Dunnes Stores

Dunnes Stores

Type	Private
Industry	Retail
Founded	1944
Founder	Ben Dunne
Headquarters	Dublin, Ireland
Number of locations	155 stores
Key people	Frank Dunne (Managing Director)
Products	Groceries and textiles
Number of employees	18,000+
Website	www.dunnesstores.ie

Dunnes Stores is an Irish multinational retail chain that primarily sells food, clothes and household wares.

In addition to its main customer base in both parts of Ireland, the chain also has operations in England, Scotland and Spain. The format of the chain's stores include a grocery supermarket operating alongside a clothing/textiles store. The grocery operation only operates in Irish stores and some Northern Irish stores, although some limited grocery ranges can be found in the Spanish stores. However some stores contain only textiles, while some (more rarely) contain only a supermarket. Many products are sold under the St. Bernard brand later being rebranded as "My Family Favourites" in 2013.

Ben Dunne began his retail career as an employee at a drapers shop in Cork, Ireland, in the 1940s. In 1943, however, Dunne left that shop to set up his own store just across the street. Dunne quickly set out to revolutionize the Irish retail market, and in 1944 opened a new store, on St. Patrick's Street in Cork, which promised "Better Value" by offering goods at pre-war prices.

Shoppers flocked to the store, sparking what the company later claimed as a "shopping frenzy" and police were called to help manage the crowd. The success of the first store prompted Dunne to add new stores elsewhere in Cork and then throughout Ireland. Dunne, who personally ran all his stores, innovated by centralizing distribution on the one hand and the shopping experience on the other. Until Dunne, goods were kept behind retail counters, and shoppers required assistance from sales staff simply to handle an item. Dunne, on the other hand, installed clothing racks on the sales floor, enabling shoppers to browse through items at will.

Initially, Dunne's shops, already called Dunnes Stores, featured only clothing and other textile items. Yet Dunne soon recognized the potential for adding groceries—beginning with apples and oranges—to encourage shoppers to come into the store during the lunch breaks. The addition of food items later led the company to extend its stores with full-scale grocery departments. As part of this effort, the company introduced its own brand, dubbed St. Bernard—in part to appeal to its overwhelmingly Catholic consumer base. The company also added hardware goods, while maintaining its policy of accepting low profit margins in order to offer the lowest prices.

Through the end of the 1950s, Dunne established stores in Wexford, Waterford, Limerick and Dublin. Then, in 1963, Dunne grouped his growing number of stores under a new corporate structure, Dunnes Holding Company, which took over ownership of the entire operation. Dunne also set up a family trust at the same time, in part to ensure that the company remained family controlled.