DESTINATION XL GROUP INC

Destination XL Group, Inc., together with its subsidiaries (the “Company”), is the leading specialty retailer of big & tall men’s apparel with retail locations throughout the United States. We operate under the trade names of Destination XL®, DXL®, DXL Men’s Apparel, DXL outlets, Casual Male XL®and Casual Male XL outlets. At February 3, 2024, we operated 232 DXL retail stores, 15 DXL outlet stores, 17 Casual Male XL retail stores, 19 Casual Male XL outlet stores, and a digital business, including an e-commerce site atwww.dxl.com, a mobile sitem.destinationXL.com and mobile app. Unless the context indicates otherwise, all references to “we,” “our,” “ours,” “us” and “the Company” refer to Destination XL Group, Inc. and our consolidated subsidiaries. We refer to our fiscal years ended February 3, 2024, January 28, 2023 and January 29, 2022 as “fiscal 2023,” “fiscal 2022” and “fiscal 2021,” respectively.

OUR INDUSTRY

We define the big & tall men’s clothing market as starting at a waist size of 38” and greater, as well as tops sized 1XL and greater. With the assistance of Coresight Research, we believe that the U.S. big & tall men's clothing market is approximately $23 billion and is highly fragmented. Big + Tall is all we do. With our proprietary fit and extensive selection of exclusive brands, we believe that we can grow market share as an integrated commerce retailer able to target a broad market, attracting customers from various income, age and lifestyle segments, offering the underserved consumer the widest selection of sizes and styles.

HISTORY

Our Company was incorporated in the State of Delaware in 1976 under the name "Kara Enterprises, Inc." and subsequently operated under the name "Designs, Inc." Until fiscal 1995, we operated exclusively in Levi Strauss & Co. branded apparel mall and outlet stores. In May 2002, we acquired the Casual Male business from Casual Male Corp. at a bankruptcy court-ordered auction. At the time of the acquisition, Casual Male was the largest specialty retailer of men’s clothing in the big & tall market in the United States. As a result of the acquisition, on August 8, 2002, we changed our name to “Casual Male Retail Group, Inc.”

In fiscal 2010, we launched a new store concept, Destination XL (“DXL”). The DXL store concept offers our customers an extensive assortment of products, ranging from value-oriented to luxury-oriented with an increased presence of name brands, without having to shop multiple stores. In addition to offering our customers a wide assortment, we also wanted to provide them with a unique shopping experience. We are focused on providing outstanding customer service through our DXL stores, with larger fitting rooms and professional, trained associates providing personal attention. With the initial success of this store format, we made a similar change to our e-commerce business in fiscal 2011 when we launched our DestinationXL.com website (now dxl.com).

OUR BUSINESS

We operate as an integrated commerce retailer of big & tall men’s clothing and shoes. Through our multiple brands, which include both national brands and our own brands, we provide a premium, personalized shopping experience, whether in-store or digitally, with a broad range of merchandise at varying price points, catering from the value-oriented customer to the luxury customer. Our objective is to appeal to all of our customers by providing a good, better, best array of product assortments in all primary lifestyles with multiple and convenient ways to shop.

What is unique about our business is our proprietary fit, our ability to manage an array of sizes and optimize our in-stock position throughout each season. Our best-selling pant has 58 size combinations and a unique specification as compared to an average retailer who may only have 15 different size combinations. We maintain a consolidated inventory across all channels that enables us to manage our in-stock position of all sizes effectively, ultimately improving customer service. Moreover, our planning and allocation methodologies, with respect to store assortment planning, help to optimize each location’s market potential without excessive inventory levels.

Our DXL retail stores, e-commerce site, dxl.com, and mobile app cater to all income demographics and offer our customers merchandise to fit a variety of lifestyles from casual to business, young to mature, in all price ranges and in all large sizes from XL and up. In addition, we also offer a selection of shoes in sizes 10W to 18W on our website at dxl.com. Our Casual Male XL retail stores primarily carry moderate-priced national brands and our own brands of casual sportswear and dresswear. We also operate Casual Male XL outlets and DXL outlets for our value-oriented customers. Through digital marketplaces, we are able to extend our reach, by providing a select offering of our merchandise to new customers who may not be current DXL customers.

