*** Welcome to piglix ***

Primark

Primark Stores Limited
Native name
Penneys
Subsidiary
Industry Retail
Founded June 1969; 47 years ago (1969-06) in Dublin, Ireland
Founder Arthur Ryan
Headquarters Dublin, Ireland
Number of locations
325 (2016)
Area served
  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • France
  • Germany
  • Ireland
  • Italy
  • Netherlands
  • Portugal
  • Spain
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
Key people
  • Paul Marchant (CEO)
  • John Lyttle (COO)
  • Steve Lawton (trading director)
  • Jose Luis Martinez De Larramendi (head of Spain and Portugal division)
  • Julian Kilmartin (buying and merchandising director)
Products
Revenue £5,347m (2015)
Number of employees
68,000
Parent Associated British Foods
Website primark.com
Footnotes / references

Primark (branded as Penneys in Ireland) is an international clothing retailer. It is a subsidiary of Associated British Foods and is headquartered in Dublin.

The company's first store was opened by Arthur Ryan on behalf of the Weston family in June 1969 in Mary Street, Dublin, under the name Penneys. Success in Ireland led to expansion to the United Kingdom, and the company opened a large store in Belfast City Centre in 1971 and one in Derby, England, in 1973. The company could not use the name "Penneys" in Europe outside Ireland because J. C. Penney had the name registered. The name "Primark" was then invented to use outside Ireland.

Primark opened its current international headquarters in 2015 in a redeveloped Dublin building, Arthur Ryan House, formerly Chapel House.

Primark offer a diverse range of products, including newborn and children's clothing, women's wear, men's wear, home ware, accessories, footwear, beauty products and confectionery. The company sells clothes at the low cost end of the market below average prices. Along with retailers such as Zara and H&M, Primark contributes to the contemporary fast fashion trend. According to an article about Primark in The Economist, "For many shoppers, Primark has an irresistible offer: amazing trendy clothes at amazingly low prices. The result is a new and even faster kind of fast fashion, which forces consumers to buy heaps of items sometimes even the same ones to use when the first ones worn out, discard them after a few wears and then come back for another batch of new outfits."

Primark have created a cosmetics line called "PS Pro" which has been praised by many beauty bloggers for its high quality and low price.

Primark own over 290 stores. The largest Primark store is located on Market Street, Manchester, England, occupying 155,000 sq ft (14,400 m2) of retail space across three floors.

Primark expanded rapidly in the UK in the mid-2000s. In 2005 they bought the Littlewoods retail stores for £409m, retaining 40 of the 119 stores and selling the rest.

In May 2006, the first Primark store outside Ireland and the United Kingdom opened in Madrid, Spain. After 10 years of constructing a chain around 40 stores in Spain, Primark opened another store in Madrid in October 2015, the second biggest in the chain.


...
Wikipedia

...