Primark finds sweet spot
Primark’s latest spring collection features quilted cross-body bags, modelled on the famous Dior bag, with the tell-tale golden chain strap and metal logo on the front. Except the Primark copy – or should one say imitation – sells for around £2.50 rather than the Dior one, which costs £3,400. No contest.
The young and trendy are already going wild about the bags on social media, which Primark advertised on instagram only last week. They come with matching white, blue and pink pastel-coloured heels for a similarly low price.
You’ve got to hand it to Primark, its buyers have the eye for finding the shoppers’ sweet spot.
They seem to know what their customers want before they do themselves – a little cheap and cheerful glitz goes a long way.
It is this knack for understanding that retail is detail that lies behind the big leap in sales over the last six months, reported by associated British Foods, Primark’s owner. Uk trading was particularly strong, and sales growth of 19pc in the current climate is nothing short of spectacular.
Shoppers are proving remarkably resilient, stocking up on heels, knitwear and luggage, as well as clothing, ahead of the summer holidays. Footfall and market share have also climbed as old and new consumers search out value for money, while Primark will have opened 13 stores across Europe and in the Us over the period.
This strong start, together with lower operating costs, has prompted aBF to lift guidance for full-year sales to be more than 20pc ahead of last year.
The food business didn’t do so badly either, despite higher energy and commodity prices. The Twinings-tea-to-animal-feed producer is particularly vulnerable to higher inflation costs so trading has been helped by lower shipping rates, which are returning to pre-lockdown levels and fuel costs down to where they were before the Ukraine war.
After such a good run, the FTsE 100 giant now expects profits to be in line with last year’s, mainly because of the surprise lift in Primark’s fortunes – although higher wages as well as higher currencies may yet feed into higher prices. Which is why aBF sensibly cautions that it is too early to say whether consumer spending will hold up over the coming months as interest rates rise and energy price support comes to an end.
That too may depend on how many copycat Dior bags the ladies keep buying. How they are made quite so cheaply – and how sustainable they are – is another question.
All aboard…
FTsE 350 companies have 40pc of their boardroom roles filled by women, three years ahead of the 2025 deadline.
Women also hold a third of all leadership roles in the 350 companies and a slightly higher proportion of women now hold top positions in 50 of Britain’s biggest private companies. This is a cracking result.
Only ten years ago, 152 of the FTsE 350 boards had no female presence. Today, the vast majority of the 350 companies have three or more women on their boards.
What’s all the more remarkable about the result is that it’s been achieved voluntarily rather than through mandatory quotas, a move which many of us believed would be the only way to bring about significant change. We have been proved wrong. Through encouragement – and help from imaginative headhunters – firms have jumped at the chance to improve their talent base.
Concerns that there were not enough women around, with the right skill-sets, to fill many senior executive positions because they tend to focus on humanity-based subjects such as law and Hr rather than finance have also been shown groundless.
another reason often given by companies for not having a strong enough female pipeline was that women lacked overseas experience, and were more likely to reject foreign postings – often a prerequisite for being promoted onto boards. such fears have also been shown to be no longer so relevant.
On current form, beating the next target of 40pc of women in leadership positions by 2025 will be a slam-dunk. The carrot really is better than the stick.
Windsor winner
LOOks as though rishi sunak has pulled a blinder on Northern ireland and Brexit.
We don’t have all the details yet, but the principles are there in black and white. red and green lanes for goods, to minimise friction, and agreement on pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs. Business liked the certainty, hailing a new chapter in Uk/EU relations.
The House of Windsor is not just all pomp and circumstance.