How a few bits from Penneys put Ireland on the world’s fashion map
A new documentary is giving a glimpse at life behind the scenes at the Dublin retailer with a global reach
FOR Irish shoppers, Penneys is where they buy their socks and smalls, PJs, beauty bits and bobs, jeans and T-shirts, and holiday gear. Almost everyone has at one point bought something in Penneys.
Most people, however, don’t appreciate the amount of blood, sweat and tears that go into creating fashion ranges and the logistics of managing the distribution, merchandising and planning to deliver them to the fashion floor. The new RTÉ documentary Inside Penneys aims to illustrate all that intense effort in intimate close-up.
That Penneys is a Dublin-based business with a global reach in fashion makes it a rare phenomenon, and getting inside its corridors of commerce is a fascinating prospect.
In the past 15 years, it has accelerated at pace to become a truly international success. It has over 72,000 employees, and a presence in over 16 countries — currently it has 191 stores in the UK, 56 in Spain, 31 in Germany, 21 in France, 20 in the Netherlands, 16 in the USA, 14 in Italy, 10 in Portugal, eight in Belgium and four in Poland.
Late last year, it opened its first store in Wicklow as the anchor tenant in the new Bray Central Shopping Centre and moved its Dundrum presence to the former House of Fraser store, where it now occupies 60,000 sq ft. It is projected to expand to 530 stores by the end of 2026 with a €250 million expansion in Ireland over the next decade.
Mary Lucas is a Penneys veteran, with over 12 years’ service. She is currently trading director for footwear as well as managing the recently-debuted Rita Ora range. Prior to working with Penneys, she had roles at Debenhams and Matalan and has over 30 years of buying and merchandising under her belt.
Originally from Galway, she did a BA in UCG before taking the emigrant route to the UK searching for opportunity in the late 1980s. She was always attracted to fashion, but was not really certain how to pursue it as a professional career.
‘I left Ireland and went to London,’ she recalls. ‘I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn’t want to do. I saw an advert in a newspaper that said “Graduate Fashion” and I thought, well I’m a graduate and I love fashion, I’ll explore this. Then once I understood what the role was, I thought, oh my God, this is it, this is exactly what I want to do. ‘The role was like a trainee merchandiser. No sooner was I in there than I thought, this is just amazing — why didn’t anybody tell me about this when I was at school? I could see a real career path for myself and to be honest, the rest is history.’ After two decades at Debenhams — where she worked with Paul Marchant, now Penneys chief executive — Mary followed Marchant when he moved to the Irish retailer. She initially thought she might only stay a year as she had a ‘horrendous’ commute from Brighton to the UK buying office in Reading, but today she commutes weekly from Brighton to Dublin and says she manages the travelling because she loves working with the company.
For Mary, the company culture at Penneys is immensely appealing. ‘Once you get into Penneys or
Primark, you kind of realise the size of the opportunity, not just to grow the business, but also for your own personal progression,’ she says.
‘They are a very open-minded and progressive company that always tries to stay relevant and ahead of the curve. I don’t feel that there is a real hierarchy here — If you have an opinion or something to say, it doesn’t matter what level you are, they listen.
‘Sometimes I do think, oh my God, I’m one of the oldies here, but I don’t feel it because there
‘Now trends are dictated by social media and Tik Tok’
‘Rita is an absolute dream to work with’
isn’t any hierarchy and everyone is treated the same, regardless of gender or age. It’s an inclusive environment and I think that in itself brings out a lot of creativity because people aren’t afraid to speak up and make proposals and suggestions to move the business forward. I found a huge amount of freedom to be able to do what I need to do for Primark.’
Mary credits a lot of the brand’s success to Marchant, the chief executive since 2009.
‘Paul is great, he’s really a charismatic individual,’ she says. ‘Again, he’s very open, he wants to keep things moving and relevant, and of course he’s got a massive amount of experience. He’s brought that all to Penneys, to Dublin. I think once he came here, he realised the size of the opportunity and he then ended up attracting like-minded people. We ended up with an eclectic mix and experience from the UK, from Spain, from Italy as well as all of the Irish talent.’
While the total workforce is over 72,000 people, Mary says that the buying teams based in Arthur Ryan House in Parnell Street, are ‘exceptionally lean’.
