Tu (clothing)

Tu is a British home brand fashion label owned by Argos, a division of the supermarket Sainsbury's. It is the United Kingdom's third largest online clothing retailer and the United Kingdom's sixth largest clothing retailer by volume.[1][2]

Tu sells a wide range of clothing for men, women and children, with 3,000 lines sold through 400 Sainsbury's supermarkets.[3]

Timeline

The Tu brand was founded in 2004 by Sainsbury's as a replacement for the Jeff & Co range designed by Jeff Banks. The new brand included a line of childrenswear created by Adams. It was initially launched in 160 stores.[4] The original range included both clothing under the "TU" brand and homewares under the brand "TU Home".

In 2011, Sainsbury's entered into a partnership with the television clothing guru Gok Wan to design a new clothing range.[5]

In 2013, Sainsbury's relaunched the Tu brand, concentrating it entirely on clothing, with the homewares re-branded under the core "by Sainsbury's" brand (the Sainsbury's homewares range is now branded as Habitat as of 2021). The logo was also changed, from all uppercase letters to a capital "T" and a lowercase "u", to emphasise that the brand is pronounced like "two" and not "tea you".[6][7]

In 2015, Sainsbury's set up a dedicated website, tuclothing.sainsburys.co.uk (branded as Tu.co.uk), to sell the product range nationwide to a much bigger audience.[8]

Following Sainsbury's acquisition of Argos in 2016, Sainsbury's started selling Tu clothing on the Argos website in 2018. This brought a much larger demographic of shoppers to the Tu brand, enabling access to a much broader range of household incomes.[9] In 2023, the Tu brand was moved under Argos.[10][11]

References

  1. Tu Sainsbury's, retrieved 2022-10-11^
  2. Top online stores in the Fashion segment in the UK in 2021, by e-commerce net sales Statista, retrieved 2022-10-11^
  3. Tu Sainsbury's, retrieved 2022-10-11^
  4. New campaign: Sainsbury's Tu campaignlive.co.uk, 2004, retrieved 2022-06-12^
  5. Ed Owen. Gok Wan designs clothing range for Sainsbury's campaignlive.co.uk, 2011-03-02, retrieved 2022-10-11^
  6. Catherine Neilan. Sainsbury's relaunches clothing arm Tu drapersonline.com, 2013-06-17, retrieved 2022-10-11^
  7. Lauren Cochrane. Sainsbury's Tu clothing range tries its hand at fast fashion theguardian.com, 2013-06-24, retrieved 2022-10-11^
  8. Luke Tugby. Sainsbury's launches Tu clothing website to open up range nationwide retail-week.com, 2015-08-13, retrieved 2022-10-11^
  9. Sandra Halliday. Tu Clothing to be sold at Argos as Sainsbury's chases faster growth uk.fashionnetwork.com, 2018-03-28, retrieved 2022-10-11^
  10. Delivery & Collection Information tuclothing.sainsburys.co.uk, retrieved 2026-02-27^
  11. You New Tu and Argos account tuclothing.sainsburys.co.uk, retrieved 2026-02-27^