Fashion Chain Primark Puts Click-And-Collect on Radar as Expansion Gathers Pace

Customers walks with shopping bags, as retail store Primark in Birmingham, Britain reopens its doors after a third lockdown imposed in early January due to the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, April 12, 2021. REUTERS/Carl Recine
Customers walks with shopping bags, as retail store Primark in Birmingham, Britain reopens its doors after a third lockdown imposed in early January due to the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, April 12, 2021. REUTERS/Carl Recine
TT
20

Fashion Chain Primark Puts Click-And-Collect on Radar as Expansion Gathers Pace

Customers walks with shopping bags, as retail store Primark in Birmingham, Britain reopens its doors after a third lockdown imposed in early January due to the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, April 12, 2021. REUTERS/Carl Recine
Customers walks with shopping bags, as retail store Primark in Birmingham, Britain reopens its doors after a third lockdown imposed in early January due to the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, April 12, 2021. REUTERS/Carl Recine

Budget fashion chain Primark, which has shunned the extra cost of home delivery, could add click-and-collect services to its revamped website over time, but still sees new stores in markets such as Italy and the United States as it main growth driver.

The chain, whose trendy clothes at rock-bottom prices have taken British and European shoppers by storm over the last decade, will launch a new website in the United Kingdom by the end of March, and across its 13 other markets by the autumn.

That will better showcase its 10,000 products, provide customers with near real-time information on product availability by store and enable Primark to mine the data of its over 24 million active "engagers".

"We’re making the digital move forward in a very big way in both the UK and the rest of Europe. That will generate sales and profits for us," John Bason, finance director of Primark's owner, Associated British Foods (ABF.L), told Reuters.

"Does this give us a capability to move further forward? Well let’s have a look at that," he said in an interview.

"If there was an e-commerce opportunity for us, it will probably be more in the area of click-and-collect," he said, referring to products ordered online and picked up in store.

But Bason said home delivery remained off Primark's agenda as the economics don't stack-up for its low price points.

"You can’t get our value by delivery to home, it’s as simple as that," said the 23-year veteran of AB Foods, which also owns major sugar, grocery, ingredients and agricultural businesses.

Founded by the late Arthur Ryan in Dublin in 1969 under the Penneys brand, Primark trades from 402 stores. It turned over 7.8 billion pounds ($10.2 billion) before the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit it hard as its stores were forced to close.

In November, AB Foods targeted an expansion of Primark to 530 stores over the next five years, accelerating growth in the major markets of the United States, France, Italy and Iberia. read more

But 530 is "not the end of the line," said Bason. "There’s a long way to go with this business in terms of adding space.”

Primark is confident its model can succeed in a US market that has been a graveyard for some of Britain's biggest retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Philip Green's Topshop.

Bason said the five-year plan would take it from 13 US stores to about 60 - all to the east of the Mississippi River.

That still leave vast swathes of the United States unserved by Primark, including key states such as California.

“Without me being sort of categoric, you can see how you’d move into other geographies," said Bason. “There is huge potential in the United States, there really is."

He also believes Italy provides a "massive runway," noting Primark recently opened its first store in Sicily, a market that has more people than the island of Ireland - Primark's longest standing market. Primark currently has eight stores in Italy.

"In Spain and Iberia we have 65 stores. There’s no reason why Italy shouldn’t be that scale and go beyond that," Bason said.

Primark has also dipped its toe into central and eastern Europe, opening stores in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. A first store in Romania is slated for 2022.

Bason said its plans for this region had not been altered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.



Snoopy the Fashion Icon Celebrated in Paris Exhibition

 A Snoopy figurine is displayed as part of the "Snoopy In Style" exhibition to mark the Peanuts comic strip's 75th anniversary in Paris, France, March 20, 2025. (Reuters)
A Snoopy figurine is displayed as part of the "Snoopy In Style" exhibition to mark the Peanuts comic strip's 75th anniversary in Paris, France, March 20, 2025. (Reuters)
TT
20

Snoopy the Fashion Icon Celebrated in Paris Exhibition

 A Snoopy figurine is displayed as part of the "Snoopy In Style" exhibition to mark the Peanuts comic strip's 75th anniversary in Paris, France, March 20, 2025. (Reuters)
A Snoopy figurine is displayed as part of the "Snoopy In Style" exhibition to mark the Peanuts comic strip's 75th anniversary in Paris, France, March 20, 2025. (Reuters)

A new exhibition opened Saturday in Paris charting the emergence of Snoopy as a fashion icon, with the famed black-and-white beagle embraced by designers from streetwear brands to couture houses.

The show at the Hotel du Grand Veneur in the Marais neighborhood is part of the celebrations for the 75th anniversary of Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the Peanuts comic strip crew which were created by late American illustrator Charles Schulz.

It is the latest entry in a competitive but extremely well-attended field of fashion showcases in the French capital, with the Louvre ("Louvre Couture") and the Grand Palais ("Dolce & Gabbana") currently hosting packed-out exhibitions.

"Since we're celebrating our 75th anniversary this year, we thought it would be fun to celebrate the history that the brand has with fashion. And where else would you do that but in Paris?" said Melissa Menta from the Peanuts Worldwide company.

Entitled "Snoopy in Style" and running from March 22–April 5, the free show explains the intense care taken by Schulz to create simple, visually recognizable characters that would "bounce off the page".

Charlie Brown was initially drawn with just a plain white t-shirt before Schulz -- whose snappy dress sense is also celebrated in the show -- gave him his trademark sweater with a jagged stripe.

But the exhibition is at its most interesting in explaining how designer collaborations and merchandising -- long before they were fashionable -- helped turn a 1950s comic strip scribble into a global cultural phenomenon.

Nowadays, Snoopy is recognized by between 80-90 percent of people in the United States, Europe, Japan and even China, according to research by the Deloitte consultancy for the Peanuts company.

Much of the credit for Snoopy's journey from newspaper pages to mass-market clothing stores and fashion catwalks is given to Schulz's long-time merchandising collaborator Connie Boucher.

She came up with the idea of producing dolls of Snoopy and his sister Belle in the early 1980s which she then sent to fashion houses around the world, asking their designers to dress them.

"Isn't it amazing how the busy fashion celebrities wanted to take on the challenge of designing outfits for fuzzy characters with large ears and tails?" she is quoted as saying afterwards.

By 1982, there were enough dolls -- from Karl Lagerfeld, Fendi or long-time fan Jean-Charles de Castelbajac -- to put on a first travelling exhibition in US cities, London and Paris.

Many of them are on display in the most striking room of the Paris show that features dozens of dolls from this period and others from the present day.

Italian fashion house Valentino sent a contribution that sees Belle in a replica of a couture outfit that was showcased in Paris in January this year that includes 15 different fabrics.

"Designers wanted to include Snoopy because they realize the universal message that he carries," curator Sarah Andelman, founder of former Paris boutique Colette, told AFP.

Elsewhere, visitors get a sense of the global marketing and commercial power of the Snoopy figure which appears on Marc Jacobs trainers, Uniqlo t-shirts, Lacoste padded jackets, Gucci jeans, Vans shoes and more.

Licensing agreements come with strict conditions.

Keeping Charlie Brown's pet sidekick relevant to new generations so long after his first appearance on October 4, 1950, is a challenge for the Peanuts company.

The fashion collaborations achieve this, but help has also come from the internet where Schulz's 18,000 Peanuts strips are endlessly recycled.

Charles Schulz, who passed away in 2000, "would be amazed at how it has taken off on social media," his widow Jeannie Schulz told AFP.