BUSINESS STRATEGY

Over the past five years, we have transformed our business, investing in our customer relationship capabilities, our data infrastructure and our data analytics capabilities. We have achieved a heightened level of operational excellence, recapitalized our balance sheet to provide a greater level of financial flexibility, made investments in our technical capabilities, and upgraded our leadership team. Since fiscal 2019, we have grown net sales by 10% and more than doubled our adjusted EBITDA margin rate. In addition, we believe strongly that there is a great opportunity for us to grow our market share. We believe that our addressable market is approximately $23 billion, yet based on our research our unaided brand awareness is 9% and our aided brand awareness is 28%. If we are to grow our revenue base and market share, our addressable market needs to know who we are, what we offer, how we are different from our competition and why they should shop with us.

We believe that we can change the growth trajectory of the Company through investments in brand marketing, new store development, a new and efficient eCommerce platform, and alliances/collaborations with other brands. We have spent the past year developing a deeper understanding of the big + tall consumer and we are now ready to execute on our long-range plan. We expect to fund these strategic initiatives with cash on hand. Accordingly, in fiscal 2024, our primary focus will be on the following four initiatives:

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Marketing and Brand-Building: We believe one of our greatest opportunities is to address our overall brand awareness levels. Over the past few years, we have transformed our brand position and differentiated ourselves in terms of experience, fit, and assortment. However, many of our target consumers simply do not know DXL. We now have the financial flexibility, informed consumer research, and the right messaging to invest in building our brand. For the past several years, our advertising-to-sales ratio has been between 5.0% to 6.0%. Our plan is to increase our advertising-to-sales ratio over the next few years, with an advertising-to-sales ratio for fiscal 2024 of approximately 7.0% to 7.5%. We have selected new creative and media agencies to develop, build, and execute a campaign that will create an emotional connection to the brand and drive brand awareness. We are planning a multi-channel campaign targeting an early summer 2024 multi-market test-launch. With favorable results, we plan to fund our marketing and brand building initiatives at greater levels over time.

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Store Development: As we have stated before, we believe there are approximately 50 net new store opportunities. New store development addresses another factor critical to our growth. While we have stores in every major metro market across the United States, there are voids in certain markets where big + tall consumers are not being served by a DXL. In our most recent research across 2,500 big + tall men, 44% self-reported that they do not shop with us because a store is not near them, and 35% self-reported that they do not shop with us because a store location is not convenient. This year we opened three DXL stores, our first store openings since 2019. We currently have plans to open an additional eight stores in fiscal 2024, with 15 new stores per year in fiscal 2025 through 2027. We also converted 11 Casual Male stores to DXL this year and expect to convert another five by the end of 2024. All new store and conversion investments are subject to rigorous ROIC hurdles that are informed by our prior experience.

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New Website: We are upgrading our website from our legacy infrastructure to a new, modern commerce platform, with various features and functionality launching in the second half of fiscal 2024. We believe this upgrade will provide immediate performance improvements and customer experience benefits by eliminating friction points, optimizing search capability, and enhancing speed and response times. The new platform is engineered by a leading eCommerce technology provider and will position us to respond faster and more effectively to make changes in the future.

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Alliances/Collaborations: We strongly believe that our "fit authority" is one of our greatest assets and that we can develop successful collaborations with other brands, who are interested in finding a cost-effective way to expand their offering to include big + tall men's apparel. In 2023, we launched UNTUCKit, Fit by DXL in an alliance with UNTUCKit, which is sold exclusively by DXL. In addition, we also added Hugo Boss and Faherty to our list of national brands, each with a level of merchandise exclusivity that cannot be found elsewhere. All three programs exceeded our initial expectations, with door expansion planned for all three in fiscal 2024. We believe our heritage of providing a world-class consumer shopping experience makes DXL an ideal partner for collaborations and alliances. We are in the final stages of an agreement with another retailer that will allow us to sell our product through a new retail distribution channel that is aligned with DXL's leading retail consumer experience.

As a result of these investments in marketing, stores, and other growth initiatives in fiscal 2024, we believe we can grow our top line and invest greater resources while maintaining a minimum acceptable level of profitability and free cash flow.

MERCHANDISE

We offer our customers an extensive assortment of apparel consisting of both our own brands and over 100 well-known national brands, within our “good,” “better” and “best” price points. Regardless of our customers’ age, socioeconomic status, or lifestyle preference, we are able to assemble a wardrobe to fit their apparel needs. With over 5,000 styles available, we carry an extensive selection of tops in sizes up to 7XL and 7XLT with additional assortments up to 8XL, bottoms with waist sizes 38” to 70”, and shoes in sizes 10W to 18W.

