Today sees the arrival of the first A Wear outlet in Northern Ireland as the clothing chain opens its 17th shop in Newry's new Quays Shopping Centre. According to Paul Kelly, chief executive of the Brown Thomas group which owns A Wear, if this first cross-Border venture is successful, several more of the chain's shops will be established in the North over the next 18 months. It is just one element in the company's ongoing programme of expansion and development which have been features of Mr Kelly's style since he took on his present job in 1994.

"During the next year and a half," he says, "we plan to have between six and 10 new A Wear stores opening in the Republic and Northern Ireland." The only surprise is that the company has waited so long before venturing northwards. "It is a market we've constantly looked at over the years," he confirms. "Originally, our eyes were on Belfast but as we couldn't get the required site, we thought, why not try somewhere else and test the market.

"Newry is our first venture and we need to see how strong the A Wear name is in the North because down here everyone knows it. We want to get Newry bedded in first before we look elsewhere." That bedding process he expects to take no more than six months but neither Paul Kelly nor the Brown Thomas company will be idle in the interim period.

A Wear is currently undergoing a change of image which will affect all existing outlets. A year ago, the chain closed down its menswear division and decided to concentrate only on women's clothing. "Because of size, we were limited to the number of stores where we could have menswear," Mr Kelly explains. `We weren't selling branded clothes so we knew that if we were going to grow the men's side, we've have to look at stand-alone units and that didn't make sense."

All A Wear outlets now stock just womenswear and, he says, the entire chain "is doing extremely well and that's being honest with you. When I look at the business, A Wear's own-brand label is flying. As the Americans would say, `it's on fire'."

Mr Kelly breaks down sales in A Wear to 82 per cent for the company's own label and 18 per cent for designer labels such as Quin & Donnelly and Marc O'Neill, which the chain also carries. Many of the A Wear shops have begun to suffer from a want of attention and so a refurbishment schedule for all premises has now been put in place. The Dublin flagship on Grafton Street will be completely redecorated "next July/August, depending on planning permission".

The first A Wear branch to have received attention is in Limerick, where as part of the Brown Thomas department store overhaul, the outlet was moved from its old site on O'Connell Street around to adjacent William Street. At almost 6,000 sq ft on two floors, the size of the new A Wear interior is little different to its predecessor but the decoration has completely changed.

Flooring is in limestone tiles while the majority of fittings are made in a combination of beech and stainless steel. Strong images taken from the seasonal A Wear brochure decorate the walls to give consumers a clear idea of what stock is on offer. Entrance to the shop is now available from both William Street and within Limerick's overhauled Brown Thomas. The Newry shop has a similar fit-out and so too will the new A Wear in Galway. Here, the old premises occupy part of the Brown Thomas-owned Moon's department store. However, before the end of the year, A Wear will move to another site in Galway's Edward Square shopping centre. This means that early next year Moon's will begin the same process of redecoration already experienced by Brown Thomas in Dublin, Cork and Limerick; like these other stores, the Galway outlet will lose its own name in favour of group branding.

Paul Kelly believes that work on Brown Thomas Galway, as the store will soon be known, should be completed before the end of next year at a cost of about £2 million. The departure of A Wear from the site is to allow extra space for menswear and cosmetics but otherwise the store will be no bigger than it is at present. Once that job has finished, the work begun when Brown Thomas Dublin moved across Grafton Street in February, 1995, will be complete. Mr Kelly describes that change of location - which cost about £15 million - as ". . . a fantastic idea. We wanted to change the image of the Brown Thomas business, make it more contemporary and broaden its appeal in terms of attracting younger customers". He says these ambitions have since been achieved and may be seen in both the store's and the group's financial performance. "We now have sales of £650 per sq ft," Mr Kelly says, "which is high by anybody's standards."

Thanks to such sales, last year the business made a profit of about £4 million but Paul Kelly expects that figure to be close to £7 million this year. When Brown Thomas Dublin switched locations, its annual turnover stood around £50 million; in 1999, it should reach £74 million. He intends the turnover to increase further by around two-thirds of its present amount over the next three years. Sales tend to break down evenly between clothing and homeware goods, indicating that Brown Thomas is perceived as not just a fashion outlet but a shop in which a much wider range of items may be found.

Naturally, the strength of the Irish economy has helped Mr Kelly achieve his ambitious targets but he insists that looking for new customers rather than just depending on existing clientele has also made a difference. While customer loyalty may no longer be as strong as was once the case, he believes it still exists and should be noted. "People have more choice today. Nobody has to spend money in any one place; you can even shop in London - the planes over are full all the time. That's the challenge a business faces now; you have to get people wanting to come back and shop again and again. It's therefore important to know your customer." So, Paul Kelly is sanguine about competition from new arrivals in Irish retail, such as the many English chains which have opened outlets in this country over the past five years. "We could say yes, there are new people in the marketplace. But here, we do things in the Brown Thomas way, which is different and we want to develop that."

Specifically, he points out, the design and layout of each Brown Thomas is unique, unlike English chains which have a standard look no matter where their location. However, Brown Thomas also faces a challenge from other department stores, such as Arnotts and Clerys, which have spent large sums on acquiring a new image.

Even though the Grafton Street outlet was opened less than five years ago, next spring "there's another couple of million pounds going to be spent here" with several departments within the building benefiting from a fresh approach. While he acknowledges that a key difficulty for any store trying to keep all its potential customers happy is shortage of floor space, "we have become very good at making the most of the space we have here". One way of using a department store's interior successfully today is to break it down into a series of small shops within one large unit. This answers those prophets of doom who suggest that outlets such as Brown Thomas are essentially 19th century creations which should now be seen as retail dinosaurs.

Naturally, Paul Kelly would disagree, and while admitting that some department stores around the world have performed better than others, he says the entire sector "has taken a huge leap forward over the past 10 years. People will still shop in them if department stores can create excitement and theatre. But they need to have a vision and identity of their own."

HE insists with equal vehemence that city centre retailing offers the consumer advantages not available in suburban shopping centres. "There's no way anyone can get the same shopping experience in an out-of-town centre as in the city centre. It's a totally different atmosphere, there's not the same excitement." This, he believes, is the real challenge ahead for department stores: first anticipating and then meeting the needs of consumers in the century ahead. Among the most important requirements will be the provision of good quality service. "Identifying who your customer is will be very important in the future," Paul Kelly concurs. "The whole country is now much more consumerist. The public has higher demands and so business has to work a lot harder to raise its standards of service.

"In our business, the first and only requirement we have of anyone coming to be employed here is that you must be a people person. You don't have to have experience or other skills - we can give you that - but you must like working with people."