J.Jill, Inc. (JILL) Business

Item 1. Business

In this Annual Report, unless otherwise indicated or the context otherwise requires, references to the “Company,” “J.Jill,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to J.Jill, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries. We operate on a 52- or 53-week fiscal year that ends on the Saturday that is closest to January 31. Each fiscal year generally is comprised of four 13-week fiscal quarters, although in the years with 53 weeks, the fourth quarter represents a 14-week period. References in this Annual Report to “Fiscal Year 2025” refer to the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026, references to “Fiscal Year 2024” refer to the fiscal year ended February 1, 2025, and references to “Fiscal Year 2023” refer to the fiscal year ended February 3, 2024. Fiscal Years 2025 and 2024 are comprised of 52 weeks and Fiscal Year 2023 is comprised of 53 weeks.

Company Overview

J.Jill is a national lifestyle brand that provides apparel, footwear and accessories designed to help its customers move through a full life with ease. The brand represents an easy, thoughtful and inspired style that celebrates the totality of all women and designs its products with its core brand ethos in mind: keep it simple and make it matter. J.Jill offers a high touch customer experience through 256 stores nationwide and a robust ecommerce platform. J.Jill is headquartered outside Boston.

Brand

J.Jill has modernized its value proposition and introduced new customers to its relevant and compelling products through thoughtful, versatile designs that reflect the individuality of its customers. J.Jill has accomplished this by clearly communicating its offerings that align with its vision: to live in a world where the totality of every woman is seen, valued and celebrated. This permeates across all J.Jill touchpoints through authentic advertising, inclusive retail experiences and presentation of its offerings – whether the customer chooses to shop on the J.Jill website, in J.Jill retail stores, or through the J.Jill catalog.

Customer

J.Jill caters to a distinctive set of women – typically 45 years and older, college educated, and with an approximate median annual household income of $150,000. Her discretionary dollars are her own to spend and she leads a busy, yet balanced life and she is involved in her community. Her average tenure with the J.Jill brand is an industry-leading 10 plus years.

Additionally, as J.Jill retains her over time, she tends to migrate from being a single channel customer to a more valuable omnichannel customer. Omnichannel customers comprised approximately 24% of J.Jill’s active customer base for Fiscal Year 2025, approximately 24% for Fiscal Year 2024, and approximately 23% for Fiscal Year 2023.

Product

J.Jill’s products are marketed under the J.Jill brand name and sold primarily through two channels: its ecommerce platform and catalog (“Direct”) and its retail stores (“Retail”). J.Jill’s thoughtful, versatile apparel, footwear and accessories reflect the individuality of each customer and are made to seamlessly take them through their day. J.Jill uses high quality fabrics and techniques for season-after-season comfort and style. J.Jill’s products are available across the full range of sizes including Regular, Petite and Tall, and it provides one, size-integrated shopping destination for customers with sizes from Extra Small up to 2X in store and 4X online.

In addition to its core assortment, J.Jill has sub-brands. Each demonstrate a different design ethos and offers customers a mix of casual and refined apparel based on their needs. J.Jill offers versatile apparel that meets every moment of her life. Customers turn to J.Jill for work, travel, luxe loungewear, events and occasions, and premium casual clothing.

J.Jill also offers accessories to elevate the styling of our classic silhouettes including jewelry, bags, belts, shoes and scarves.

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Product Design and Development

The J.Jill customer seeks newness and unique products. Through nine separate seasons, J.Jill flows designs and color palettes frequently – creating engagement and optionality for its customers. Substantially all of J.Jill’s merchandise is designed in-house, creating newness through different fabrics, colors, patterns and silhouettes. J.Jill also utilizes the launch of its sub-brands, Pure Jill, Wearever, and Fit, to stagger new deliveries, and offers web edit capsules and omnichannel product refreshes to provide newness throughout each season. The close coordination between its teams ensures that its product and brand message is clearly communicated to its customers across all channels, bringing customers back regularly to see what’s new.

