“It was the Stone Island Ice Jacket that set me off,” says 31-year-old Billy Pritchard who works for the Welsh Ambulance Service. ​“Even back then it was a sought after item so to find one for fifty quid in this store in South Wales was just incredible.” The Newport County fan is recounting the moment in 2006 that he found some heavily reduced Stone Island deadstock in the TK Maxx in Cardiff city centre, leading to a life-long obsession with the high-street discount retailer.

“They were originally released in ​’89 or ​’90 so God knows how they ended up in there. I bought two of them and two of the Stone Island Ice Jacket vests too. That cemented me basically spending the next 15 years searching through them and driving to all these different TK Maxx’s.”

At his peak, Pritchard was getting to a branch of TK Maxx on a nearly daily basis but has cut back to just two or three times a week. And he’s not alone. In 2017, he set up an Instagram page called TK Maxx Hunting where he displays his best finds from the store and encourages other followers to send in pics for him to post too. Soon a band of dedicated TK Maxx hunters had emerged, scouring the rails up and down the country on a daily basis to find gems like Snow Peak parkas, Norse Projects gloves, rare limited edition Ralph Lauren and C.P Company sweatshirts in amongst the seeming endless sea of Crosshatch hoodies and multi-pocket Bench jeans. And with most stock discounted by at least 70 per cent, who can blame them? In fact, during the pandemic, TK Maxx was one of the only high street stores to report an increase in profits and bucks the shift to online retail with the majority of its business still happening in its bricks and mortar stores.

“I’ve got mates who wouldn’t be seen dead in there,” says Johnny Hall aka Phil Sparrowhawk, the page’s most prolific poster. ​“But I just think ​‘bollocks to you then. You go and buy it for two hundred quid in End or Oi Polloi!’ Everyone likes a bit of one-upmanship and knowing you got it for £40 instead of £200 – even if you had to work for it digging through the rails and driving all over the place – it gives you that little buzz.”

Billy Pritchard, 31, Newport

How did your TK Maxx obsession begin?

Around the age of 15, I got really into message boards like ​’80s Casuals, which were an absolute goldmine of information if you were into terrace culture and learning about certain brands. Then I discovered some of these brands would turn up in TK Maxx and eventually found the Stone Island Ice Jackets. I bought two of them for £50 each and sold them for £200 each and have regretted it ever since! They’d go for a lot more now!

What’s your TK Maxx routine now?

I probably go about three times a week between the Cwmbran store and the Newport branch. I’m like a whirlwind when I go in the store. I’ve spent so many years in there taking in information about different labels that I just absolutely fly through the rails but a good label will catch my eye. I’m not usually in the store longer than ten minutes at a time. 

What made you set up the page?

Initially I was putting stuff on my own Instagram page and people were telling me to start something. At the start it was me running around taking pics of stuff in stores just to fill it but now I’m getting around thirty-five things sent to me a day. It’s actually getting hard to manage on top of having a job and a family.