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I’ve been back from London for over a month now, I’m still pondering some of the differences between American English and Ye Olde British English.
Lift versus elevator. Aubergine versus eggplant. Don’t even get me started on biscuits. And now, apparently, TJ Maxx versus TK Maxx.
I wasn’t aware of that last one until recently, when I was scouting feature brands for this very newsletter and noticed that TJ, the American cousin, was popping off with some truly impressive growth. When I ran this by CreatorIQ’s one and only Rebecca Cianci, she informed me that TK, the European cousin, 1. Existed, and 2. Wasn’t doing too shabby, either.
That’s when I realiz(s)ed that it was time for a good old-fashioned competition between the sides of the pond. Was growth for TJ outpacing growth for TK? Were the brands rising in tandem? Were the same factors fueling success in both regions, or were there elements unique to each locale?
Did you know that the reason TJ Maxx transforms into TK Maxx every time it crosses the Atlantic Ocean is because it wants to avoid confusion with U.K. retailer TJ Hughes, which has no affiliation with the Maxx family? It’s true! Good luck to University of Michigan hockey player T.J. Hughes if you ever travel to England. Sorry bud, your name is T.K. now. I don’t make the rules.
So the first thing to clear up, before we even get to the international comparison, is whether European creators really favor TK Maxx over TJ Maxx. That’s why I looked at totals for both brand names in Europe over the last five years. The results were shocking, in that the results were exactly the same.
See, our data operations team wisely counts mentions of the brand by one name in Europe as mentions of the other. So while most European creators are indeed referring to the retailer as TK Maxx, metrics from that content are attributed to both TK and TJ Maxx.
I’ll also take the time to say here that mentions of TK Maxx in the American market are pretty negligible, though those metrics are also applied to both TK and TJ Maxx.
Alright, having gotten to the bottom of that—thanks for bearing with me—how do TJ Maxx’s U.S. numbers compare to TK Maxx’s European numbers?
Ah, I see.
Yes, while the brand is seeing steady growth on both sides of the Atlantic, there’s really no comparison: the scale of TJ Maxx’s digital presence in the U.S. is orders of magnitude larger than TK Maxx’s digital presence in Europe. In fact, putting them side by side does a disservice to the strides that TK Maxx has made, which are just as impressive, on their own scale, as TJ Maxx’s gangbusting numbers stateside.
But in the end, 19.8k American creators mentioned TJ Maxx in 2024, and 5.1k European creators mentioned TJ Maxx in 2024. That’s going to lead to some discrepancies.
Despite the title of this blog post, the question becomes less of who reigns supreme between the brand’s American and European iterations, and what’s driving the supremacy shared between both iterations of Maxx brand itself.
To find an answer in the data, I looked for differences between TJ and TK, which by and large followed the same patterns: five bars of steadily increasing growth, a la the cellphone logo format this newsletter favors. What were the metrics where we saw exceptions to this rule?
In Europe, TK Maxx’s post count actually dipped in 2022. While it’s since recovered, the growth hasn’t been exponential, indicating that the brand’s progress stems from more impactful content, rather than an influx of new posts.
TJ Maxx Post Count (US): 2020 - 2024
Meanwhile, in America, TJ Maxx’s post count didn’t drop, exactly, but it made for fairly flat going until things skyrocketed in 2024.
Another area where things only took off as of late came with TK Maxx’s (again, the European one) impressions, which stayed level from 2020 to 2022 before taking off thereafter:
In America, that trajectory was a little different:
2021 to 2022 saw a similarly small bump, and 2023 to 2024 saw similar progress, but that jump from 2020 was more pronounced.
Hmm: suddenly surging post counts, coupled with skyrocketing impressions…I have a theory. Let’s take a look at the brands’ platform figures and see whether that theory pans out.
As longtime (or even short-time) readers might be able to guess, my suspicion is that TikTok has played a big role in the rise of both TJ and TK Maxx. Analyzing the numbers from June 2024 to May 2025, I found that Instagram and TikTok combined to generate 95% of TJ Maxx’s EMV in the U.S., and 98% in Europe. But the proportions proved pretty different:
While TikTok claims an advantage in both markets, that advantage is a lot more pronounced in the U.S. Another thing that’s a lot more advanced in the U.S.—a discrepancy that sits at the heart of this TikTok discrepancy—is the term ‘Maxxinista.’
But before I get into that, I want to set the stage a little.
When my coworkers at CreatorIQ found out that I would be writing about TJ Maxx, they were very excited. All the somewhat abstract numbers I’m talking about here, the engagements and impressions, registered immediately and viscerally in their passion for the brand. These coworkers noted how TJ Maxx can claim not only a dedicated consumer fanbase, but a team of creators wholly devoted to brand-specific. Like grocery brands, whose top creators often incorporate their favored stores into their brand handles and general social media identities, these creators dedicate themselves to content like ‘search’ videos, which profile creators’ quests to find coveted items like the lobster purse.
Not only does this content spark a sense of drama and storytelling, it also gets creators (and consumers) to visit several store locations, where they’ll surely purchase additional items. That’s how you get content like TJ Maxx Treasure Hunt videos, or a creator’s, uh, $4,000 Beaded Bag Collection Reveal. (Thank you to CreatorIQ’s Senior Digital Marketing Manager Lauren Lippert for these content suggestions! And thank you, once again, for making HBBIP possible.)
Valerie Leary, CreatorIQ’s Senior Director of Revenue Marketing (and arguably our Chief Maxxinista), put it perfectly: “It’s a community. People that shop at and appreciate TJ Maxx, Marshalls, etc. just ‘get’ each other in a way that’s palpable but unexplainable to people who don’t.”
Which brings me back to ‘Maxxinista.’ The term is an encapsulation of that palpable, unexplainable quality, and that sense of community. However, at least from a social media standpoint, it drives less total coverage for TJ Maxx than I for one would have guessed.
While posts mentioning ‘Maxxinista’ steadily increased over time, they only topped out at $5.7M EMV in 2024—$3.2M EMV of which, by the way, came from TikTok, proving the platform’s integral role. But this was still a pretty negligible percentage of TJ Maxx’s overall total. Plus, the term didn’t get any play for TK Maxx over in the U.K.
Instead, TJ Maxx succeeded by being present for all the needs in creators’ lives, from back-to-school shopping to holiday gifts to the occasional lobster bag. Even if a creator wasn’t a dedicated Maxxinista, they could rely on the brand for both the viral fun of a product treasure hunt and everyday reliability and affordability. That spirit pervades content on both sides of the Atlantic, fueling success for both TJ and TK.
Like Val said, sometimes you just get it.
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