Fast fashion retailer Primark is finally catching up with digital trends, but why is it still moving so slowly on retail basics?

While UK ‘fast fashion’ retailer Primark has in the past had a reputation for being somewhat of a digital laggard - no e-commerce, just stores philosophy, as recently as 2021 - it has, post-COVID, been playing a tentative game of catch-up, with new websites, the long-overdue introduction of click-and-collect, and, soon it seems, a decent mobile app.

It is worth noting that across parent company Associated British Foods (ABF), CapEx of around £100 million this year has been allocated to technology spend, including automation to drive efficiency in supply chain and new ERP systems to strengthen efficiency and decision-making in the businesses. So can Primark now be moved across to the techno-phile column?

Up to a point, it seems, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty, not least around who will lead the firm into its future and what form that future will take. There’s open talk of spinning off Primark from the rest of the ABF empire and currently there’s an ongoing search for a full-time CEO for the business regardless of what the outcome of that strategic review might be.

For now, it’s left to ABF Executive Director Eoin Tonge to steer the ship at a time when the consumer backdrop remains “challenging” even for a low-cost retailer:

Our customers have more and, in some cases, newer choices in the value space. We also recognize our world has evolved. The customer journey to our stores is more fragmented and more complex than it used to be. We fundamentally believe that our core proposition has never been more relevant to consumers, but we know we have some work to do to enable our customers to rediscover our value disruptor edge. Primark is the original value disruptor, and we remain that today. We need to make sure that it is always front of mind for our customers.

That being so, the priority in all markets is like-for-like sales growth, he explains:

This is about sharpening our value proposition, starting with price and specifically price perception,  while at the same time strengthening our product, starting with womenswear, better integrating our customer engagement, and, of course, continuing to develop our digital capabilities to enable all of this, all the while thinking hard as to how we attack the significant white space available to us. 

Customer engagement 

OK, so lots to do. On the customer engagement front, Tonge makes the claim that Primark sits at “the foothills of integrated customer engagement”, with some progress made over the past  12 months, but a lot more to tackle:

We've been using paid social marketing for a number of years now, which has driven good conversion with strong ROIs, particularly in the UK, and, again, with good uplifts delivered. For example, increased revenue from paid media was up 30%. Increased efficiency of paid media was up five percent.

What's underpinning more integrated customer touch points is continued investment in digital assets, he acknowledges, a helpful recognition from a company that only launched a (non-transactional) UK website as recently as 2022. Tonge is keen to emphasize progress since then:

We've continued to invest in the Customer Experience on our website, including better functionality. We've had 177 million visits to our primark.com website last year, an increase of 24%. Customers are spending more time on our website and are viewing more of our products. Critically, in 20% of the website visits this year customers have used the stock checker, which is the best measure of intent to convert. 

Plus, our CRM database continues to grow. It's reaching 4 million customers, and our survey data shows that e-mails have been a strong driver of store visits. And finally, we launched our Primark app in the year. It's only in Ireland and Italy so far, but the results have been good, and we're going to roll that out into other markets this year, including the UK.

Ah yes, the app. As 2026 looms, Primark is a retailer that still feels it needs to explore and test out the value of a mobile app. When it launched in Ireland and Italy back in August,  this approach was said to have been adopted to enable the business to test and learn how customers interact with the app in different retail environments. Insights from both markets would then be used to “inform further development” ahead of future launches, including the UK. These may take place over the next 18 months it seems, but there's no committed schedule offered. 

Matt Houston, Chief Customer and Digital Officer said at the time of the Irish/Italian debut: 

This launch is an important step in our ongoing digital investment as we harness the power of digital to complement our stores and offer our customers a more seamless browsing and shopping experience. We know our customers increasingly start their shopping journey online, whether that’s checking what’s new or planning a visit, and the app gives them the tools to do that in a more intuitive, personalised way. By launching in two very different markets, we’re able to test at scale, refine the experience, and build a roadmap that’s shaped by real customer behavior. That insight will be critical as we evolve the app and prepare to bring it to customers in other markets.

To which many may look on in bafflement at the levels of seeming caution and struggle to resist the urge to scream, ‘Just get on with it!’.

Clicking

Mind you, there was the exactly the same reluctance to push into Click & Collect a long, long time after other retailers had made it part-and-parcel of their engagement strategies. The mood there has changed now that the service is on offer from all UK stores as of May this year. Turns out it was a good idea all along!  Who knew?!? Tonge admits:

It’s contributing nicely to growth, and the metrics have remained very strong. The average basket size was around 25% higher than the UK average. And we've had at least a 40% attachment rate when people come into stores to pick up their Click & Collect, again with higher average basket size. Our data shows that one in four Click & Collect customers have not shopped with Primark for at least two years prior to the first Click & Collect purchase.

To which many again may again look on in bafflement and ask, ‘What took you so long?’.

But success story though it has been, there’s still work to be done here, says Tonge, particularly around awareness that the option even exists:

Over a third of our UK customer base are still not aware we offer the service. Given our comfort level on the customer and the financial metrics of the service in the UK, we're exploring the potential to offer Click & Collect service in other markets over the coming years as part of more integrated market growth plan.

Good, good - steps in the right direction. But - and yes, there’s always a but - those steps are baby ones it seems. Old habits die hard when it comes to digital caution as Tonge says:

We obviously did a lot of testing in the UK. But in that time, we obviously developed a capability, so that's good. The metrics, financial metrics and the customer metrics, are very compelling it's fair to say, so we will be rolling it out into other countries. But- it might take a bit of time.

To which many may again look on in bafflement and...yada yada yada.

For his part, Tonge is unapologetic:

I don't think we are in any way defensive at the time we've taken to get where we've got to on Click & Collect. We've had to work it through and get the model right and then we'll take our time in other markets as well.

My take

Let’s hope that time is forthcoming in a market space which is characterized by fickle shoppers buying fast-moving, highly-discardable product and being all-too-open to moving on to the 'next big thing' as soon as it comes along.

It's a retailer with a high percentage of younger shoppers in its customer base and it goes into 2026 without a mobile app. 

One more time for luck - many may look on in bafflement and....

Actually, no, that's it - many may look on in bafflement.