Omnichannel Business Model

J.Jill believes that its customers’ purchasing decisions are influenced by the consistent experience it provides across its sales channels. For Fiscal Year 2025, J.Jill generated approximately 52% of total net sales through its Retail channel and approximately 48% of total net sales through its Direct channel. This balanced, omnichannel business model means J.Jill meets existing and prospective customers where and how they want to shop. Further, its robust customer database and analytical capabilities allow J.Jill to be focused and strategic in identifying high potential locations and optimizing its store footprint.

Retail Channel

J.Jill Stores

As of January 31, 2026, J.Jill operated 256 stores across 42 states with approximately half located in lifestyle centers and the remaining in premium malls; all J.Jill stores are leased. Its stores range in size from approximately 2,000 to 6,000 square feet, and the average store is approximately 3,700 square feet.

J.Jill’s store designs showcase its brand, while elevating and simplifying the J.Jill shopping experience. Its stores provide a shared community of like-minded women and a welcoming, easy-to-shop environment with personalized attention. Its customer relies on trusted store associates to provide honest feedback and advice to help guide them. Through its concierge service, they can get early access to J.Jill’s latest products or have its team pull items that complement their style and aesthetic. When the customer cannot find an item in-stock at their local store, J.Jill’s in-store ordering platform ships available products to their home.

Store Growth

J.Jill believes its stores to be an important channel for its customers. J.Jill reviews and evaluates its store fleet and potential new store locations on various factors, including customer demographics within a market, concentration of existing customers, location of existing stores, center tenant quality and mix, rental economics and overall operating performance. J.Jill returned to net store growth in Fiscal Year 2024 and continued in 2025 with the addition of net four new stores. J.Jill will continue to review its fleet for optimization opportunities going forward, while also pursuing net new store openings.

The following table shows new store openings and closings since Fiscal Year 2021.

Direct Channel

J.Jill’s Direct channel consists of its website and catalog orders. Within its Direct channel, ecommerce represented approximately 97% of Direct channel net sales and phone orders represented 3% of Direct channel net sales.

J.Jill’s website, www.jjill.com, delivers to customers an engaging shopping experience by featuring updates on new collections, guidance on how to wardrobe and wear its products, and the ability to chat live with a sales representative.

The J.Jill website also provides customers with a broader range of styles than the stores and catalog.

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Competitive Strengths

Distinct, Well-Recognized Brand. The J.Jill brand represents an easy, thoughtful and inspired style that celebrates the totality of all women and fuels her joy and impact with style. J.Jill has cultivated this differentiated brand through deep consumer insights and primary research data to better understand what women want from fashion and the shopping experience. The result has helped J.Jill communicate the brand story more broadly and strategically and reaffirmed its commitment to its customers, creating significant brand trust and an emotional connection with them.

Omnichannel Business. J.Jill has developed an omnichannel business model comprised of its Retail and its Direct channel. Its Retail and Direct channels complement and drive traffic to one another, and J.Jill leverages its targeted marketing initiatives to acquire new customers across its channels.

Data-Centric Approach That Drives Future Profitability and Mitigates Risk. J.Jill believes it has industry-leading data capture capabilities that allow it to match approximately 97% of transactions to an identifiable customer. J.Jill uses its extensive customer database to track and effectively analyze customer information as well as contact history. J.Jill also has significant visibility into its customers’ transaction behavior. J.Jill can identify a single-channel customer who purchases a product through its website, its retail store or its catalogs, as well as an omnichannel customer who purchases in more than one channel. J.Jill continually leverages this database and applies its insights to operate its business as well as to acquire new customers and then create, build and maintain a relationship with each customer to drive optimum value.

Affluent and Loyal Customer Base. J.Jill targets an attractive demographic of affluent women 45 years and older. With an approximate median annual household income of $150,000, its customer has significant spending power. J.Jill’s private label credit card program also drives customer loyalty and encourages shopping. J.Jill believes it will continue to develop long-term customer relationships that can drive profitable sales growth.

