Business
Can Primark stay relevant, or is Shein taking over?
BBCPrimark has long been a staple of UK high streets, luring in shoppers with low-priced clothes, accessories and homeware.
But in its UK and Ireland stores, like-for-like sales – a key metric in the retail industry – were down 3.1% in the year to September, which it attributed to a “weak” consumer environment and fewer people buying winter clothes during last year’s mild autumn.
As online stores like Shein and Vinted continue to attract young shoppers, does Primark face a fight to remain relevant – or is it just fine?
“While the UK clothing market is seeing subdued growth, Primark has significantly underperformed the overall market,” says Tamara Sender-Ceron, an associate director at market-research agency Mintel, adding that it faces “increased competition”.
Some shoppers point out that online marketplaces like Shein and Temu have even lower prices, a huge range of products, and – crucially – home delivery, something Primark lacks.
At Primark’s biggest London store on Oxford Street, which BBC News visited this week, Serena Milius has just popped in with her 12-year-old daughter to look at pyjamas, socks and the new Stranger Things range.
Serena used to do most of her shopping at Primark – until Shein took over.
“Shein’s our main thing,” the 34-year-old finance manager from Tooting, south-west London, says.
She says her wardrobe is now 90% Shein, and goes to Primark for “little bits and bobs” like flipflops, candles, socks and cosmetics dupes.
Serena MiliusOthers tell the BBC they’d rather splash out on better-quality products. This includes Martha, a 23-year-old student in Leeds, who only shops at Primark for basics like T-shirts, socks, underwear and cotton buds. For other items, she turns to Weekday, Zara and independent shops.
“I like to buy more expensive items that I’m going to wear over the years,” she tells the BBC as she browses clothes in a Primark store with her mum. With Primark, “it’s not always a lasting item,” she says.
The store was busy when the BBC visited on a late Wednesday afternoon, with mainly female shoppers browsing alone or in pairs. Some said they’d gone out of their way to visit, others popping in after finding themselves in the area.
Some say they’re deterred by Primark’s huge, sprawling stores which can sometimes get very busy.
“I do not enjoy shopping in a Primark,” says Abbi Lily, a 24-year-old content creator from near Bournemouth. She describes the experience as “very overwhelming” and “overstimulating” and says it can be “impossible” to find things.
Abbi LilyShe used to buy most of her clothes from Primark, but feels it isn’t as cheap as it used to be. “They just don’t have the bargains as much anymore,” she says, echoing comments some other shoppers made to the BBC.
Though Abbi sometimes shops at Shein, she’s trying to become more “intentional” with her shopping and buy more second-hand items, including through Vinted and Depop.
A Primark spokesperson told BBC News that 85% of its products were £10 or under, and said it “continually benchmarks” its prices against competitors.
Shein uses AI to identify trends and launch “thousands of new styles daily”, says Ms Sender-Ceron at Mintel.
According to a survey by Mintel in May, 46% of UK women aged 16 to 34 had bought fashion items from Shein in the last 12 months.
It has held pop-up shops in London and this week opened its first permanent physical shop in a department store in Paris, with long queues of people waiting to get their hands on cut-price garments.
“You can buy anything from Shein,” said one shopper waiting in the French capital to visit on its opening day. “It’s such a cool thing for people my age who are struggling in this economy.”
Critics point to the environmental impact of fast fashion and working conditions in its factories. At the Paris launch, protestors gathered outside calling for a boycott of the brand.
Firas Abdullah/Anadolu via Getty ImagesShould Primark offer delivery?
With Shein specialising in delivering clothes to your door, Primark does offer click-and-collect services in its nearly 200 UK stores – but not deliveries.
Some high-street retailers have been struggling in the UK, but Primark has largely bucked the trend – it’s closing a store in Dartford, Kent, next year, which reports say will be its first store closure in a decade. It also opened dedicated Primark Home stores in Belfast and Manchester.
Primark relies on its customers shopping in bulk, Mr Stevenson says. “You might be going in for one thing, but you end up buying seven things that you hadn’t really thought about,” he says. This doesn’t happen as much with online shopping, he says.
Would Primark’s sales be boosted if it did offer delivery? Mr Stevenson is sceptical, saying “it doesn’t feel like they’re losing out by not doing that”, but that it could be an option in future.
“If you wanted to buy a couple of things from Primark for £5 each, are you going to pay 50% of that in delivery charge?” he asks. “Because buying £10 of stuff is going to cost me £5 to get it tomorrow.”
Primark’s spokesperson said that its online model was a “deliberate choice to streamline operations and pass the savings directly to customers”.
Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThough Primark’s like-for-like sales in the UK and Ireland are down, “I absolutely don’t think they’re doing badly,” says Mr Stevenson, the Peel Hunt analyst. Its UK and Ireland market share has grown, according to data from market-research company Kantar.
And its total sales globally in the year to September were up 1% compared to the previous year as it opened more stores in Europe and the US.
For some shoppers, Primark will always have a hold on them. “I absolutely love Primark,” says Khloe Lightholder, a 34-year-old childcare worker from Essex.
She says Primark is “actually quite good quality for the price” and she visits every few months for a couple of hours, usually spending £200 or more on shoes, bags, perfume and homeware. She sets herself a monthly budget, “but every time I go to Primark that budget is out of the window”.
