Home Bargains

The retailer was founded by owner Tom Morris in 1976 as a single store called Home and Bargain in Old Swan, Liverpool when he was aged 21. The name was changed to Home Bargains in 1995, but is still colloquially referred to by its original name in the Merseyside area.

Morris, who was reported to have still owned an 89% stake in the business as of 2013, operates the company with his brother Joe. The business has since grown to become one of the largest privately owned companies within the United Kingdom, selling a variety of household items including food, clothing and games.

Customer numbers were estimated to be in excess of three million in February 2013, with items sold typically consisting of 70% regular lines and the rest as one-off product lines. The retailer was ranked sixth in a Which? list of 100 Top Stores, making them the highest ranking retailer within the United Kingdom.

Growth

From 1977, annual growth was around 20–25%. They opened their first warehouse in Prescot in 1979. They then moved to the Rocket Warehouse in 1983. Then, in 1994, they moved to another warehouse, Fallows Way. The retailer gained approval in January 2008 to construct new headquarters in Merseyside, which it estimated would create seven hundred jobs at the Axis business park, Croxteth, as it constructed a ten-storey distribution centre and retail training facility.

A £70m distribution centre began construction in October 2013 in Wiltshire, England, as a duplicate of their 700,000 sq ft (65,000 m2) facility that they had opened at its Liverpool headquarters some years prior, in order that their expansion plans could be maintained.

In January 2023, Home Bargains announced that the company had purchased rival discount retailer Quality Save for an undisclosed amount. The purchase came after Quality Save reported it had made a loss of more than £64,000 for the 12 months, compared to a prior £1.3m profit the year before despite having an increase of £3.7 million turnover, all Quality Save stores will convert to the Home Bargains name and brand.

In 25 August 2026, it was confirmed that the Denby Pottery Company brand was saved by an unidentified buyer from administration, confirmed to be Home Bargains.

Sales strategies

The strap line of the retailer is "Top Brands, Bottom Prices", with operations director Joe Morris explaining their business model of acquiring stock at the same cost price as the larger supermarkets, but selling them to the public at a cheaper price.

In August 2011, Home Bargains opened a website to enable customers to shop with them online.

Stores and branding

Home Bargains stores have red and blue branding. Most are centrally located though several are in out of town retail parks. Stores range from small to medium outlets, with the retail park outlets being slightly larger. Store sizes in 2013 were typically between 10,000 sq ft (930 m2) and 25,000 sq ft (2,300 m2).

In January 2009, the retailer acquired fourteen former Woolworths stores from administrators. These stores include Cardiff and Port Talbot in Wales. In Fife, Scotland, two former Woolworths stores have been opened in shopping centres in Glenrothes and Kirkcaldy.

Litigation

The retailer was fined over £20,000 in February 2017, after being caught selling phone chargers that risked exploding. The chargers had been imported from China yet had not undergone sufficient safety checks by the retailer, despite Trading Standards having carried out five failed safety checks on the product.

Despite being able to produce a Chinese test certificate indicating that a sample product was safety compliant, Home Bargains subsequently admitted to three offences of electrical safety through the sale of unsafe chargers during 2015.