What sets us apart from our competitors is our proprietary fit. We are different because our fit is different. Our merchandise is not just an extension of regular sizes. The fit is built from unique specifications for every size and style, with specific design features for the big and tall customer.

Our stores are merchandised to showcase entire outfits by lifestyle, including traditional, active, modern, tailored and denim. This format allows us to merchandise key items and seasonal goods in prominent displays and makes coordinating outfits easier for the customer while encouraging multi-item purchases. This lifestyle layout also allows us to manage store space and product assortment effectively in each market to target local demographics. The key item strategy is also fully integrated by lifestyle, allowing us to focus on merchandise presentation and offer our customers a compelling value proposition.

Merchandise assortments in our DXL stores are organized not only by lifestyle but, within each lifestyle, the assortments are shown in a “good,” “better” and “best” visual presentation. With the “best” merchandise assortments featured most prominently in the DXL store, our customers can visualize current fashion trends and select their wardrobes within their desired price points in a convenient manner.

Big and tall is all we do and through our own brands and exclusivity with national brands, we estimate that more than 80% of our inventory assortment, in units, is not available elsewhere. Several of the national brands that we carry, in sizes 2XL and above, are sold exclusively by us in our stores and on our website and may otherwise only be available on the brand’s website, if at all. In addition to our exclusive brands, we also work with several other national brands to offer a unique, curated merchandise assortment, in sizes 2XL and above, that are exclusively sold in our stores and on our website and are not available from the brand’s own website. These offerings are a subset of the larger merchandise offering that we carry for these respective brands. The penetration of national brands in a specific DXL store can range from 39% to 80%, depending on several factors, but on average, approximately half of the assortment is branded apparel.

In October 2023, we launched UNTUCKit, Fit by DXL in collaboration with UNTUCKit, sold exclusively by DXL. The launch was supported by a comprehensive marketing campaign on both DXL and UNTUCKit channels. The shirts are sold exclusively online with ‘try-on’ capsules in select physical stores. Based on the performance, we are expanding this program in fiscal 2024. We will continue to explore other strategic collaborations with other brands that are widely recognized and that could complement our curated assortment.

Value-Priced Apparel -“Good” Merchandise

For our value-oriented customers, we carry Champion, Lee, Wrangler and Reebok. In addition, we carry several value-priced private label lines:

Harbor Bay® was our first proprietary brand and it is a traditional line that continues to represent a significant portion of our business, specifically in terms of our core basic merchandise.

Oak Hill® is a premium line catering to those customers looking for slightly more style and quality than our Harbor Bay line but still in a traditional lifestyle.

Synrgy™targets the customer looking for a contemporary/modern look.

True Nation® is a denim-inspired line consisting of vintage-screen t-shirts and wovens and is geared towards our younger customers.

Society of One® is an activewear brand that offers versatile styling options and is grounded by performance technology.

Moderate-Priced Apparel -“Better” Merchandise

We offer our customers an extensive selection of quality sportswear and dress clothing at moderate prices carrying well-known brands such as: Levi's®, Columbia, Carhartt®, and Jockey®. Our exclusive brands in this price range include O’Neill® and Nautica®, Adidas Golf® and vineyard vines®. Within our product assortment for Callaway®, Majestic and Tommy Bahama®we also offer exclusive styles specially curated for our customers.

Higher-End Fashion Apparel -“Best” Merchandise

Within this higher-end price range, we carry a broad selection of quality apparel from well-known branded manufacturers, such as The North Face®, Polo Ralph Lauren®, Jack Victor®, Boss®, Faherty®, Original Penguin Golf®, Michael Kors®, and Tallia®. Our exclusive brands in this price range include Brooks Brothers®, JOE’S®Jeans, 7 for all Mankind®, Boss®, Faherty®, Original Penguin Golf® and Robert Barakett®. Within our product assortment for Psycho Bunny®, Lucky and Robert Graham®we also offer exclusive styles specially curated for our customers. Polo Ralph Lauren builds one collection a quarter for our customers that is exclusive to DXL.

