Primark Wants to Be Twice as Big in Spain

Despite the fact that Primark has become the largest fashion store in Spain, outselling national global brands such as Mango and Zara, financial director of the Irish company, John Bason, has stated that there is still a lot of ground to cover and plenty of room to expand.

With 9% of the market share and 8.9 million customers a year, the company believes that it is still possible to double the amount of commercial space it owns across the country over a period of time.

It was thanks to Spain that Primark suddenly exploded onto the international market around ten years ago, with the opening of its first store in this country in the Plenilunio commercial centre in Madrid in May 2006.

Nevertheless, despite current plans to expand in Spain, the fact that most of the new stores are so big, between 4,000 and 5,000 square metres, means that this growth is taking place at a fairly slow rate.

New stores are often inaugurated in shopping centres and so the time has to be right before the right location has been found.

The latest Primark stores have been opened in Palma de Mallorca, Valencia, and Tarragona, and a new premises is being built in Bilbao on the Gran Vía.

As a matter of fact, the Primark store on Madrid’s Gran Vía, which only opened in October and has a total area of 12,356 square metres, making it the second largest Primark store, is one of the most popular and the second highest selling after Manchester.

Due to the inauguration of the new Primark on Madrid’s Gran Vía, the company was able to increase its sales by 16% last year.

While a number of brands are opting to become more visible online and generate a greater number of sales through this method, Primark has practically ruled out going down this road.

The financial director has explained that profit-wise it wouldn’t be worth trying to sell online and because their prices are so low, they would barely make any profit on the items sold if they did.

The way that Primark can make money is because it barely advertises, it buys in large quantities directly from the suppliers, it sources locally, pays its suppliers on time and manufactures in countries where there are tax agreements in place within the EU.

The Irish company currently employs 5,000 people in Spain over its 41 stores, but hopes to increase its staff as it opens more stores.

Source: www.cincodias.com