High-street stores; An insight to the world of fashion: Primark vs New Look

From our extensive shopping habits, to high demand of current trending fashion, Primark encourages a “get what you pay for” shopping experience, exploring long queues, chaotic rails and unconcerned staff in regards to customer service. While all these factors combine together to form Primark, there aren't many shops where you can fill enormous paper bags full of clothes and leave with change from a £50 note. While this encourages shoppers such as myself to purchase more items than intended, their careless hanging of clothing provides an unpleasant and distressing experience for others, where their staff are more concerned about quantity over quality.

Their brand also expands into the low-cost end of the market, where the company became popular within today’s shoppers like you and I, seeking latest fashion items at affordable and modest prices. My shopping experience has always been positive, where their stores use rails to hang and hold mass amounts of clothing, while I am left to shop alone in my own space and time. While this is more comforting, finding staff can be challenging, where their responses are more forward, rather than welcoming.

In contrast, New look also provides a “get what you pay for” attitude towards fashion, while their quality is higher in regards to Primark's. Price points are more demanding and less encouraging for customers on lower budgets, while their quality is noticeably better. While their idea surrounding their “get what you pay for” fashion is different to Primark, New Look provides quality clothing with higher prices where less items may be bought within one trip to their stores. Since Primark is known for their cheap prices and variety of styles, New Look offers a range of styles which appeal more within current trends, encouraging shoppers to return. While Primark stores are much larger and overwhelmingly busy, New Look applies a more relaxed and welcoming environment where shoppers can browse and comfortably take their time shopping. Primark's changing rooms are rather messy and unorganised, while although they have more space, New Look uses more secure and spacious rooms with brighter lights to allow clear personal views on products to encourage customers to buy their clothing. Lighting within Primark is much more dreary and dark within their changing rooms, where customers simply go in, try on clothing and leave. New Look encourages customers to take time to admire products and feel satisfied with their purchases.

Within my own visit to their store, I found more varied items of clothing which appealed to me the most in comparison to Primark. Although you get more for your money within Primark, clothing felt weaker and cheap, where New Look improves in quality, while their styles were more attractive than items within Primark. Staff were more encouraging with more staff easily accessible within their shop floor. While New Look is much smaller, I felt less overwhelmed and more satisfied within their store while browsing, in comparison to Primark's busy store.

While both stores have unique sides to their branding, both incorporate simplistic packaging and visuals within and outside of their stores, encouraging customers to shop for their brand name and styles inside their stores. Their uses of mannequins allow customers from both stores to get clear visuals of how products may look on themselves to encourage shoppers to buy products.

Within Primark, while they are known for their Primark ranges and affordable pricing, they also explore various sides to retail including home-ware, nightwear, shoes, bags, menswear, tailoring, children’s clothing, lingerie, womenswear, makeup and hair products as well as accessories and food towards their checkouts. This allows a variety of customers to explore different aspects to their store, where various generations of customers can shop within their preferred areas. While their uses of various areas within their store allow a wide range of customers, they do not restrict customers to certain areas, where all sections can appeal to most ages and generations. However, within New Look, although they sell most of the same to Primark, their sections are much smaller and less broad, where food and homeware are sold within the same area near their tills. Where both stores incorporate many target markets, their stores are much more varied in styles and products of which they sell within each store.

As we take a look into today’s fashion, Primark has become one of the most well-known and popular brands within this industry. Every retail store has to begin from somewhere, where Primark that we know and love to this day opened their first store in 1969 in Dublin, Mary Street; city centre, which transformed society into a fast pace style of fashion, beginning under the name of Penneys. Since their first store opening within dublin, over 370 stores have since been encouraged in twelve countries all across Europe and America. Within today’s Primarks, “Penneys” could not go into Britain, where American retailer J.C. Penney had rights over his use of name within the region. Since then, the name we all know of as Primark was born, since allowing all stores opened to use its name worldwide.

Additionally, New Look also began in 1969, originating from Taunton, where they started out as a single fashion store within the UK. New look became owned by the private equity group Apax Partners and Permira, and founder Tom Singh where since May 2015, their brand had been led and taken over by the investment company Brait SA, controlled by Christo Wiese. Over time, their brand has grown into a fast-fashion company, exploring around 519 more stores within the UK and Ireland. While they have created more stores than Primark, New Look also ships to around 66 countries world-wide, showing their success and quality is higher than Primarks, where they sell less internationally than New Look.

Since their influence within stores, both brands use websites for encouraging customers while they browse online. As customers from both stores, we can get a true reflection of their brand throughout their website layout and access to products. While Primark is affordable, products do not include information in regards to pricing, fabric, colour options and sizes within their websites, where this is a way they encourage customers to browse and shop in store. As an online shopper myself, having access to Primark from my own computer screen entices me to shop more, where I only reach for Primarks website to browse. On the other hand, New Look allows online shopping, where customers who cannot access stores within their local areas can access their brand easily. They also include all information we as customers need when shopping for clothing online and in store. While helpful and accessible they are, their website is aesthetically pleasing and intriguing while following their colour schemes and store layouts within their website.