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Carlos Inacio of Primark for Spain and Portugal in the new La Cañada store in Marbella this week.
'We believe in physical shops and have no immediate plans to sell online'

'We believe in physical shops and have no immediate plans to sell online'

Primark, the Irish low-cost fashion giant, is still committed 100% to its offline model as it opens its new store in Marbella's La Cañada

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Friday, 27 August 2021, 11:52

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He is not yet 40 (his 39th birthday is coming up) but Carlos Inacio, who is from Lisbon, is in charge of the 62 Primark stores on the Iberian peninsula. After a meteoric career with the Irish company, where he began as a store manager in 2009 after working for H&M and Inditex, two years ago he was made director in Spain and Portugal. He has had to deal with the effects of the pandemic, especially as Primark does not sell online. Despite this, the firm is proceeding with its expansion plan in Spain, which includes a new store in La Cañada shopping centre in Marbella, which opened this week.

While your rivals are closing stores, you are opening new ones. Did you not modify your expansion plans as a result of the pandemic?

We opened our first store in Spain in 2006 and we have been growing year by year. The plan is to continue doing that, because Spain is one of the most important markets for the company. We believe in real shops, not online shopping. Between now and 2023 we will have seven new stores: we have just opened Madrid, Bilbao and Marbella, and the others will be in San Fernando, Gerona, Vigo and another in Madrid. We want to continue developing our business in Spain, we are very clear about that.

It is interesting that you don't have an online store, when others in the fashion sector have expanded their e-commerce.

For us as a company, all our decisions have to be sustainable. This business has been going for 51 years and we never take any decision which could jeopardise the good work we have put in so far, just because of a trend. Online shopping is a reality which cannot be ignored, and the pandemic has accelerated it, but we are committed to physical shopping, which we believe is something that is here to stay. In fact, there are some purely online operators who are now opening shops, like Amazon and Aliexpress.

Has your business model, based 100% on actual shops, made you more vulnerable to the crisis caused by the pandemic?

The pandemic has greatly affected us, of course. Imagine: we had no cash flow. When that awful day arrived when they told us we were going to have to close for 15 days, which then turned out to be three months, my thoughts were not about closing the stores, because that had been planned since the February; I was thinking about how and when we were going to open them again. I wasn't just worried about the responsibility of generating cash flow for the company, but about the whole team of people at Primark. Around 7,000 people suddenly had to be furloughed.

So we cannot expect Primark to sell online any time soon?

The company has decided to do it when the time is right, and at the moment there is no date in mind. We are studying different business models. Maybe the one that would suit us best is click and collect. We do, however, have a very strong presence on social media, with more than 20 million followers, nine million on Instagram. That helped us to keep in touch with customers during lockdown.

To what extent are people buying again? Has there been the so-called champagne effect that everyone was hoping for?

I was asked about that when the lockdown ended and I said that the next three years are likely to be very difficult. Sales have improved gradually, but are still nothing like they were. The champagne effect? It depends. Some stores have been busier than others, depending on the restrictions and tourism. The shop in Fuengirola, for example, relies strongly on tourism and there are practically no tourists at present. The tax-free transactions have fallen by about 80 per cent. And things are still not stable: we still don't know what is going to happen this winter.

The store in Marbella is your third in the province. Is that it, or are you planning to open more here?

We're not ruling out opening more, because there is a margin here. In Andalucía we have 12 stores, and with San Fernando that will be 13. It is the region with the most stores, and Malaga province has the third highest number after Madrid and Barcelona.

The production model and consumption of low-cost fashion has been criticised because of its effects on the environment. Is it possible to combine fast fashion with sustainability?

Is a company that charges 20 euros for a tee-shirt more responsible than one that charges five? Why should what a company does be judged by the price of its product? For me, low cost doesn't mean low values. Our way of thinking is that fashion needs to be accessible and also responsible in terms of the environment and people.

I would like to tell you everything we do in that sense. A year and a half ago we launched our A Better Future project, based on three factors: to continue developing our organic cotton collection, reduce single-use plastics and promote recycled fabrics. The map of our suppliers is open: on our website you can see where our products are made and who makes them, and we carry out more than 3,000 audits a year in our production countries to ensure that things are being done properly. Those measures are in place. But we are not going to stop offering the best possible prices. People shouldn't have to pay more for sustainable fashion, that wouldn't be fair.

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