Customer-Focused Product Assortment. J.Jill customers strongly associate its product with a modern balance of style, quality, comfort and ease suitable for a broad range of occasions at accessible price points. Its customer-focused assortment spans a full range of sizes and is designed to provide an easy wardrobe that is relevant to her lifestyle. Each year, J.Jill offers merchandise collections that are designed and delivered to provide a consistent flow of fresh products. J.Jill creates product newness through the use of different fabrics, colors, patterns and silhouettes. J.Jill has an in-house, customer centric product design and development process that leverages its extensive database of customer feedback and allows J.Jill to identify and incorporate changes in its customers’ preferences. J.Jill believes its customer focused approach to product development and continual delivery of fresh, high quality products drives traffic, frequency and conversion.

Highly Experienced Leadership Team. J.Jill’s leadership team has extensive industry experience with significant expertise in merchandising, marketing, stores, ecommerce, human resources, and finance. J.Jill’s senior leadership team has an average of 26 years of experience in retail.

Growth Strategy

J.Jill believes that its target demographic (women 45 years and older) is relatively underserved by the industry, and the brand has significant opportunity to acquire new customers, reactivate lapsed customers, and retain existing customers to expand its customer file. J.Jill has refined its growth strategy around three core pillars: Product Evolution, Enhanced Customer Journey, and Operational Excellence. These pillars build on the Company's existing strengths while positioning J.Jill to unlock future growth and expand its customer base. Key elements of J.Jill's growth strategy include:

Product Evolution. J.Jill believes there is an opportunity to evolve its product assortment to be more cohesive and capture a greater share of wallet through eliminating redundancy to incorporate new styles that serve more of its customers' lifestyle needs while also expanding areas of its assortment, such as accessories, that are highly scalable. With a strength in merchandising and design, the Company expects to execute this initiative while improving visual merchandising and maintaining a balance between newness and core staples.

Enhanced Customer Journey. J.Jill has significant opportunity to attract new customers and grow the value of its active customer base across all channels. J.Jill is rebalancing its marketing investment to optimize customer acquisition and retention across the full marketing funnel, reducing catalog circulation while increasing investment in digital channels. These initiatives are designed to expand brand awareness, acquire new customers profitably, reactivate lapsed customers, and build deeper relationships with existing customers while improving overall marketing efficiency.

Operational Excellence. J.Jill expects to drive organizational efficiency through operational excellence, advanced technology, and an agile culture. This includes building a strategic technology roadmap, incorporating opportunities for

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artificial intelligence implementation with an aim to accelerate growth, gain efficiencies, and improve the customer experience by building on recent foundational technology upgrades to the Company's Point of Sale (“POS”) system and Order Management System (“OMS”). J.Jill expects that these efforts will facilitate a more cohesive and seamless shopping experience for its customer, wherever and whenever she chooses to shop. J.Jill plans to continue leveraging its insight into customer attributes and behavior, which will guide strategic investments in its business.

Profitable Expansion of Store Base. Following several years of optimizing the fleet through net store closings, J.Jill believes there is an opportunity to strategically open profitable new stores targeting an ultimate fleet size of approximately 300 stores. We target new locations primarily in lifestyle centers and premium malls.

Marketing and Advertising

J.Jill leverages a variety of marketing and advertising vehicles to increase brand awareness, acquire new customers, drive customer traffic across its channels, and strengthen and reinforce its brand image. These include print mailings, email communications, digital advertisements, and public relations initiatives. J.Jill leverages its customer database to strategically optimize the value of its marketing investments across customer segments and channels. This enables J.Jill to productively acquire new customers, effectively market to existing customers, increase customer retention levels and reactivate lapsed customers.

J.Jill’s ecommerce platform offers a full representation of its brand with its complete range of styles, sizes and colors, including curated shops and online exclusives. Accessed through desktop, tablet or mobile, its website enables J.Jill to attract new customers to the brand and creates momentum with existing customers through its valuable brand proposition.

Along with ecommerce, its catalogs continue to be an integral part of its business. As one of J.Jill’s key marketing vehicles, its catalogs promote and reinforce its brand image and drive customer acquisition and engagement. As on its website and in its retail stores, J.Jill’s catalogs reflect its product offering in settings that align with its merchandise segments, including its sub-brands, and provide guidance on styling and wardrobe. J.Jill’s catalogs are designed in-house, providing greater creative control as well as effectively managing production costs.