Shoes

Our DXL website offers an assortment of footwear, with a broad selection from casual to formal, in varying price points. We currently have a selection of more than 200 styles of shoes, ranging in sizes from 10W to 18W, including designer brands such as Cole Haan®, Timberland®, Sketchers®, New Balance®, Reebok® and Deerstags.

STORE CHANNEL

DXL Men’s Apparel Stores

As of February 3, 2024, we operated 232 DXL retail stores. Our DXL store concept brings all of our brands together in one format. Within this format, we cater to our diverse customer base, with merchandise representing all price points, from our higher-end brands to value-oriented brands, and all lifestyles, from business to denim. The size of our DXL stores averages 7,400 square feet. Depending on the customers in each respective market, we can adjust the appropriate mix of merchandise, with varying selections from each of our price points, to cater to each demographic market. Our DXL stores are located on real estate that is highly visible, often adjacent to high-performing regional malls or other high-traffic shopping areas.

In many markets, rebranding a Casual Male XL store to a DXL store provides a viable alternative to the more costly endeavor of relocating a Casual Male XL store to new DXL real estate. In addition, the converted stores benefit from DXL advertising. We are actively reviewing opportunities to relocate or convert Casual Male XL stores to DXL stores.

During fiscal 2023, we opened three new DXL stores, with plans to open eight new stores in fiscal 2024. These new DXL stores offer an updated look and feel both inside and outside, with the store layout focusing on improving our customer engagement and their overall shopping experience.

We believe that our store portfolio is a vital asset to our business strategy and we are investing in stores over the next several years. Over the next three to five years, we believe we could potentially open approximately 50 net new DXL stores across the country, which could average 6,000 square feet or 300,000 sq. ft. in total, a 15% increase over our current square footage.

Casual Male XL Retail Stores

As of February 3, 2024, we operated 17 Casual Male XL full-price retail stores, located primarily in strip centers or stand-alone locations. The majority of the merchandise carried in our Casual Male XL stores is moderate-priced basic or fashion-neutral items, such as jeans, casual pants, t-shirts, polo shirts, dress shirts and suit separates. These stores also carry a full complement of our own brand collections. The average Casual Male XL retail store is approximately 3,200 square feet.

DXL Outlet /Casual Male XL Outlet Stores

As of February 3, 2024, we operated 15 DXL outlet stores and 19 Casual Male XL outlet stores designed to offer a wide range of casual clothing for the big & tall customer at prices that are generally 20-25% lower than our moderate-priced merchandise. Much of the merchandise in our outlet stores is offered at discounted prices to cater to the value-oriented customer. In addition to own brands and national brands at our “good” price tier, our outlets also carry clearance product obtained from DXL and Casual Male XL stores, offering the outlet customer the ability to purchase brand and fashion product for a reduced price.

The average DXL outlet is approximately 5,100 square feet and the average Casual Male XL outlet store is approximately 3,000 square feet.

DIRECT CHANNEL

Our direct business is a critical channel for growing sales and market share through new customer acquisition and digital engagement of the active file. Since fiscal 2019, comparable sales from our direct business in fiscal 2023 have grown 50.9%, with our total direct business representing 31.3% of our total retail sales in fiscal 2023, as compared to 23.1% of our retail sales in fiscal 2019.

We define our direct business as sales that originate online, whether through our website, our app, those initiated online at the store level, our Guest Engagement Center, or through a third-party marketplace. We want to serve our customers wherever and how they want to shop, whether in-person at a store, over the telephone, or online via a computer, smartphone or tablet.

A key to being a successful integrated commerce retailer is having the ability to showcase all of our store inventories online, resulting in additional transactions that are initiated online, but are ultimately completed in store. In addition, our stores are able to fulfill an order for an item that is out-of-stock in our warehouse. This capability has not only resulted in incremental sales, but it has also helped us reduce clearance merchandise at the store level and manage margins.

DXL Website and App

Our DXL website and app have been instrumental in our growth over the past three years, with sales from our website and app together increasing 47.4% from fiscal 2019. We continue to see our consumers shift to online shopping helping to drive higher new customer acquisition for the website business.

As mentioned above, we expect to launch an updated website in the second half of fiscal 2024 that we believe will offer a superior user experience to our customers, with modernized design aesthetics and improved performance, while also providing us the tools to improve our agility and efficiency.

