Primark's Business Doesn't Make Sense

I'm on Primark's website right now. You know, the fast fashion brand that everyone seems to lose their minds over. I wanted to see what the hype is. So, take a look at these shorts. How much do you think they cost? $10? $50? Turns out they're only $4.

You can get a bunch of items just like this for about that amount from Primark. In 2024, Primark made 12.4 billion in global sales. That puts it in a similar tier to H&M, Zara, and Shein.

All massive global fashion brands. But here's the part that makes no sense. Even though I'm on their website right now, I can't buy anything from Primark online. Not in the US, not in Europe where they're headquartered, nowhere. In a world where everyone shops online, especially for fast fashion, how does Primark get away with not having any e-commerce at all? Why is it stuck in the stone age?

This story isn't just about one company. It's about what we've been taught to expect from modern retail and what it actually takes to make that happen. And importantly, if one of the most successful fast fashion brands can thrive without e-commerce, why are they the only ones doing it?

For what's going on with Primark to make sense, we first need to understand how the fast fashion industry and some of its competitors work. Traditional fashion has operated on two seasons: spring/summer, then fall/winter. But in the early 2000s, fast fashion changed all that by embracing 52 micro seasons per year. That means many brands release new collections every single week of the year. And brands like Shein, they can release multiple times a day. Sheesh.

In the early years, brands like H&M and Zara led the charge in this retail transformation. In their 2024 fiscal years, they respectively brought in 21.5 billion and 40.2 billion. It's a lot of clothes. Shein, which just tried to IPO, by the way, generated an estimated 38 to 48 billion dollars in revenue, according to CB Insights. All while dropping up to, and I'm not kidding, 6 to 10,000 new items a day on their website. That's not even fast, that's warp speed.

All told, as of 2024, fast fashion is a $150 billion industry and is expected to grow to $214 billion by 2029. That's a lot of $4 shorts. And to be clear, e-commerce is a significant part of these brands' revenue generation. Most fast fashion brands get a quarter to a third of their revenue from e-commerce, and for brands like Shein, which is almost exclusively digital, that number is much closer to 100%.

Now, before I get to Primark, I do need to address something. Yes, these brands are absolutely dominating. But part of the reason they all work is because of cheap factory labor, often in dubious conditions. I will come back to this later on, but I wanted you to know it is on my mind. Okay, now, enter Primark. Founded in 1969 in Dublin as Penneys, the store aimed to provide affordable fashion to the Irish market, a mission that resonated with consumers and led to rapid success. Within a year, four additional stores were opened in Dublin, signaling the brand's strong market appeal.

Side note, since I wondered about it too, Penneys became Primark in 1974 to avoid a trademark issue with the department store, JCPenney. From 2008 to 2016, it expanded to seven different countries across Europe. During this era, all the other fashion brands started launching their online stores. H&M started offering online shopping as early as 1998 in Sweden, and Zara hit the online fashion scene in 2010. But Primark, still nothing.

In 2015, they made a big move across the Atlantic. They made landfall in Boston, which was a sensible strategic move. A lot of Irish-American people live in Boston. Shout out to my hometown. As of spring 2025, Primark has 29 locations in the US and 460 stores globally. That sort of expansion takes a lot of time and knowing how to make the right strategic bets. Whether you're running a retail business like this, leading a team, or just trying to stay ahead of the curve, retail is changing in ways that affect everyone.

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But this is where things are about to get tricky for Primark. Leading up to 2020, they still hadn't gone digital. Their entire model has been built around customers coming into their stores and making a purchase. And with a model like that, there's really only one thing that could potentially ruin you.

Coronavirus officially hitting the US.

Retailers across the country announcing closures.

From March to June 2020, Primark lost 75% of its revenue, according to Primark's parent company, Associated British Foods. By the end of the year, revenue was down by 24%. By the end of fiscal year 2020, profit had fallen 60%. And you're likely thinking, okay, this is the moment that Primark pivots. This is where it will be forced to modernize. It'll do an app or even a temporary web store. Well, kind of.

