Primark

Primark Stores Limited
legal form	Limited
founding	1969
Seat	Dublin , Ireland
management	Arthur Ryan †, Chairman Paul Marchant, CEO
Number of employees	73,000 (2017)
sales	7053000000 GBP (2017)
Branch	textiles
Website	primark.ie

Primark branch in Saarbrücken

Primark [ praɪmɑ: k ] is an international textile - discounter , headquartered in Dublin in the Republic of Ireland .

In Primark branches, which usually offer several thousand square meters of sales area, textiles, shoes and accessories for women, men and children as well as items for home use and cosmetics are sold at very low prices. The world's largest branch with a sales area of ​​around 14,400 m² is located in Manchester, England, and extends over three floors. In Germany, Primark is represented by Essen- based Primark Mode 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 over 70,000 employees. All branches in the Republic of Ireland have always operated under the Penneys name . Primark has been a subsidiary of the British food company Associated British Foods (ABF) since it was founded . From 2008 to 2014, Primark's total revenue more than doubled, while profits increased three and a half times.

Due to its particularly low prices, among other things, with regard to the working, wage and production conditions in low-wage countries, pollution in the goods on offer and the lack of sustainability of the textiles on offer, the company has come under international criticism.

history

At the end of the 1960s, the native Canadian and founder of Associated British Foods , W. Garfield Weston, became aware of the Irish tie seller and trade manager Arthur Ryan, who had emigrated to London . Weston hired Ryan to build a discount chain in Ireland with £ 50,000. In June 1969 Ryan opened his first store on Dublin's Mary Street under the name Penneys . The store still exists today, and the Primark Group's board of directors is in the same building. Within a year, more branches were opened in the greater Dublin area before the first branch outside Dublin opened in Cork City in 1971 . In the early 1970s, the company relocated production to low-wage Asian countries.

In 1974 the first UK stores opened on shopping streets in Derby and Bristol . Because name rights violations with the US department store chain JC Penney stood in the room for the British market , the name for Great Britain was changed to Primark without further ado. In 1984 the first multiple takeovers took place with the purchase of five Irish Woolworth stores. After BHS (British Home Stores) withdrew from Ireland in 1992, a major flagship store on O'Connell Street in Dublin was acquired. When C&A withdrew from Great Britain in 2000 , Primark acquired eleven of the branches. In May 2006, Primark opened its first store outside Ireland and the UK in Madrid . Primark has also been represented in the Netherlands since the end of 2008 and the first branch in Germany followed in 2009 . The first branches in Portugal and Belgium were also opened in 2009 . 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, Primark has also been represented in France . In September 2015, the first branch outside of Europe was opened in Boston . The first branch in Italy followed in April 2016 in Milan and the first Primark in Slovenia opened in Ljubljana in 2019 . An online shop is not planned.

The company's concept is to offer particularly affordable and fashionable textiles. Primark invests a lot in optimizing the value chain to reduce costs and little in advertising. There are no changing collections and no sales are held. The company also tries to keep the administrative effort low by using flat hierarchies. The company itself speaks of "intelligent use of technology, efficient sales as well as bulk and stock purchases". All goods offered by Primark are produced for Primark, some under their own trade names; the company does not carry any brands from other manufacturers. In comparison to fashion discounters such as NKD or KiK based in Germany, for example, Primark has succeeded in winning over the young target group with low prices and fashionable articles. This fact is reflected in the opening of new Primark branches, sometimes in an immense rush by customers and also opponents of the group (see section Criticism ).

Primark's CEO was Arthur Ryan, the company's founder until 2009. Since then, the British Paul Marchant has been running the business. Primark remains a subsidiary of Associated British Foods (ABF) and is ultimately controlled by the British branch of the descendants of W. Garfield Weston through Wittington Investments . Whittington Investments Limited owns 54.5% of the shares in ABF, is itself 79.2% of 1958 caused by W. Garfield Weston to life, non-profit foundation Garfield Weston Foundation , as well as 20.8% of the Weston family. With an annual turnover of 6.7 billion euros (2014), Primark is the ABF subsidiary with the highest turnover.

country	Branches
United Kingdom	192
Spain	48
Ireland	36
Germany	32
Netherlands	20th
France	17th
Portugal	10
United States	9
Belgium	8th
Italy	5
Austria	5
Slovenia	1
All in all	383
As of July 04, 2020

Primark branch in Dortmund ( Thier-Galerie )

Primark in Germany

The first branch in Germany was opened in Bremen in May 2009 , followed by the second German shop in Frankfurt am Main in November 2009. Primark is currently represented in Germany with 31 branches, in the cities of Berlin (three times), Bielefeld , Bonn , Braunschweig , Bremen, Dortmund , Dresden , Düsseldorf , Essen , Frankfurt am Main (twice), Gelsenkirchen , Hanover , Hamburg , Ingolstadt , Kaiserslautern , Karlsruhe , Kiel , Cologne , Krefeld , Leipzig , Mannheim , Munich , Münster , Saarbrücken , Stuttgart (twice), Weiterstadt and Wuppertal . There is a works council in five shops . Primark employs 6,300 people across Germany. A transitional collective agreement has been in force in the company since May 1, 2016. From May 1, 2017 the collective wage and salary agreements of the individual federal states will apply. The general collective agreement applies in full from May 1, 2018. The branches in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium are supplied from a warehouse in Mönchengladbach. The managing director of Primark in Germany has been Wolfgang Krogmann since 2010. Primark Deutschland GmbH , founded in 2010, is based in Essen.

criticism

Production conditions

Hubertus Thiermeyer, head of trade at the United Service Union in Bavaria , criticized the buyers, who must know that someone else would have to pay the price for a two-euro T-shirt. 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 had to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Critics also complain that Primark degrades clothing to " disposable items" through low prices .

