Primark, a contraction of price and mark, is an Irish company specializing in the distribution of cheap clothing, owned by Associated British Foods. It was founded in Ireland in 1969 under the name of Penneys and then developed more clearly internationally since the 2000s. Its commercial policy is based essentially on a reduction of costs and a large volume of sales.
About
Primark is an international textile discounter headquartered in Dublin, Republic of Ireland.
Primark stores, which typically have thousands of square feet of retail space, sell women's, men's and children's textiles, footwear and accessories, and home and cosmetic items at very low prices.
1960 - 1970
In the late 1960s, the native Canadian and founder of Associated British Foods, W. Garfield Weston, became aware of London-based Irish tie seller and trade manager Arthur Ryan. Weston commissioned Ryan with 50,000 pounds in Ireland to build a chain of discount stores. In June 1969, Ryan opened his first store on Dublin's Mary Street called Penneys. The shop exists to this day, and in the same building sits the board of the Prlmark Group. Within a year, further branches were opened in the Greater Dublin, before 1971, the first branch outside Dublin was opened in Cork City. Already in the early 1970s, the company moved the production to Asian low-wage countries.
1974 - 2016
In 1974, the first British stores opened in shopping streets in Derby and Bristol. Because of the British market name violations with the US department store chain J. C. Penney were in the room, the name for Great Britain was summarily changed to Primark. In 1984, the first multiple takeover took place with the purchase of five Irish Woolworth branches. After BHS (British Home Stores) withdrew from Ireland in 1992, a major flagship store was acquired on O'Connell Street in Dublin. When C & A withdrew from the UK in 2000, Primark acquired eleven outlets. In May 2006, Prlmark opened its first store outside of Ireland and the UK in Madrid. Prlmark has also been present in the Netherlands since the end of 2008, followed in 2009 by the first branch in Germany. Also in 2009, the first branches were opened in Portugal and Belgium. The first branch in Austria followed in September 2012 in Innsbruck. Four further branches are located in Gerasdorf near Vienna, Pasching, Seiersberg and in Vösendorf. Since December 2013, Prlmark is also represented in France. In September 2015, the first store outside Europe was opened in Boston. The first store in Italy followed in April 2016 in Milan. An online shop is not planned.
2009 - 2014
The concept of the company is to offer particularly low-priced and fashionable textiles. Primark invests heavily in optimizing the value chain to reduce costs and less in advertising. There are no changing collections offered and no final sales organized. The company is also trying to minimize the administrative burden of flat hierarchies. The company itself speaks of "intelligent technology use, efficient sales and wholesale and stock procurement". All goods offered by Primark are produced, in part under their own trade names, for Prlmark; the company does not carry brands of other manufacturers. Primark is - compared to, for example, in Germany-based fashion discounters such as NKD or KiK - managed to win with low prices and fashionable items especially the young target group for themselves. This circumstance is reflected in new openings of Primark stores sometimes in immense demand by customers, and also opponents of the Group (see section Criticism), reflected.
Primark CEO was until 2009, the company founder Arthur Ryan. Since then, the Brit Paul Marchant leads the business. Primark remains a subsidiary of Associated British Foods (ABF) and is ultimately controlled by the British branch of W. Garfield Weston's offspring through Wittington Investments. Wittington Investments Limited owns 54.5% of ABF and owns 79.2% of the Garfield Weston Foundation, founded in 1958 by W. Garfield Weston, and 20.8% of the Weston family. Primark is with 6.7 billion euros annual turnover (2014) the highest-earning subsidiary of ABF.
Story
Prlmark stores, which typically have thousands of square feet of retail space, sell women's, men's and children's textiles, footwear and accessories, and home and cosmetic items at very low prices.
The world's largest store with a sales area of ââaround 14,400 m² is located in the English city of Manchester and extends over three floors. In Germany, Primark is based in Essen based Primark Fashion Ltd. & Co. KG represented. The largest German branch with around 8,800 m² on four floors is located in Hanover.