Primark initiated a limited click-and-collect service, essentially their version of curbside pickup. Except that wasn't in 2020. That was in November of 2022. By then, most restrictions had eased up. So this click-and-collect service couldn't have been a potent response to the challenges posed by COVID. So, while Primark is barely online and losing money from lockdowns, H&M, Zara, and Shein have been making money from online shopping this whole time. Putting this side-by-side, it becomes really hard not to ask, what is Primark thinking?

In 2020, George Weston, CEO of Primark's parent company, said, 'Our decisions online will be taken in their own context, not because of a once in a hundred years pandemic.' Later that same year, the following CEO, Paul Merchant, said, 'Anyone who thinks that shopping in person is over or outdated would be naive.' Their stance was clear: we do digital on our own terms, not the world's, not even when we've lost half our profit for the year. Honestly, I respect it. It's a bold commitment. And ultimately, that commitment paid off.

By the end of 2022, revenue rebounded from the low of COVID's 6.6 billion to 7.7 billion, nearly as much as was generated in 2019 before the pandemic. By 2024, they had surpassed pre-COVID numbers. For this sort of 'we're doing this on our own terms' bet to pay off, Primark's business needed to be airtight, from design to point of sale.

From a design perspective, Primark uses a dual approach: timeless basics with trend-driven fashion. The basics are meant to be wardrobe staples: simple t-shirts, plain shorts, neutral outerwear. These are the bread and butter, priced at extremely affordable touch points. Primark's trendier items often lean into celebrity collabs, like its Rita Ora collection released in 2023 or its Kem Cetinay men's line. After design, it's time to manufacture, which Primark accomplishes in 793 factories in 17 countries. It doesn't own any of these factories; instead, it partners closely with them. This is semi-normal in the fashion industry. H&M and Shein also don't own any of their factories, but Zara owns some.

Beyond that, and one of the parts I found interesting when it comes to packaging and warehousing, is that items are shipped floor-ready. This means that they're folded, tagged, and sorted by brand in the manufacturing plant. Meaning that once they get to the store, they're ready to just immediately be placed on the shelf, which reduces costs by saving on additional labor at distribution centers. Speaking of which, distribution. Primark has nine distribution centers. These centers are behemoths. Their largest in Islip, Northamptonshire is 1.1 million square feet, the size of 19 football fields. With a space that big, they need to optimize as well.

When floor-ready shipments arrive, both workers and automated systems scan and register items, making sure everything is accounted for. Automatic cranes and trolleys place goods where they need to go for delivery to retail stores, once again lowering costs from manual intervention. When Primark ships its goods, it does so by freight, utilizing a fleet of over 200 vehicles, which further reduces the cost of logistics while ensuring a high-efficient transit of a high volume of products. Finally, the goods arrive at the store, and this is where you can actually buy them.

And this is where I'm going to toss it to my good friend Tori, another producer here at The Hustle, to tell you all about what it's actually like there. Tori, what's up?

Hey, what up, Jamal? And hi everybody. Yes, I am here at Primark Boston, which you might remember is Primark's first location in the United States. This store is 77,000 square feet, right in that sweet spot of the 70 to 80K range where most Primark stores sit. And this location is smack dab in the heart of downtown Boston, meaning foot traffic is definitely high. Let's check it out.

This place is two floors of goods on goods. The most important thing about Primark's shopping experience is that they want you to feel like you're discovering hidden gems. You'll see people online often talking about it this way, like they're going on a treasure hunt just by being here. How does Primark accomplish that? Most displays don't go above eye level. Getting a look at other departments means you can create a mental layout in your mind of every nook and cranny you want to explore. We know it's a tried and true tactic retailers use. You spend time exploring every part of the store, prompting you to buy more items. How big it is in and of itself becomes kind of a fun experience. But other than that, there might not be too much that's special about Primark's in-store experience.

Totally makes sense. Hey, since you're there, you think you can get that shirt for me?