Covert public relations

In November 2011, the company attracted attention in Germany with a PR campaign for journalists. At the opening of the Primark branch in Hanover, media representatives received various fan articles and information materials as well as a “gift card” for a shopping voucher worth 50 euros. The NDR media magazine Zapp called this "Schmieren-PR" and criticized the lack of contact options for critical inquiries on the Primark website.

Connection to the building collapse in Sabhar

In 2013, it came to Bangladesh for a garment factory in Savar Upazila collapse with 1,127 dead and 2,438 injured. Primark also had production there. As a result, Primark paid 6.5 million euros in aid to the families of the victims and surviving workers and set up a fund for a further 725,000 euros for long-term support. The Clean Clothes Campaign , UNI Global Union and IndustriALL estimate 40 million dollars to be able to provide support to all concerned and denounce reluctance among companies. As a result, the so-called Bangladesh Agreement was signed.

Suspected cries for help in clothing signs

In June 2014, there were increasing reports that sewn-in notes with calls for help from Asian workers had been discovered by customers. Here the workers complained of intolerable conditions in the manufacture of clothing, in which they “are forced to work for hours until they are exhausted” . The manufacturer referred to the fact that the affected garment has not been sold since 2013 and internal investigations are being sought. A little later, another label was published with a corresponding call for help on Twitter . At the end of June, Primark published the results of investigations according to which two of the three “calls for help” found so far were very likely to be forgeries .

Primark in Wuppertal

In Wuppertal , a citizens' initiative called “Kein Primark am Döppersberg” ( K-Pri ) was founded at the end of 2014 after it became known that the textile discounter was planning a location on Döppersberg . The initiative criticizes the prominent address - the branch will be right at the entrance to the city - in view of the city's history: Wuppertal was "the setting for one of the darkest chapters of early industrial history", and therefore the "cheap fashion chain with its throw-away mentality " is fundamentally not suitable, in particular, "Primark could not [now] become the city's lighthouse." Mayor Andreas Mucke suggested a boycott of the branch as a possible solution , as the city had no influence on the owner of the property to whom the property was rented. Basically, however, he “welcomes the settlement”. The Wuppertal city council approved the construction project of the Berlin investor Signature Capital in mid-2015; construction began in autumn 2015. The market opened on April 16, 2019.

literature

• Anette Dowideit, Flora Wisdorff: This is how cheap works. The clothing chain Primark is loud, hip, extremely inexpensive - and also very successful with us. But the rise of the Irish company has a downside. In: Welt am Sonntag , January 25, 2015, p. 34. Online

Web links

Commons : Primark  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Primark Germany

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Associated British Foods: Annual Report And Accounts 2017 abf.co.uk
2. ↑ ^{a b} About ABF ( Memento from July 21, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), primark.com, accessed: August 8, 2015
3. ↑ ^{a b} Cheap fashion - why no scandal harms Primark , wiwo.de, February 6, 2015
4. ↑ Criticism of working conditions - A pair of Primark trousers cry out for help , handelsblatt.com, June 28, 2014
5. ↑ Primark boss counters criticism - "Cheap is not necessarily bad" , t-online.de, August 8, 2015
6. ↑ ^{a b} The Primark Secret , sz-online.de, November 17, 2014
7. ↑ ^{a b} Primark company history
8. ↑ How reason exposes reason in cheap fashion , welt.de, December 11, 2013
9. ↑ Big crowd at the opening of Primark in Braunschweig , braunschweiger-zeitung.de, May 31, 2015
10. ↑ Primark opening in Berlin - why clean when it can also be cheap? , n-tv.de, July 3, 2014
11. ↑ Primark opening at Alex - Small prices, big anger , berliner-kurier.de, July 3, 2015
12. ↑ Primark opening stampede brings chaos to Southport town center , southportvisiter.co.uk, May 30, 2015
13. ↑ Primark prefers to grow slowly , welt.de, May 11, 2015
14. ^ Ralf Böhme: Opening in Leipzig. mz-web.de, April 6, 2016, accessed April 7, 2016
15. ↑ Primark , on pep-muenchen.de/
16. ↑ Interview by Sebastian Peters with Wolfgang Krogmann: "Primark regularly checks the factories". In: Rheinische Post , October 11, 2014, p. B4. Online , accessed October 12, 2014.
17. ↑ New establishment of the company: Primark Deutschland GmbH HRB 23866 ( Memento from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), on handelsregister-online.net
18. ↑ The trick with the cheap T-shirts from Ireland , Welt Online from August 4, 2012
19. ↑ Cheap clothing from Primark - Conscience is suspended in the shopping frenzy , deutschlandfunk.de, July 4, 2014
20. ↑ Bangladesh collapse disaster: The consequences of the clothing companies. test.de, April 23, 2014
21. ↑ Fashion houses want to better protect Bangladeshi workers. süddeutsche.de, May 16, 2013
22. ^ Cries for help found in clothing ( memento from June 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), br.de, June 26, 2014
23. ↑ Primark describes calls for help as fakes , faz.net, June 28, 2014
24. ↑ Jan Drees: Simply unbearable: Wuppertal defends itself against the construction of a Primark - probably in vain , Der Freitag No. 40, October 1st, 2015.
25. ↑ Elberfeld: Rush at the Primark start , on wuppertaler-rundschau.de