Ireland’s favourite shop is undergoing some major expansions over the next few month in the lead up to the Christmas shopping season.
However much to the public’s disappointment, providing an online service isn’t being considered right now.
Penneys boss, Paul Marchant, spoke to EY partner Roger Wallace at the beginning of the month and explained the company’s love of the ‘bricks and mortar’ approach.
In the midst of Covid, where many businesses across the globe met their demise, the Primark empire managed to expand into 25 new stores to meet the demands its customers.
They’re currently in 8 countries and have 373 stores, but a move online looks to be far into the future.
Mr. Marchant explained; “I get asked ‘will you go online?’ question about 20 times a day.
“The fact is we’ve got a business that is very successful, very profitable, and a model that is able to be rolled out across many markets and many countries and that is our prime focus.
“However, we always recognise that if customer demands mean that we need to think about another route to market then we’ve got to discuss that, be open-minded.
“But any change in strategy from bricks and mortar needs to be genuinely incremental and enhancing, and until we can find a model that enables us to do that then we’ll stick with what we’re doing.”
Primark’s sales in the second half of its financial year are expected to be around €4 billion and its operating profit margin in the period will likely be more than 10%.