The company, founded in 1969, is in addition to Ireland and Great Britain (since 1973) in Spain (since 2006), the Netherlands (since 2008), Portugal (since 2009), Germany (since 2009), Belgium (since 2009), Austria (since 2012) , France (since 2013), the United States (since 2015) and Italy (since 2016), and has more than 350 branches with more than 70,000 employees. In the Republic of Ireland, all branches have always operated under the name Penneys. Primark has been a subsidiary of British food company Associated British Foods (ABF) since its founding. From 2008 to 2014, Prlmark's total revenue more than doubled, while profits increased three and a half times.
Due to its particularly low prices, the company is internationally criticized, among other things with regard to the labor, wage and production conditions in low-wage countries, pollutant levels in the goods on offer and the lack of sustainability of the textiles on offer.
Products
Nightwear
Blouse for girls
Lip Pencil and Lip Gloss
Ladies' boots
Fes set with scarf and gloves
Pajamas for girls and boys
Criticism
Production Conditions
Hubertus Thiermeyer, Division Manager Trade of the United Services Union in Bavaria, criticized the buyers who need to know that the price for a two-euro T-shirt must pay another. Björn Weber, head of the German branch of the retail research company Planet Retail, criticized the catastrophic working conditions in the textile industry in Bangladesh: The seamstresses would have to work twelve hours a day for seven days a week. Critics also complain that Prlmark downgrades low clothing prices clothes to "disposable items".
Undercover public relations
In November 2011, the company made a publicity campaign for journalists in the UK. At the opening of the Prlmark branch in Hanover, media representatives received a shopping gift voucher of more than $ 50 called "gift cards" in addition to various fan articles and information materials. The NDR media magazine Zapp described this as a "smear PR" and criticized the lack of contact for critical queries on the Primark website.
Alleged cries for help in clothes signs
In June 2014, reports were accumulating that sewn-in notes calling for help from Asian workers had been discovered by customers. Here the workers lamented unsustainable conditions in the manufacture of clothing, where they "are forced to work for hours until exhaustion". The manufacturer referred to the fact that the garment was no longer sold since 2013 and to seek internal investigations. A little later followed the publication of another label with a corresponding call for help on Twitter. At the end of June, Prlmark published the findings of a study that found that at least two of the three "cries for help" found so far were counterfeits.
Fashion stories
As early as the sixteenth century, several books, especially French and Italian, were published on the fashion of the time, one of the first works on its history is perhaps that of Cesare Vecellio (v. 1521-1601), published in Venice. in 1590 and entitled Habiti Antichi and Moderni di tutto il'Mondo. In the sixteenth century, engravings represented the old fashions, such as Jean Moncornet's Le bransle des modes françoises5 (1642-1716), dating from 1696, listing some of them from Francis I to Louis XIV. In the eighteenth century Guillaume-François-Roger Mole wrote Histoire des Modes Françaises, or Revolutions du Costume in France, from the establishment of the Monarchy to the present day. Containing all that concerns the head of the French, with research on the use of Artificial Hair in the Ancients (1773). It was especially from the middle of the nineteenth century that the publication of such works increased, starting with Ãmile de La Bédollière's Histoire de la mode en France (1858) (1812-1883).
The empire of the ephemeral, haute couture and confection
In the nineteenth century, Charles Frédéric Worth invented living models and, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Jeanne Paquin fashion shows. There were about twenty fashion houses in Paris in 1900 (a hundred in 1946, approximately fifteen at the dawn of the year 2000). The fashion designer is no longer a craftsman at the service of his customers, it is part of their world, a more mixed world that is constituted under the Second Empire and seeks a soul at the same time a legitimacy. With dandyism, theorized by Baudelaire, he finds them: the correction of elegance takes place of birth, so much aesthetics is in fact an ethics, inimitable for those who are not already elected.
Fashion
The pre-industrial world was not indifferent to appearance, but its function was to dramatize the social hierarchy. In contrast to the contemporary rejection of the uniform, custom assigned to each one his habit at the same time as his social rank. Until the twentieth century, the clothing of women changes little in its general line, except at the Directory, but the clothes of courtiers strike by their splendor. The great lord carries on his back his property wealth, to show it, at the risk of squandering it. The independence of spirit of the aristocracy is manifested at certain times by the libertine enhancement of the body.