Why do primark sell cheap clothes

Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site. Ad Choices. Report a digital subscription issue If you are being blocked from reading Subscriber Exclusive content, first confirm you are logged in using the account with which you subscribed. Fact-forward news for readers like you who want to know more. Judging by the number of branded brown paper bags swinging from arms or hooked over pushchair handles in Birmingham city centre, she is not alone.

If the high street is dying, then Primark, which will mark 50 years in business in June, appears to be immortal. And it is remarkable that the biggest British fashion retailer in Britain by volume if not by value has done it all without venturing into online shopping.

If you want Primark, you still have to get off the sofa and buy it — and millions happily oblige. The Birmingham megastore is almost a tourist destination, what with its in-store blow-dry bar, beauty salon and Disney-themed cafe that is catnip to preschoolers.

There have been coach trips from Scotland, with customers filming on their phones as they walk in, as if it were a theme park. But people are not just browsing; they are buying. These are pocket-money prices for grownups, and they are not just attracting shoppers on a tight budget.

Discount retailers have also discreetly helped the squeezed middle — people who are not exactly hard up, but have still felt the pinch over the past decade — ride out what would otherwise have been painful downward pressure on their living standards. If younger consumers mean what they say about tackling the climate crisis, then fast fashion — clothes so cheap, they are practically disposable — should be going the way of plastic coffee cups. Fashion is the second most polluting industry in the world, second only to oil, creating environmental headaches right through from production to the landfill created when people tire of their bargains.

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Source: Primark and The Economist. At the time, analysts expected the store to pose a threat to rival US apparel stores such as Gap and Abercrombie, by undercutting them on price and offering a constant turnover of new styles. When the pandemic hit Primark found itself in a worse position than many competitors because it doesn't sell online. It does so by running a sleek logistics system, having limited advertising, and buying products in bulk, which enables it to negotiate better prices from suppliers.

In the past, the company has come under fire for its cost-cutting supply-chain tactics and the conditions in which its clothes are made.

In , Primark was highlighted as one of the retailers that made clothes in the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh, which collapsed and killed more than 1, workers.

The typical Primark shopper tends to buy in large quantities because of the store's cheap prices. The baskets at the front of each store are a nod to this shopping habit, enabling customers to pile them up with new items. Primark executives still say it doesn't make economic sense to sell online, despite the events of , because of expensive shipping and returns costs.

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