, our marketing campaigns and greater assortment of values continue to attract new shoppers of all ages into our stores, including an outsized number of Gen Z and millennial shoppers. We are also encouraged by our strong overall customer satisfaction scores.
Lastly, while most of our European and Canadian stores were opened in the second quarter, many of them were still operating with stringent COVID related occupancy restrictions. Many of these restrictions have eased and assuming this trend continues. We expect overall sales and customer traffic to improve in the second half of the year in these regions. Further, with a significant number of permanent retail closures in these geographies over the last 18 months, we see a great opportunity to capture a bigger share of consumers' wallets going forward.
As to e-commerce, we continue to be pleased with the sales at our US and UK online businesses. We are excited to launch e-commerce on homegoods.com in the third quarter. We believe this is something, our existing customers have been waiting for and there is another way for us to attract new shoppers. Similar to our other online businesses, homegoods.com will be complementary to our physical stores and allow customers to shop our great values 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Beyond this year, we are convinced that we are set up extremely well to significantly grow our market share and improve our profitability. Let me take a moment and share the characteristics of our business that we believe will continue to drive consumers to our retail banners going forward. First, we are confident that the appeal of our treasure hunt shopping experience will continue to resonate with consumers. Our merchandise assortments are constantly changing. So there's always something new to surprise, excite and inspire shoppers in our stores and online. Further we offer great value every day. So our customers know they are getting excellent deals every time they visit and they don't have to think about coupons or promotions. Second, we believe our stores offer consumers a much more eclectic assortment of merchandise versus traditional department and specialty stores. Our more than 1,100 global buyers are in the marketplace every week, sourcing, fresh, exciting merchandise from a universe of about 21,000 vendors around the world. Our planning and allocation teams curate these goods to create a differentiated store by store mix that we believe, no one else is offering.
Next, we look at our stores in convenient easy to access locations to make it easy for shoppers to visit our stores in a timely and efficient way. For example, in the US, we estimate that we have a T.J. Maxx or a Marshalls store within 10 miles of approximately 80% of the population. Our retail banners are located across urban, suburban and rural markets, which allows us to reach consumers across a very wide customer demographic. Lastly, the flexibility of our business model allows us to adjust our buying store formats and distribution to take advantage of hot categories and brands and adapt to changing consumer preferences. In terms of profitability, I want to emphasize that we are highly focused on improving our pre-tax margin profile next year and beyond. Clearly, our ability to keep gaining market share and drive outsized sales is our best opportunity. In addition, we feel great about the opportunities we are pursuing that we believe will help offset the margin pressures that we have seen over the last several years. One of these is to surgically look for opportunities to adjust details and select areas, while maintaining our great values to our shoppers, just as we have throughout our history.
Scott will discuss this in more detail in a moment. Now, I would like to share some information about Corporate responsibility of TJX. For our nearly 45-year history, our mission has been consistent to deliver great value every day, and similarly since the very beginning, we have also committed to acting as a responsible corporate citizen. Throughout the pandemic, the health and safety of our associates and our customers has been a top priority and remains so today. Simultaneously, over the past year and a half and important issues like equity and racial justice and climate change have become even more critical. To be clear, these are areas that we have been committed to for many years and a proud of the actions we have taken recently to make additional progress.
Let me share a few key points on these. In terms of equity and racial justice, for our 45 year history, we have been committed to making TJX an inclusive workplace. In June, we shared with our associates and on TJX.com, the most recent steps that we are taking to help us become a more inclusive and diverse organization at all levels. These efforts include initiatives related to recruitment practices, associate education, training and development and an expanded focus on our process and programs to support an inclusive work environment. We know we have work to do and are committed to improving in this important area.
As to the increasing importance of environmental sustainability, we have made progress working towards the goal we set last June for a science based greenhouse gas emissions target mapped to the Paris Climate Agreement 1.5 degree Celsius guidelines. In the coming weeks, we will make our annual update to the environmental sustainability portion of TJX.com, including information about our climate and energy strategy along with waste and chemicals management. These are just a few of our initiatives. We recognize there is an increasing interest in our efforts related to environmental, social and governance or ESG practices and we look forward to keeping you update on our progress. Our commitment to corporate responsibility is as important as ever. And as always, there is a lot of information on tjx.com.
In closing, I want to again thank each of our associates around the globe who stepped up to support the business and helped us achieve outstanding second quarter results. I could not be prouder of the collective efforts of our associates over the past 18 months and their commitment to working as one TJX throughout this health crisis. I am extremely pleased with our excellent top and bottom line performance in the second quarter and I'm optimistic on the remainder of the year. As an off-price leader in every country we operate in, I'm convinced that TJX has set up extremely well to gain market share for many years to come. I am confident that our sales and traffic initiatives as well as our global store growth plans will drive even more shoppers to our retail banners.
In terms of the bottom line, we are very confident in the opportunities we see to drive higher profit margins beyond this year. I truly believe the characteristics of our off-price business model will continue to be a winning retail formula and that TJX is on its way to becoming a $60 billion plus revenue company.
Now I'll turn the call back to Scott for a few additional comments and then we'll open it up for questions.