Digital Sales at Store Level

In support of our integrated commerce approach, our store associates use our website to help fulfill our in-store customers’ clothing needs. If a wider selection of a lifestyle, color or size of an item is not available in our store, then our store associates can order the item for our customer online through our direct channel and have it shipped to the store or directly to the customer. Our customers also have the ability to shop-by-store and pick-up in store on the same day.

Digital Marketplaces

We continue to broaden our reach through digital, third-party marketplaces. A large portion of our assortment is available on Amazon.com and Walmart.com. Digital marketplaces provide us an opportunity to drive awareness, grow our customer base and introduce new customers to our brand.

MERCHANDISE PLANNING AND ALLOCATION

Our merchandise planning and allocation function is critical to the effective management of our inventory, store assortments, product sizes and overall gross margin profitability. The merchandise planning and allocation team has an array of planning and replenishment tools available to assist in maintaining an appropriate level of inventory, in-stock positions at the stores and for the direct channel, and pre-season planning for product assortments for each store and the direct channel. Additionally, in-season reporting identifies opportunities and challenges in inventory performance. Over the past several years, we have made, and we will continue to make, investments in implementing best practice tools and processes for our merchandise planning and allocation.

Our evergreen merchandise made up approximately 42% of our merchandise assortment in fiscal 2023. Our planning and allocation team estimates quantity and demand several months in advance to optimize gross margin and minimize end-of-season merchandise for all seasonal merchandise. We develop customized assortment strategies by store that accentuate lifestyle preferences for each particular store.

Our merchandising data warehouse provides the merchandising team with standardized reporting for monitoring assortment performance by product category and by store, identifying in-stock positions by size and generally monitoring overall inventory levels relative to selling. At season end, we analyze the overall performance of product categories, overall assortments and specific styles by store to focus on the opportunities and challenges for the next season’s planning cycle.

The merchandise planning and allocation team utilizes a set of specific universal reporting tools in fulfilling their daily, weekly and monthly roles and responsibilities. These reporting tools provide focused and actionable views of the business to optimize the overall assortment by category and by store. We are confident that our inventory performance is optimized by having all members of the merchandise planning and allocation team follow a standardized set of processes with the use of standardized reporting tools.

STORE OPERATIONS

We believe that our store associates are critical to creating the highest quality experience for our guests. The culture in our stores is to be guest-centric - to engage and build a relationship with each of our customers. Our overall goal is to accomplish three key initiatives in our stores. The first is that we strive to build relationships with all of our guests. The second is that we believe our stores need to be clean, neat and organized in an effort to allow the "just-looking" customer to find what he needs with ease. The last component is our stores serving as mini-distribution centers. The majority of our stores are able to fulfill customer orders that were placed online in one of our digital channels. Our associates are well versed in not only the product selection carried in their specific store, but also the product selection carried online. With a point-of-sale system that can access items online for the guest who is physically in the store, our associates are able to fulfill all of their customers’ needs.

Our multi-unit, field management team receives extensive training on recruiting associates who are the correct fit for our stores. All store associates participate in our DXL FIT Expert Training and Certification program as part of our commitment to deliver a great guest experience. All new DXL store management team hires are trained extensively through senior peer trainers throughout the country. We believe having a mix of internal promotions (store manager to Regional Sales Manager) as well as external hires with extensive multi-unit background gives us an inclusive and diverse Regional Sales management team. Regional Vice Presidents give us touchpoints in the field in addition to our Regional Sales Managers and store management team to ensure consistency in executing our standards and all programs and processes we deem important to our success.

Each new member of the store management team goes through extensive training with their Regional Sales Manager and a peer Store Manager. We believe our training system, together with monitoring sales metrics to help identify opportunities for further training, will improve sales productivity and strengthen our customers' brand loyalty.

Our field organization is overseen by our Chief Stores and Real Estate Officer, VP Store Operations, Regional Vice Presidents, Regional Sales Managers, and a Store Operations Team, who provide management development and guidance to individual store managers. Each Regional Sales Manager is responsible for hiring and developing store managers at the stores assigned to that Regional Sales Manager’s market, and for the overall operations and profitability of those stores. Each store is staffed with a store manager, assistant manager and key holders. The store manager is responsible for achieving certain sales and operational targets. Our stores have an incentive-based commission plan for managers and selling staff to encourage associates to focus on our customer’s wardrobing needs and sales productivity.