J.Jill offers a private label credit card program through an agreement (“Credit Card Agreement”) with Comenity Capital Bank (“CCB”), under which CCB owns the credit card receivables. Pursuant to the Credit Card Agreement, we are eligible to receive reimbursements for costs of marketing programs and royalties based on net sales charged to the private label credit card, as defined in the Credit Card Agreement. All credit card holders receive invitations to exclusive customer events and promotions including special purchase events seven times per year, a special offer for her birthday, and a 5% discount when purchases are made on the card. J.Jill promotes the benefits of its credit card to new and existing customers through its various marketing channels. J.Jill believes that its credit card program encourages customer loyalty, repeat visits and additional spending. In Fiscal Year 2025, 49% of its gross sales were generated by its credit card holders.

Sourcing and Supply Strategy

To efficiently source its products, J.Jill leverages its longstanding relationships with agents who represent suppliers and factories. In Fiscal Year 2025 approximately 81% of its products were sourced through agents and 19% were sourced directly from suppliers and factories. J.Jill works with several primary agents that help it identify quality suppliers and coordinate its manufacturing requirements. Additionally, the agents manage the development of samples of merchandise produced in the factories, inspect finished merchandise, ensure the timely delivery of goods and carry out other administrative and oversight functions on J.Jill’s behalf. J.Jill sources the remainder of its products by interacting directly with suppliers and factories both domestically and abroad.

Agents work with approximately 34 suppliers on J.Jill’s behalf. J.Jill sources its merchandise globally from 10 countries with the top three by volume being India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. No single supplier accounts for more than 20% of merchandise purchased by volume.

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J.Jill has no long-term merchandise supply contracts as it typically transacts business on an order-by-order basis to maintain flexibility. J.Jill believes its strong relationships with suppliers have provided it with the ability to negotiate favorable pricing terms, further improving its overall cost structure and profitability. J.Jill’s dedicated sourcing team actively negotiates and manages product costs to deliver initial mark-up objectives. The team further focuses on quality control to ensure that merchandise meets required technical specifications and inspects the merchandise to ensure it meets J.Jill’s strict standards, including regular in-line inspections while goods are in production. Upon receipt, merchandise is further inspected on a test basis for consistency in cut, size and color, as well as for conformity with specifications and overall quality of manufacturing. J.Jill’s sourcing team ensures that the customer has a consistent product and satisfying brand experience regardless of product size, color or collection. See Item 1A. Risk Factors for additional discussion related to our risks associated with sourcing and our supply chain.

Omnichannel Distribution and Customer Contact Center

J.Jill leases its 520,000 square foot distribution and customer contact center in Tilton, New Hampshire. The facility manages the receipt, storage, sorting, packing and distribution of merchandise for its Retail and Direct channels. Retail stores are replenished from this facility and shipped by third-party delivery services, providing its retail stores with a steady flow of new inventory that helps to maintain product freshness. J.Jill’s distribution system is designed to operate in an efficient and cost-effective manner, including its ability to profitably support individual direct orders. In Fiscal Year 2025, the distribution center handled 28 million units, split between 13 million retail (46%) and 15 million direct (54%), and J.Jill believes this facility is sufficient to support its future growth.

The customer contact center is an extension of the J.Jill brand, providing a consistent customer experience at every stage of a purchase across all of its channels. In Fiscal Year 2025, J.Jill managed approximately 3 million customer interactions through its in-house customer contact center in Tilton, New Hampshire. J.Jill’s customer contact center is responsible for nearly all live customer interactions, other than in retail stores, including order taking and further serves as an important feedback loop in gathering customer responses to its brand, product and service. J.Jill continues to refine and improve its contact center strategy and experience to support the constantly evolving digital landscape.

