MAGGIE PAGANO: Primark finds the sweet spot with its designer dupes

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Primark’s latest spring collection features quilted crossbody bags, modeled after the famous Dior bag, with the telltale gold chain strap and metal logo on the front.

Except that the Primark copy – or should you say imitation – sells for around £2.50 instead of the Dior copy, which costs £3,400. No game.

The young and trendy are already going wild on the bags on social media, which Primark advertised on Instagram last week.

Sales up: A strong start to the year, along with lower operating costs, has prompted Primark owner ABF to raise full-year sales expectations to more than 20% higher than last year

They come with matching white, blue and pink pastel heels for a similarly low price.

You have to leave it to Primark, the buyers have an eye for finding the shoppers’ sweet spot.

They seem to know what their customers want before they know it themselves – a little cheap and cheerful glitter goes a long way.

It’s this knack for understanding retail as a detail that underpins the big jump in sales over the past six months, Associated British Foods, Primark’s owner, reported. UK trade has been particularly strong and sales growth of 19 per cent in the current climate is nothing short of spectacular.

Shoppers are proving remarkably resilient, stocking up on heels, knitwear and suitcases, as well as clothing, for the summer holidays.

Footfall and market share have also increased as consumers old and new look for value for money, while Primark will have opened 13 stores in Europe and the US over the period.

This strong start, together with lower operating costs, has led ABF to raise its full-year revenue forecast to more than 20 percent more than last year.

The food trade also did not perform so badly, despite higher energy and commodity prices.

The Twinings tea-to-animal feed producer is particularly vulnerable to higher inflationary costs, so trade has been helped by lower shipping costs, which are returning to pre-lockdown levels, and fuel costs to where they were before the war in Ukraine.

After such a good run, the FTSE 100 giant now expects earnings to be in line with last year, mainly due to the surprise rise in Primark’s fortunes – although higher wages and higher currencies could still contribute to higher prices.

That is why ABF sensibly warns that it is still too early to say whether consumer spending will hold up over the coming months as interest rates rise and the energy price support comes to an end.

That too may depend on how many copy-cat Dior bags the ladies keep buying. How they are made so cheaply – and how sustainable they are – is another question.

Everyone on board…

FTSE 350 companies have had 40 percent of their board positions filled by women, three years before the 2025 deadline.

Women also hold a third of all leadership positions in the 350 companies and a slightly higher percentage of women now occupy top positions in 50 of Britain’s largest private companies. This is a smashing result.

Just a decade ago, 152 of the FTSE 350 councils had no female presence. Today, the vast majority of the 350 companies have three or more women on their boards.

What is even more remarkable about the result is that it was achieved voluntarily rather than through mandatory quotas, a move many of us thought would be the only way to bring about significant change.

We’ve been proven wrong. With encouragement – ​​and help from resourceful headhunters – companies have jumped at the opportunity to improve their talent base.

Concerns that there were not enough women around, with the right skills, to fill many senior executive positions, as they tend to focus on humanity-based topics such as law and HR rather than finance, have also proved unfounded .

Another reason companies often cited for not having a strong female pipeline was that women had no experience abroad and were more likely to turn down overseas job opportunities – often a prerequisite for promotion to boards. Such fears also appear to be no longer relevant.

As it stands, beating the next target of 40 percent of women in leadership positions by 2025 will be a hit. The carrot really is better than the stick.

Windsor winner

It seems that Rishi Sunak has been spoon-fed Northern Ireland and Brexit.

We don’t have all the details yet, but the principles are there in black and white. Red and green lanes for goods, to minimize friction, and agreement on pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs. Businesses loved the certainty and welcomed a new chapter in UK-EU relations.

The House of Windsor isn’t just all splendor.

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