MARKETING AND ADVERTISING

We believe that our marketing initiatives are critical to driving our sales growth by increasing traffic to our stores, website and app. Last year, we launched our brand initiative “Wear What You Want” ℠ inviting our customer to not only experience the depth of our assortment but also the breadth of exclusivity across our brands, offering brands and styles not available elsewhere. We are providing him with the freedom to choose his own style and wear what he wants. Big + Tall is all we do, and we trade on the belief that we offer superior fit, assortment, and experience to him and through this initiative we are eager to develop relationships with our customers that are built on respect, trust, and belonging.

Over the past few years, our marketing strategy has been a more targeted, personalized, data-driven model, enabling us to engage differently with each of our customers based on their shopping behaviors across all our buying channels. We adopted a stringent, analytical perspective to our marketing program, focusing on understanding incremental outcomes in addition to the “return on ad spend” throughout all our programs. This data-driven philosophy extends across all our marketing initiatives as we look at new ways to engage our customers. Our on-going work on enhancing our customer segmentation will ultimately drive our long-term marketing strategy, enabling us to create targeted and personalized content and messaging to our various customer segments. Our marketing programs have included email, direct mail, our loyalty program, direct marketing, digital marketing, social media, and streaming media, among others. Because we are not highly promotional, our loyalty program, The DXL Rewards Club, provides a strong value to our customers and we are planning on making further enhancements to the program during fiscal 2024.

While we will continue to invest in these targeted marketing initiatives, we also plan to increase our marketing spend in fiscal 2024 to include broad-based advertising, focusing specifically at building brand awareness. We have been working to transform our brand positioning by focusing on key customer insights and leveraging our distinct advantages of superior fit, depth of assortment, great styles and largely exclusive brands and an experience like no other. Our focus is to acquire new customers and achieve a greater lifetime value across our entire customer file. Working with our new creative and media agencies, we are planning a multi-channel campaign, targeting an early summer 2024 multi-market test-launch.

We expect our marketing costs in fiscal 2024 to be approximately 7.0%-7.5% of sales as compared to 5.9% of sales in fiscal 2023.

GLOBAL SOURCING

Our global sourcing strategy is a balanced approach, which considers quality, cost and lead-time, depending on the requirements of the program. We believe our current sourcing structure meets our operating requirements and provides capacity for growth. The growth and effectiveness of our global direct sourcing program is a key component to the strength of merchandise margins.

We have built a strong internal team with extensive experience that is responsible for managing an international network of vendors and suppliers across the globe. We have established strong relationships with many of the leading factories and mills across the globe. Our sourcing network consists of over 30 factories in eight countries which are experts in big & tall sizing and production. In fiscal 2023, approximately 52% of all our product needs were sourced directly. We manufacture a significant percentage of our own brand merchandise in Southeast Asian countries including Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia and India. We continue to reduce dependency on China, with less than 10% of our own brands sourced from China, inclusive of our raw materials and trims, and have moved certain programs into the Western Hemisphere with duty-free opportunities such as Nicaragua and Mexico.

In an effort to minimize foreign currency risk, all payments to our direct sourced vendors are made in U.S. dollars with payment on account.

See "Sustainability" below for a discussion of our environmental, ethical and social audits.

DISTRIBUTION

All of our retail distribution operations are centralized at our headquarters located in Canton, Massachusetts. We believe that having a centralized distribution facility maximizes the selling space and in-stock position of our stores and reduces the necessary levels of back-room stock. In addition, the distribution center provides order fulfillment services for our e-commerce business. In-bound calls for our e-commerce business are primarily fulfilled by our distribution center and if an order cannot be fulfilled by our distribution center, the order is completed at the store level.

Our supply chain technology provides visibility for imports and domestic deliveries giving our buyers accurate shipping information and allowing the distribution center to plan staffing for arriving freight, resulting in reduced costs and improved receipt efficiency.

Our warehousing application and labor management system enable us to streamline our distribution processes, enhance our in-transit times, and reduce our distribution costs. We will continually work to make improvements and upgrades to our software.

For store shipments and domestic customer deliveries, we use large national carriers. We are able to track all deliveries from the warehouse to our individual stores, including the status of in-transit shipments. In addition, we are able to provide our direct customers with Authorized Return Service and Web labels, making returns more convenient for them.

