Primark: new management for its second biggest market

New head for Primark Spain. The Irish low-cost fashion retailer, owned by AB Foods, places a long-standing executive in the company at the helm of Spain and Portugal. Carlos Inacio, who holds the position of sales director in the national market relieves Stephen Mullen, who has been promoted to retail director of southern Europe.

Spain is currently the second largest market in Primark by revenue. Waiting for the company to announce the final results of 2019, at the end of the 2018 fiscal year (ended in September 2018) Primark had 45 stores in the Spanish market, only behind the 185 in the United Kingdom. Next was Germany, with a total of 27 stores.

Inacio began his career at Primark in 2009 as the area director of the group in Portugal. Subsequently, he was promoted to commercial director in Spain and was appointed in 2018 as sales director for Spain. The executive, who has developed part of his career at H&M, has been in the structure of the Irish group for nearly eleven years.

Primark has promoted the head of Spain to lead retail in southern Europe

Stephen Mullen, on the other hand, led the company in the Iberian Peninsula since early 2015, when he replaced José Luis Martínez de Larramendi, who took the lead in the American market. The executive took his first steps in Primark as commercial director for Spain. 

According to the latest available data, the subsidiary in the Iberian Peninsula of Primark ended the year 2018 with a 5% growth in sales, up to 1.5 billion euros. With a workforce of 6,295 employees in the Peninsula and the Canary Islands, the group increased its profit by 57.6% compared to the previous year, to 96.3 million euros.

Spain will continue to be one of the main focus of Primark’s expansion this year. France and Spain will cover the bulk of the group’s openings, adding between the two markets a total of 19 new stores, in addition to extensions and relocations. After opening at the Lagoh shopping mall in Seville, the company will also open this year at the Gran Vía in Bilbao and in Plaza Cataluña in Barcelona.  

Spain is the company’s second largest market and plans to open new macro stores in Barcelona and Bilbao  

Primark closed its fiscal year 2018 with a revenue of 7.4 billion pounds (9 billion dollars), which places it as the seventh largest fashion retailer in the world. The company’s operating profit, meanwhile, stood at 843 million pounds (1 billion dollars) last year.

Waiting for Primark to announce the final results of its 2019 fiscal year, the company’s forecasts were to close the year with a 4% growth in its revenue. Primark argues that the evolution of sales is due to the increase in its commercial area during the period. Specifically, the group has increased its commercial area by 88,000 square meters in the last year.