Sorry, man. I got to go.

All right. Well. So, this finally gets us to the central question: why couldn't this also work online? The answer lies in how fragile Primark's margin is and how digital breaks that system. If they were to go online, a number of things would need to happen. First, you need more inventory in more places to fulfill local orders fast. Second, you need to hire more warehouse workers to pack individual items or develop automation systems that can somehow reliably do that. Third, you would need to handle returns. These are particularly bad for fast fashion, with return rates as high as 50% according to WeSupply Labs. This would mean receiving return shipments, restocking, and marking down return items. What would you even mark down $4 shorts to? A dollar? Is it even worth it to sell at that point? Suddenly, you're not just selling a $4 shirt, you're spending $7 to ship it, and up to 50% of the time, a customer might return it.

In a comment to the Financial Times, George Weston, the CEO of Primark's parent company, said, 'At our price points and our basket sizes, online doesn't just take some of the margin, it takes all of it.' Now, you're likely thinking, but wait, how does an all-digital brand like Shein manage to sell at such low price points though? There are three things that Shein does. First, on a given order, the first return is free, but any additional returns thereafter have a return fee of $7.99. This discourages multiple returns on a single order, keeping logistical costs down. Second, original shipping fees are not refundable. That's money Shein gets to keep. Finally, Shein offers returnless refunds, where if an item is low enough in value, they'll just refund you without having to return it. It's a slightly opaque policy with it being unclear which items are deemed low value, but allows Shein to save on return handling costs.

In other words, a digital-first business like Shein is built from the ground up with digital in mind, while Primark isn't. Primark would need to completely build all these systems from scratch, all while trying to keep costs as low as possible. It's not only a tall order financially, but also means that Primark's entire ethos of getting people physically into stores would need to change as well. And that's exactly the opposite of what they've built their brand around. So, it's not that Primark refuses e-commerce out of stubbornness or necessarily because they're stuck in the past. It's because for them, e-commerce just isn't the right game to play. And trying to modernize or compete in this way would eviscerate their profit margin of 11.5%. Going digital means imploding the model they've spent decades perfecting and abandoning their core ethos: in-person shopping first, always. So, Primark isn't ignoring where the retail world is going. It's just chosen a path that looks like the past and made it work better for its future. It wins not by trying to compete, but by playing an entirely different game.

As I mentioned towards the beginning of this video, though, the system doesn't come without trade-offs. To sell clothes at these prices, something has to give. And that something is almost always labor. I won't be able to go super in-depth here. The topic of unethical labor honestly deserves its own video. But there are two things at play: the Modern Slavery Act and Primark's code of conduct. In 2015, the UK passed the Modern Slavery Act, a piece of legislation that explicitly aims to combat forced labor, human trafficking, and slavery, particularly in supply chains. Similarly, the code of conduct is a binding agreement between Primark and its 793 manufacturing partners. It mandates that employment is freely chosen, working conditions are safe and hygienic, and workers receive fair wages. If you take Primark at its word and trust these guardrails, it seems like it's been doing well. But even still, there have been issues. In 2021, there was an incident in Myanmar where supervisors reportedly locked workers inside the factory to prevent them from joining anti-work protests. In India, Cambodia, and Bangladesh that same year, workers reported not being paid their full wages. And in 2014, a customer reportedly found a distressing SOS note in one of their garments, describing inhumane conditions. Primark conducted an investigation into the matter and denied the allegations.

Primark looks like a company that's defied the odds, thriving in an age of apps without selling a single product online. But what makes it remarkable isn't just what it avoids. It's the system it's built instead, one that runs on volume, simplicity, and in-store foot traffic. There's ingenuity in that, efficiency, discipline, but also a kind of cost, because when you peel back the layers from the store experience to the supply chain, you start to see how delicate this balance really is. How the promise of ultra-cheap fashion comes with invisible trade-offs. In the end, Primark doesn't just sell clothes, it sells a feeling that you got way more than what you paid for, even if the cost is harder to trace.

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