In order to service our International customers, we have contracted with a global e-commerce company for payment and shipment services. Through this service, international customers view and pay for products in their local currency. Our vendor then ships directly to our customer, which we believe helps avoid potential fraud and currency exchange rate risks.

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS

The infrastructure of our management information systems is a priority to us. We believe that the investments we have made in this regard have improved our overall efficiency and improved our access to information enabling timely, data-driven decisions.

Our management information systems consist of a full range of retail merchandising and financial systems, which include merchandise planning and reporting, distribution center processing, inventory allocation, sales reporting, and financial processing and reporting. We believe that our current infrastructure provides us the ability and capacity to process transactions more efficiently and provides our management team with comprehensive tools with which to manage our business. Our direct and retail channels maintain a shared inventory system and we operate a single-system platform for our DXL and Casual Male XL stores to deliver improved efficiencies.

In an effort to improve our inventory management, we have created a standardized set of “best practices” for both our merchandise planning and allocation groups. Using a retail business intelligence solution, we are able to integrate data from several sources and provide enterprise-wide analytics reporting. Over the past few years, we have continued to develop a custom Assortment Suite application to leverage business intelligence and predictive analytics to provide high-impact insights into core merchandising tasks.

COMPETITION

Our business faces competition from a variety of sources, including department stores, mass merchandisers, other specialty stores and discount and off-price retailers that sell big & tall men’s clothing. While we have successfully competed on the basis of merchandise assortment, comfort and fit, customer service and desirable store locations, there can be no assurances that other retailers, including e-commerce retailers, will not adopt purchasing and marketing concepts similar to ours. Discount retailers with significant buying power, such as Walmart, Kohl's and J.C. Penney, represent a source of competition for us. The direct business has many competitors, including the King Size catalog and website as well as online marketplaces, such as Amazon.

The United States big & tall men’s clothing market is highly competitive with many national and regional department stores, specialty apparel retailers, single market operators and discount stores offering a broad range of apparel products intended for big and tall men. Besides retail competitors, we consider any casual apparel manufacturer operating in outlet malls throughout the United States to be a competitor in the casual apparel market. We believe that we are the only national operator of men’s apparel stores focused exclusively on the men’s big & tall market.

SEASONALITY

Historically, and consistent with the retail industry, we have experienced seasonal fluctuations as it relates to our operating income, net income, and free cash flow. Traditionally, a significant portion of our operating income, net income, and free cash flow is generated in the second and fourth quarters. Our inventory is typically at peak levels by the end of the third quarter, which represents a significant use of cash, which is then relieved in the fourth quarter as we sell-down our inventory through the holiday shopping season.

TRADEMARKS/TRADEMARK LICENSE AGREEMENTS

We own several service marks and trademarks relating to our businesses, including, among others, “Destination XL®”, “DXL®”, “DXL Mens Apparel®”, “Big on Being Better®”, “Casual Male®”, “Casual Male XL®”, “Harbor Bay®”, “Oak Hill®”, “Continuous Comfort®”, “Synrgy™”, “Society of One®”, “True Nation®” and “Wear What You Want℠”. We also hold a U.S. patent for an extendable collar system, which is marketed as “Neck-Relaxer®” and a U.S. copyright for a no-iron hang tag.

SUSTAINABILITY

At DXL, we recognize the importance of addressing and prioritizing environmental, social and governance ("ESG") issues throughout our business, including recognizing and addressing specific climate-related risks. During fiscal 2021, we formed the Sustainability Committee, consisting of a cross-disciplinary team from corporate management that engaged with a third-party firm to assist us in the development of the Company's initial ESG strategy and initiatives. The committee reports to the senior management team of the Company and to the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee of our Board of Directors, which is responsible for the oversight of our initiatives. We are working to develop short- and long-term ESG goals, as well as an action plan.

Since 2019, we have been a member of a leading ethical trade service provider to increase our social, environmental and ethical sustainability, and we participate in their Ethical Trade Audit platform. Since fiscal 2020, we have retained LRQA, formerly Elevate, a global leader in supply chain assessment, and instituted 4-Pillar audits of our supply chain factories. Our intent is to increase our social, environmental and ethical sustainability by utilizing LRQA’s audit tool, "ERSA", which stands for ELEVATE Responsible Sourcing Assessment. ERSA 3.0 covers social compliance, human rights, environmental business ethics, and worker’s sentiment surveys. All audits can be found on their EIQ tool which is a web-based analytical system on which we participate in their Ethical Trade Audit platform. In fiscal 2023, we retained LRQA to also perform environment assessment audits. Through collaboration with LRQA and Bureau Veritas, we are pursuing what we call a “5-Pillar Audit”, which includes traceability of both raw materials and the equipment used to produce finished goods.

