Fashion retailer Primark opening second Czech store in Brno

Fashion retailer Primark is opening a second store in the Czech Republic, following the flagship on Prague’s Wenceslas Square.

An outlet in Brno, the country’s second-largest city, will welcome its first customers at 10 a.m. on Sept. 14. The new 3,600 square meter branch, located in Brno’s Olympia shopping mall, will offer clothing for women, men, and children, as well as beauty products, accessories, and houseware. There will also be an expanding range under the Primark Cares brand, which is part of an effort to make sustainable fashion more accessible. The store will be open daily.

The opening of the Primark outlet in Brno will create 190 part-time and full-time jobs, ranging from buying assistants to managerial positions, according to the company. Recruitment for some positions is still ongoing.

The second Primark store in the Czech Republic follows a year after the launch of the first store in Prague. The new Brno store will be Primark's 406th branch worldwide. It joins others in the Central and Eastern European region, including Ljubljana, Slovenia, and two stores in Poland, in Warsaw and Poznan. Primark also has announced plans to open stores in Romania and Slovakia as well as more stores in Poland.

Maciej Podwojski, Primark's commercial director for the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region said, the chain is delighted to be able to offer Brno customers fashion at affordable prices. "The welcome from customers in Prague has been great and we can see that they have fallen in love with Primark and its products. We look forward to welcoming customers from Moravia and growing our Primark team," Podwojski said.

Jan Pazour, manager of Olympia shopping mall said, the addition of Primark to the mall’s portfolio of fashion brands gives customers the opportunity to shop for a wide range of products at affordable prices. "We are delighted that such a popular and major international retailer has chosen Brno, and in particular our shopping center, as the destination for its second store in the Czech Republic," he said.

Primark opened in Prague on June 17, 2021, in the newly built Flow Building on Wenceslas Square. The opening was delayed from the second half of 2020 due to the pandemic, which had forced stores to remain closed or limit the number of customers.

The store was the chain’s 396th, and the Czech Republic was the 14th country where the chain started operations. The store covers 4,600 square meters on three floors. When it opened, the chain operators said it would create 300 jobs.

Primark was popular with Czech consumers even before the Prague branch opened. Buses from Prague, Brno, or Hradec Králové, went to the nearest foreign stores.

Primark was founded in Dublin in 1969 as Penney’s. In total, stores have a sales area of over 1.53 square kilometers and they employ over 70,000 people. Aside from its home market of Ireland and the Czech Republic, it is present in Europe in the UK, Spain, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, France, Italy, Poland, and Slovenia. It also has 13 stores in the U.S.

The company uses almost no advertising, including television, and only sells products in brick-and-mortar stores. They don’t have an e-shop or a delivery network.