A dress for €13? Penneys is bang up-to-the minute with its cost-conscious interpretations of the latest trends, writes Deirdre McQuillan.
To fashion conscious bargain hunters, Penneys's price tags are a source of incredulity. "€20 for a pure linen tailored jacket. €3 for a vest. €11 for a pair of striped drawstring trousers. And a wrap jersey dress for €13. Impossible. Incredible. We'll take two of each." So it's not unusual to see women of all ages heaving more than one Penney's bag out of the stores, these days.
"We are aiming at the multiple buy to give the image of a one-stop shop. Our 100 per cent linen suits are almost a trademark now, and I love how they can be put together in so many different ways," says Triona McGinley of Penneys. A senior buyer with the chain for the past two years, McGinley is the best advertisement for the clothes she buys, dressed in a fashionable brown tiered skirt and the new "GI" jacket, a military-style number decorated with sequinned gold embroidery at the back and on the epaulettes, (€22, and in the shops from end of this month).
So how does Penneys keep the prices so low? "It is the volume that we do, and our margins are the lowest," she says.
A former children's wear buyer with Dunnes Stores, 12 years ago McGinley returned to Penneys, where she had started her career. "We have a very young profile in Ireland, but I don't put an age on the product. I see older women such as my mum getting younger in what they wear. With the linen, we started with neutral colours such as beige and white, and introduced colour last year and it walked out the door. That gave us the courage to go full swing this season." This season the colours of the linens are fresh and zany - mint green, strawberry pink and a bright optical white, which sold so well quantities had to be increased. Colour, McGinley stresses, is vital. "If the style is right and the colour is wrong, they won't buy. We have to be careful that our range is right. You put something in for eight weeks and then introduce a new version and you must not saturate the story because customers need a clear vision."
Celebrities are what really influence what people buy. "The catwalk is important, but young girls are really into what Kate Moss and Sienna Miller wear," she says. One item bound to be a best seller when it is introduced in mid-April is a black military-style jacket with brass buttons for €l8 (below).
McGinley reckons she's just like many of her customers, who buy something new to wear at least once a week. "Clothes are disposable nowadays. I don't store as much as I used to, and one of the reasons is that the look changes so much. You could be wearing a safari look one day and a new world traveller look the next. Competition is heating up, too, because the variety out there is really good. Penneys used to be about big quantities and low prices, but now it's about change and spotting trends."