‘If I compare the team that I have here and the turnover that we do, it’s a fraction of what I would have been working with in Debenhams,’ she says. ‘There’s 1,200 people here, every single function from the IT, HR, finance etc. Because we’ve grown so much and it’s a massive global retailer in the grand scheme of things now, it is big... but it’s much, much easier to steer the ship with minimum people trying to get them all in the same direction, than it is to have an army of people behind you,’ she explains.
She cites the influence of social media as one of the defining factors that has transformed how trends emerge and disseminate. Primark has 10 million followers on Instagram and 24 million fans in total across social platforms.
‘Now trends are dictated by social media and TikTok,’ she says. ‘The great thing here is that we make decisions very, very quickly. When somebody sees something on TikTok, then we’re on it straight away.’
There is one issue with this quick turnaround, however.
‘The downside for us is our lead times are really long,’ she says. ‘Everyone says Primark is fast fashion, we’re not actually. We make the decisions very quickly but to get the stock on to the shop floor takes months and months and months,’ she notes.
‘So, we’ll make a decision, like a few months ago we were in Milan where we saw tons of girls wearing ballerina shoes but my lead time in footwear is really long — it’s six months — so we’re only going to get those shoes in maybe the next four or five weeks.
‘Obviously it depends on the category you’re in. I don’t do short lead times, but you’ll still get jersey out of Turkey in six to eight weeks, but in the main it’s long.
Also, all of our factories have to go though a very serious vetting and compliance process, so if I want to bring a new factory on board, that could take forever and a day, by the time they go through the ethical and compliance process.
‘At the end of the day, buying and merchandising, although it’s changed dramatically because of social media and the way customers react and the way they want their trends, we’re not reinventing the wheel because we’re still buying from the same sources as everybody else, that we did 20 years ago: Bangladesh, India, China, Turkey etc. So, none of that has really changed and because with a retailer like Primark, buying vast, vast, volumes and the margins are very lean, we can’t really afford to do anything much closer to home and make a profit.’
Penneys has also seen a trend towards consumers buying better quality.
‘Actually the products that do brilliantly well for us is all the essentials, the basics — your black leggings, your white T-shirt — but also what we’re now calling elevated essentials that are seasonless,’ she says.
‘Although we’ll always be market leaders and we’ll always have our opening price point, they’re definitely buying into what we would call in Debenhams, “Good, Better, Best” products. So, it’s a better/ best product,’ she explains.
She says this is a notable change in consumer behaviour.
‘If I think back to what customers were buying 12 years ago when I joined, it was everything that was the lowest possible price,’ she says. ‘Now we have stretched those prices but when I say stretched, I mean there’ll always be a saving once you walk into Penneys. People expect to be in a certain price point, but as long as it’s excellent value in comparison to equal product in the competition, that’s what we do exceptionally well.’
She emphasises that Penneys has worked to make its clothing more sustainable and circular — this is an approach that aims to create a closed-loop system, reducing waste and maximising the lifespan of clothing and textiles.
‘That is something that we are going to be growing as much as we possibly can,’ she says. ‘We’ve got a lot of circular denim and jersey in the range and we’re doing a collaboration with Rita Ora, and she is very, very much down the whole sustainable route so anything that we can make circular, or more sustainable, that’s the first port of call.
‘The next collection, we’re hoping to introduce even more circular products with her, and then just generally speaking everyone is being trained in circularity. The strategy is for that element of the business to grow.’
Regarding the Rita Ora/Penneys collaboration, Mary was initially a little apprehensive as it ‘is always tricky having somebody else’s name on the label’. However, she says that Rita ‘is an absolute dream to work with because she’s got a very clear view and vision as to what she wants the product to look like.
‘I think the nice thing about her is that there are as many people that admire her and probably follow her for her sense of style and fashion as they do her singing. She has got a bit of authenticity about her and the fact that she is a Primark shopper, she’s different I think. I feel like it’s a very genuine relationship.’
Looking back, Mary would encourage others to consider a career with Penneys.
‘I think if they’ve got natural ambition and real drive and passion, they’re agile and they think on their feet, it’s an amazing opportunity for any individual, whether it’s a young person coming out of university or somebody whose already got a lot of experience,’ she says. ‘There’s a lot of opportunity and space for individual growth so I would 100 per cent, hand on my heart, say its an amazing opportunity.’
Inside Penneys airs on RTÉ One on Tuesdays at 8.30pm and on the RTE player