Primark warms to online with click-and-collect trial

PRIMARK is softening its long-standing opposition to online shopping with the launch of a new click-and-collect service in some stores.

Owner Associated British Foods (ABF) is launching a trial later this year in up to 25 Primark stores in the North West. Customers will be able to browse items online and then order them to be collected at local branches.

The trial will cover children’s clothes and accessories and is expected to give more choice to shoppers who live close to smaller stores, which normally only stock a limited range.

ABF said the change will double the number of options available to shoppers. Around 40pc of the products available to order under the trial will be exclusive to click-and-collect.

ABF promised to explore expanding click-and-collect to other categories and areas if the trial goes well.

Primark has for years resisted selling online, even as the pandemic forced it to close shops and take a hit on sales. Shares are around 40pc lower than they were in February 2020.

The retailer recently launched a website where shoppers can browse products and check their availability in store, but not buy them.

George Weston, ABF chief executive, said Primark was still focused on instore sales despite the pandemic.

“We think our figures in this last quarter back up the belief that people will come back to the high street, are coming back to the high street and that the high street will exist in the future, as it has in the past,” he said.

Primark’s like-for-like sales in the UK were 4pc below pre-pandemic levels in the most recent quarter.

Mr Weston said: “We are very encouraged by that number ... They’re building from there.”

On the launch of the new trial, Mr Weston said: “We didn’t think we had a great problem to fix. We think we’ve got an opportunity to make a visit to a Primark store an even more worthwhile thing to do.”

He played down the idea of Primark launching a full online shopping service in future, saying it was a “very different” prospect to click-and-collect.

“There’s a lot more cost involved,” he said. “Obviously, the return rate makes it a very complicated business logistically, and there’s an environmental consequence of all those different brands delivering products the whole time.”

Primark has been able to open since the lifting of Covid rules, although ABF said like-for-like sales globally were still 9pc below pre-pandemic levels in its latest quarter to the end of May.