Maurices marks 95 years, touts roots in small communities

Maurices reached 95 years by building for customers many national chains overlook: women in smaller communities. What started in 1931, when E. Maurices Labovitz opened a small women’s clothing store in Duluth, has grown into about 900 locations across the U.S. and Canada, yet the company still operates from downtown Duluth and still calls those stores its “hometowns.”

That local root matters in St. Louis County because Maurices is more than a retail name on a storefront. George Goldfarb, who has spent more than four decades with the company and is a Duluth native, has long tied the brand’s staying power to style, service and community, not price alone. Maurices’ leadership materials describe the business as built on exceptional product, value and “people-first service,” and the company says it backs that up with community giving, including partnerships and donations focused on women’s health and basic needs.

The company’s downtown footprint is substantial. Maurices’ headquarters is an 11-story, roughly 200,000-square-foot building that spans an entire city block in the heart of downtown Duluth. It was designed to house about 600 employees and to bring together about 450 associates who had been spread across several buildings, including the original store site. The project also added a parking ramp at 410 West First Street and a public skywalk connection that links eastern downtown to the Radisson Hotel and the Duluth Public Library. City figures say the ramp added more than 400 monthly parking contracts, a reminder that Maurices has helped shape not just payrolls, but downtown traffic patterns and the commercial core around it.

The anniversary also arrived as longtime employees prepared to retire and a new generation of leaders stepped in, turning the milestone into a test of continuity. Maurices was sold by the founding family in 1978, acquired by Ascena Retail Group in 2005 and is now owned by OpCapita, but the brand has kept its headquarters and identity in Duluth through every ownership change. Its current site says it serves inclusive sizes 0 to 24, reinforcing the niche that helped it survive while many legacy retailers collapsed. After 95 years, Maurices remains a rare example of a major retail brand still being run from the city where it began.