Information Systems

J.Jill uses information systems to support business intelligence and processes across its sales channels. J.Jill continues to invest in information systems and technology to enhance the customer experience and create operating efficiencies including its OMS system upgrade that was completed during the current fiscal year. J.Jill utilizes third-party providers for customer database and customer campaign management, ensuring efficient maintenance of information in a secure, backed-up environment.

Seasonality

While the retail business is generally seasonal in nature, J.Jill has historically not experienced significant seasonal fluctuations in its sales. J.Jill’s merchandise offering drives consistent sales across seasons with no quarter contributing more than 26% of total annual net sales in Fiscal Year 2025.

Competition

The women’s apparel industry is highly competitive. J.Jill competes with local, national and international retail chains and department stores, specialty and discount stores, catalogs and internet businesses offering similar categories of merchandise. J.Jill competes on the basis of design, service, quality and value. J.Jill believes its distinct combination of design, service, quality and value allows it to challenge the competition effectively and believes it differentiates itself based on the strength of its brand, its omnichannel platform, its strong data capabilities, its loyal customer base, its customer-focused product assortment and its highly experienced leadership team. See Item 1A. Risk Factors for additional discussion related to our risks associated with the competition we face.

Human Capital

Attracting, retaining, and developing a pool of talent with diverse backgrounds and experiences to drive the success of the J.Jill brand is a key element of its business strategy. As of January 31, 2026, J.Jill employed 1,039 full-time and 2,101 part-time associates. Of these associates, 273 were employed in its headquarters in Quincy, Massachusetts, 2,618 were employed in its retail stores and field management team, and 249 worked in its distribution and customer contact center and administrative office in Tilton, New Hampshire. The number of associates, particularly part-time associates, fluctuates depending upon seasonal needs. J.Jill considers its relations with its associates to be very good.

J.Jill’s key human capital measures include associate safety, turnover, pay benchmarking and associate professional development. J.Jill has programs in place to provide associates with feedback on performance and professional development planning, and its senior leadership team engages in a formal talent review and development planning process each year.

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J.Jill frequently benchmarks its compensation practices and benefits programs against those of comparable industries and in the geographic areas where its facilities are located. J.Jill believes that its compensation and employee benefits are competitive and allows it to attract and retain talent throughout its organization. J.Jill’s notable health, welfare and retirement benefits include:

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Company subsidized health insurance

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Short and long-term disability insurance

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401(k) plan with Company matching contributions

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Tuition assistance program

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Paid parental leave

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Flexible working arrangements

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Paid time off programs

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Associate Compassion Fund providing emergency financial assistance to qualifying associates

J.Jill strives to maintain an inclusive environment free from discrimination of any kind, including sexual or other discriminatory harassment. Associates have multiple ways to report inappropriate behavior, including through a confidential hotline. All reports of inappropriate behavior are promptly investigated with appropriate action taken to stop such behavior.

Intellectual Property

J.Jill’s trademarks are important to its marketing efforts. J.Jill owns or has the rights to use certain trademarks, service marks and trade names that are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office or other foreign trademark registration offices or exist under common law in the United States and other jurisdictions. Trademarks that are important in identifying and distinguishing its products and services include, but are not limited to, J.Jill®, The J.Jill Wearever Collection® and Pure Jill®. J.Jill’s rights to some of these trademarks may be limited to selected markets. J.Jill also owns domain names, including www.jjill.com.

Corporate Information

We were originally organized as Jill Intermediate LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, in February 2011. On February 24, 2017, we completed transactions pursuant to which we converted into a Delaware corporation and changed our name to J.Jill, Inc. Our principal executive office is located at 4 Batterymarch Park, Quincy, MA 02169, and our telephone number is (617) 376-4300.

Available Information

We are required to file annual, quarterly and current reports, proxy statements and other documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). The SEC maintains an Internet website that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC. The public can obtain any documents that are filed by us at www.sec.gov.

In addition, this Annual Report as well as future quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and any amendments to all of the foregoing reports, are made available free of charge on our Internet website (https://www.jjill.com) as soon as reasonably practicable after such reports are electronically filed with or furnished to the SEC. The contents of our website are not incorporated by reference in this report.