Has your TK Maxx shot downhill?

[Supersimkin7]

Grumbling of SW4 here. TK, formerly the home of the odd very nice jersey and useful dress, has slumped - fast - into polyester hell, scuffed and sloppy, for only £70 a dirty garment.

Racks of tat, basikerly, in woeful nick. Same with you?

I know everything is polyester now but surely not so much the good brands - TK appear to have whacked the prices up too by a good 25 or 50 percent.

Is yours ok? Where can we go for those bargainous buys these days.

NW England here. Two local to me, both have actually improved.

Definitely agree with you, very rarely find anything I really like in recent times, prices definitely increased massively and too much polyester!

I've certainly fallen out of love with mine. I'd thought it was because the illusion of bargains had worn off, because I'd become wise to their trickery of interlacing genuine bargains with a plethora of invented tat-brands. But perhaps you are right and they have also become objectively worse. I only know that I don't enjoy a wander there like I used to

I still like their home and garden stuff, but the clothes selection is like a jumble sale.

It’s one of those places that one day you can find lots you like, and another day , nothing. It’s always been a bit jumble-sale ish though.

The home section is always good.

Ours never stocks anything larger than a size 18, so I can't get anything to fit. I swerve it these days.

Ours never got more than a few feet up the hill.

Same here in the north east in my opinion.

Up in the North, TKMAX seems to be mostly full of ends of lines from other stores. Some days nothing is good, sometimes lots is fab!

Our local one is fine. I get good bargains on skincare in there (you see the same brands in other chains elsewhere priced higher) and on kids’ clothes (it’s often the same price even as midrange brands like Zara and H&M for Puma, Pierre Cardin etc). So I will keep going there.

Most definitely and others I’ve spoken to think so, too. They no longer seem to have the genuine designer clothes that they had years ago.

The quality of the china, especially the mugs, isn’t a patch on what it was.

So much plastic tat.

But the skincare and hair care products are genuinely first rate, as is most of the kitchen ware. Plus if you keep your eyes peeled, bedding can still be excellent.

Still can’t resist going in, though.

That’s the point of it, isn’t it? Ends of lines, except for the cheap knock off stuff they make.

Ours is ok but you do really have to rummage through the rubbish. For a period a few years back it was just a sea of Breton stripe t shirts, season after season. The homeware, garden stuff, fitness stuff and cosmetics in mine are good but to be honest the clothes are better in Primark (the only big shops we have in our little town)

I get bits of beauty and body care stuff there. Clothes are crap.

Like a jumble sale and always felt like that. Hate it will not go and some of the shops smell

I never even bother looking at clothes in there, I haven’t done for years, I like the home section, especially candles and kitchen items

Think the clothing has definitely deteriorated

I'm still finding bargains in shoes and their active/outdoors section, but I mainly go for beauty - in particular shower gel and shampoo. And also weirdly enough, socks - they always have nice bamboo ones. But am still mourning the days when their clothes were better. I picked up a Benetton blazer then for £5.00 which I'm still wearing, together with a lot of Paul Costello items.

My local one is absolutely brilliant for scent. But I'm a Miller Harris fan so can't go wrong, really.

Lots of tat and own brand stuff but I have found a Cos shirt and SweatyBetty running jacket in my local this year.... just enough of a dopamine hit to keep going back and searching the rails whenever I pass!

The make-up is the first thing you see in my local TK, and it’s ALL been opened and smeared around by the local kids. Bleugh. And I don’t know enough about Korean skincare yet to tell which brands are real and which are TK knock-offs, but there seems to be a lot of it.

upstairs I never bother with the clothes, but the home/kitchen section is good for baking tins, pans, glasses, etc. I’ve had some bargains - Robert Welch spoons and Miller Harris candles. But when you see all the identical socks and pants it really drives home how much stuff is made under license in the same factories - ‘good’ brand names are pretty meaningless.

Agreed, I went into the one near me earlier and jumble sale was my exact thoughts!

Two jumpers I picked up had pulls in them already, most stuff just seemed really tatty or poor quality and it just all felt a bit crap.

The home stuff is good but the clothing has gone right down hill.

I've spent a small fortune in there this year after losing some weight. Some of their in house brands are really quite good.

I rarely see anything good in the clothing but I don't think it's ever been that easy to find good stuff, you always have to rummage! I think perhaps clothes manufacturers in general are declining in standards so they're matching that tend.
I like the skincare and accessories best. I have gotten some great handbags from there in the past couple of years. Sometimes I didn't nice gifts too, it's still one of my favourite shops, I think mostly because you never know what you'll find.

Same in Aberdeen..wonder if it's a store model.