How much of a threat Shein and other budget retailers pose is an ongoing challenge, but it doesn’t feel like Primark’s brown shopping bags will disappear from our high streets any time soon.
WH Smith is to claw back around £1.5 million in overpaid bonuses from former bosses following an accounting blunder at the retail firm’s US arm.
The travel retail specialist confirmed last week it is being investigated by the UK’s financial watchdog after it overstated profits for its North American business by as much as £50 million due to issues with its audit process.
Carl Cowling resigned as WH Smith’s chief executive last month after a report by Deloitte confirmed the accounting problems.
The company said on Wednesday in its annual report that annual bonus payments for Mr Cowling and former finance chief Robert Moorhead have been recalculated for 2023 and 2024.
It has also recalculated the payment of long-term share bonuses from a 2021 scheme for executives.
WH Smith said it overpaid Mr Cowling £516,000 in cash and 60,182 deferred shares worth £374,933 based on the latest closing price for the firm.
It overpaid Mr Moorhead by £372,000 in cash and £272,493 worth of shares.
It said it would now seek to “claw back” both of these payments from the former bosses.
WH Smith also confirmed that it did not pay annual or long-term bonuses to Mr Cowling for the past financial year.
As a result, his total pay deal tumbled to £724,000 for the year to August 2025, from £2.71 million for the same period a year earlier.
The retailer told investors last week that it had kickstarted a remediation plan, which aims to strengthen its governance and controls, ensure processes are aligned across the group, and enact cultural change involving training and monitoring.
Its board is currently searching for a permanent group chief executive.
WH Smith is now focused solely on its 1,300 shops in global travel locations, including at airports and train stations, after selling its high street chain of about 480 shops to Hobbycraft owner Modella Capital in June.
As part of the deal, the WH Smith name is disappearing from British high streets and being replaced by brand TGJones.
The slimmed-down business reported a pre-tax profit of £108 million for the year to the end of August, excluding what it deems one-off costs.
RBI Guidelines For Cheque Clearing Time: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said on Wednesday that it has delayed the rollout of Phase 2 of the faster cheque clearance system by banks. The new phase was earlier set to begin on January 3, 2026. The RBI also announced changes to cheque processing timings. Cheques can now be presented between 9 am and 3 pm, while banks will have time from 9 am to 7 pm to confirm or reject them.
“Implementation of phase 2 is being postponed until further notice, to allow more time to banks to streamline their processes,” according to the RBI statement. Phase 1 of the system, which was implemented earlier this year, will continue to operate as usual.
RBI Phase 2 Guidelines
Under the proposed Phase 2 guidelines, banks are required to clear or reject any cheque deposited over the counter within just three hours. This is expected to be a major relief for customers, making payments faster and more efficient once the process starts.
RBI Rolls Out Cheque Truncation System
The RBI introduced continuous clearance under the Cheque Truncation System (CTS) to speed up and simplify cheque clearing. Instead of the old batch system, cheques are now processed using digital images and electronic data. This means banks no longer need to physically transfer cheques, making the process faster and more efficient.
RBI Phase 1 Single Presentation Window
From October 4, 2025, Phase 1 brought in a single, continuous cheque presentation window during the day. Instead of waiting for fixed clearing batches, banks now scan cheques as they receive them and send the cheque images along with MICR data to the clearing house.
Once the drawee bank gets the cheque image, it checks the details and sends an approval or rejection electronically. If the bank does not respond by the end of the confirmation window, the cheque is automatically treated as approved and settled.
RBI Phase 2 Plan For Cheque Clearance
Phase 2, which was planned to start from January 3, 2026, was meant to further expedite the clearance of cheques to ensure greater convenience for bank customers. Banks would get just three hours to approve or reject a cheque after receiving its image.
If a bank failed to respond within this time, the cheque would be automatically approved and settled. This would have pushed banks to process cheques more quickly and helped customers get their money sooner. However, since phase 2 has been deferred, cheque clearing will continue under the present Phase 1 system, which does not have to follow the three-hour deadline. (With IANS Inputs)
Shoppers descended on UK high streets and retail parks to buy last-minute gifts on Christmas Eve, boosting retailers amid a challenging consumer backdrop.
More shoppers visited shops and retail destinations compared with a year ago, according to early data.
Figures from retail technology specialists MRI Software showed footfall up to 1pm on Christmas Eve was up 2.4% compared with the same day a year earlier.
This also represented a 20.5% jump against a week earlier, with many Britons leaving their shopping late.
It said this was particularly driven by a large number of shoppers visiting retail parks for last-minute purchases.
Retail park footfall rose 6.6% compared with a year earlier and was 36.3% higher week-on-week.
Meanwhile, footfall on high streets lifted by 1.1% year-on-year, and shopping centres reported a 1% increase.
Jenni Matthews, retail analyst at MRI Software, told the Press Association: “It has been a tough year for retailers after they first felt the impact of last year’s autumn budget, which led to increases in labour costs.
“Many are now expecting higher business rates next year too.
“The footfall shows that people are still out and about, shopping in their towns and cities across the country.”
Regional data showed that Wales saw a particular surge in last-minute shopping, with shopper traffic lifting by 7.9% year-on-year.
Many shoppers also ventured into London to snap up presents, with it reporting a 2.6% increase.
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