HUMAN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

As of February 3, 2024, we had 1,439 employees. We hire additional temporary employees during the peak holiday season. None of our employees is represented by any collective bargaining agreement. Our associates are our greatest asset and we are committed to providing them with a safe and healthy work environment. Each associate is required to sign a set of policies that include, among other policies, the code of ethics, anti-harassment and procedures for raising a complaint. Our policies also contain protection of human rights and prohibit, among other things, the use of child labor or forced, bonded or indentured labor.

Inclusion and Diversity

We are committed to inclusivity, acceptance, and equality. Since 2017, we have had a diversity and inclusion initiative called “Normalizing the Brand.” The program brings awareness to unconscious bias and focuses on ensuring that the composition of our organization looks and feels like the communities where we live and serve. We have policies and training in place with respect to anti-discrimination and anti-harassment, among others, and provide our associates with access to an anonymous hot-line for reporting any concerns. Throughout the year, we require our associates to participate in educational videos. In 2021, we joined with CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion, a coalition of over 2,000 CEOs, pledging to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace. By signing on to this commitment, we have pledged to take action to cultivate a workplace where diverse perspectives and experiences are welcomed and respected, and where employees feel encouraged to discuss diversity and inclusion without retribution.

Workplace, Culture and Career Development

We are committed to providing our associates an environment where they have an opportunity to provide input on issues affecting the Company’s workforce and the employer-associate relationship. Periodically through the year, we encourage feedback and ideas from our associates through our annual engagement surveys and periodic pulse surveys. Perhaps most importantly, we promote professional and career development and mentorship programs. Since 2014, we have offered our associates the opportunity to participate in our DXLG Mentor Program, which pairs up to 20 mentees with mentors for one-year periods. The DXL Women’s Leadership Group was formed in fiscal 2016 with a mission of “Women supporting, educating and empowering each other @ DXLG”. It started as a pilot program and quickly expanded to now include over 40 female leaders, both people and process managers, in the corporate office and field. In addition, for the past five years, we have presented Leadercast, a platform for leadership development content available online.

Our Associate Engagement & Development Committee organizes “Lunch, Learn, Lead” and “Coffee Talk” sessions throughout the year to provide our associates an opportunity to gain insight on a variety of topics, such as, DXL’s social responsibility initiatives, TED talks, Global Sourcing, Normalizing the Brand and Technology. We also joined with Marist College to provide our DXL associates and their immediate adult family members with a 25% discount toward on-line tuition costs.

Compensation and Benefits

Our compensation programs are designed to pay our associates competitively in the market, based on their skills, qualifications, role, and abilities. Our benefits are designed to help employees and their families stay healthy and help them balance their work and personal lives. These benefits include health and wellness, paid time off, employee assistance, competitive pay, career growth opportunities, paid volunteer time, product discounts, and a culture of recognition. The challenges created by the global pandemic brought mental health awareness to the forefront. We are continually looking for programs and opportunities to offer our associates to ensure physical and mental wellness. We also highlight mental health awareness as part of our “Lunch, Learn, Lead” series and provide other relevant content within our learning management system. We also provide an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) which provides 24/7 assistance to associates and their family members for a variety of issues such as stress, family, parenting, and finances.

In October 2022, we added a new voluntary benefit, DailyPay, which allows our associates to access their money as they earn it, instead of having to wait until their payday to access their funds.

For more information regarding human capital, our programs, our health and safety as well as diversity information regarding our board, senior management and associates, such information can be found on our corporate website at https://investor.dxl.com. The information included in, referenced to, or otherwise accessible through, our website is not incorporated by reference in, or considered to be part of, this document or any document unless expressly incorporated by reference therein.

AVAILABLE INFORMATION

Our corporate website iswww.dxl.com. Our investor relations site ishttp://investor.dxl.com. We make available through our website, free of charge, our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and all amendments to such reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, as soon as reasonably practicable after we have electronically filed such material with, or furnished such materials to, the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC maintains an internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information for issuers that file electronically with the SEC athttp://www.sec.gov.