In a statement of international intent Primark fired its first style salvo into the soft belly of the US value fashion market with the opening of its 8,000 sqm Boston flagship.
Truly a shopping space full of superlatives, the four floors are home to 530 mannequins, 84 fitting rooms, 73 cash registers and a myriad of digital screens and traditional design features set to define the Primark brand as it strives the make emotional inroads into the hearts and minds of the American consumer.
Primark’s premier foothold in the US has sizeable shoes to fill as it occupies the historic Burnham building, home for many years to the landmark Filene’s department store. So this is not just any carbon copy, any predictable template of the mega stores familiar to shoppers in the UK and Europe, but a strategic development focused on delivering a truer value perception through communicating low prices but with a significant increase in the fashion projection to attract younger and more style focused fashionistas.
Primark still packs its sizable punch but with a more lightweight design as the volume tables are replaced by streamlined floor fixtures, the mass market cardboard making way for vibrant visual communication with the digital centerpiece of the Boston Primark story now a personalization feature of all new stores but with additional refinement and fanfare for this first foray across the pond.
Amazing Fashion! Amazing Value! Primark communicates and delivers what is still firmly on the brand box, but with its long-term design collaborator UK agency Dalziel & Pow, decisively thinks outside the box, with surprising sophistication and style.
This first step of an initial eight stores should have US native retailers shaking in their shoes. The road to international domination of the fashion value sector begins with the promise of some heavyweight battles to come, but with no shortage of fast footwork, strategic skill and commercial experience on hand, this promises to be no simple slugging match.
Are you projecting the correct perception to your customers through your visual communication and merchandising?
Do you adapt your stores appropriately for the international markets that you enter?