Arthur Ryan the founder of Primark and my experience working with him part I

Who is this old guy in the photo above you may ask? This guy is one of the most, if not the most influential man in the fashion. Fact . No he is not the vogue editor or Kate Moss( obviously).Arthur Ryan set up Primark also know as Penney's in Ireland from scratch. Contrary to popular belief Primark is Irish. Unable to call it Penneys in the UK Arthur came up with the name Primark to trade. The companies last revenue announcement boosted 7.7 billion in retail revenue worldwide. The company operate under the ABF umbrella that make products such as Earl grey tea. 325 stores are currently trading in Ireland , UK , Spain , Portugal , Netherlands, Germany , Austria , Belgium and have recently broke into the states and Italy. Primark are absolutely flying it. Their Oxford store is estimated to be taking more than 250 million pound annually. Thats just astronomical . And they have two of them on Oxford St alone.Their head office is in Mary Street, Dublin Ireland . The 80,000 sq ft superstore is their largest in Ireland.
This is where my story starts and how Mr Ryan as we had to call him shaped my retail career. Not much is known as Mr Ryan. He is an immensely private person and he only deals with his trusted lieutenants. These guys do not have the ivy league degree's or the stiff upper lip shall we say. But they would die for him and he rewards loyalty. I became one of them. I absolutely loved working for Primark. You could get bollocked out of it from a height and then 5 minutes later you are out having a pint with the guy who knocked you down a peg or two. We worked hard but they played harder. I was in my early 20's . Working long hours were fine. Everyone was in the same boat. The motley crew just clicked.

Just after I received my business degree I purchased a Fiat Punto . This cost money so I applied for the job that would give me the most money to pay it off. Penney's was the one. On hindsight I should of been going into banking with my finance degree but I worked in a retailer at the time so this was just a little step up for much more money. Long story short there was a girl in Dublin I was interested in so I applied for the assistant manager job in head office to be near her. I was 22 years of age and I didn't know what I had let myself in for. Nobody else went for the job. They knew too well. This was head office and AM's didn't last long. Arthur and his 3 executives ,
Seamus Halford (the number 2 )

Paddy Prior(the money man)

and Breege O Donoghue (the human resource director that could make grown man whimper).

The fab 4 who turned 1 store in Mary Street into one of the most successful retailers on the planet.

So here I am swaggering into the lions den going to make a name for myself. Store had around 500 staff. It was 2 of the hardest years of my life but for some reason I loved them. I loved being at the centre of the action. Mr Ryan's office is just above the main trading floor in Mary st. He used to arrive in around 9am. Keen to check what items were not selling. His job apart from running the company was keeping the stock ticking over. If there was an item that was reduced and there was still some left in the depot then it was holding up the new stock and Primark was all about turnover. I think he must of got burned by this when he was starting out because he was obsessive about this part of the business which meant we on the trading floor had to know our shit, He would demand a report for the style of a particular item and then he would check other stores and tell me to phone them and get their" finger out of their arses". Then he would say "Seriously I want you to tell them to ring me so I can tell them myself". This was not a nice phone call to my peers in other stores. "Ahhhhhhh fuck I don't have to ring him do I " were most of the replies. knowing they were going to get it off the chief.
This guy was hands on. He was the chairman and CEO of the company with a 5 billion revenue at the time telling me to tell a store manager to ring him about an item of clothing not selling in his or her shop. Ridiculous in todays world but thats what made the company work so well. No-one was safe from his wrath! He treated directors the same as he treated duty managers. He wanted answers and if you didn't have them then everyone got it.
There were 3 assistant managers , a store manager and a general manager in Mary st. The general manager was normally waiting for him to arrive to go through markdown list. The store manager was running the store and ordering so the assistant managers usually were the first to greet/ bear the brunt of Arthurs arrival into the store. I figured out that everyone else scattered when he approached so being the young cocky 22 year old , my strategy was to walk headlong into him and take whatever was coming. "Why is that empty?", "How is this selling?", "What is she doing over there? Fuck all".
I received it all. I was his go to person for when something was up on the floor. But while I was getting the hard treatment , I was building my reputation up with the chief. I got things done and he liked that. As soon as a store managers job came up Mr Ryan had Breege promote me to store manager. He knew me . I was one of his own at that stage. I didn't even have to apply for it. I was 24. This was good. They just told me to be in Mullingar on Monday morning. Mullingar was a country store . High profile because if the reduced wasn't selling there , it sold nowhere in Europe so therefore Arthur used to arrive every Saturday in the jag with his driver to go through the markdowns for the entire company. He always liked dealing with someone he knew in Mullingar so I was an ideal candidate. They put me up in hotel for the first 6 weeks . There was a gym there. So I lost some weight up there. I was delighted. Need to get fit again. Mr Ryan first came up around 6 weeks into my tenure and immediately asked me was I alright as I lost a few pound. I told him I was fine. Around ten minutes after he left the store.
Phone call off Breege.
"Oh No". Breege is calling.
This is bad.
"Hello Paul"
"Hello"
"Are you okay up there?, are you ok in the your new role? " "Is it affecting your eating?, are you putting the meals through on expenses?, Anything I can do?"
I told Breege about gym and she made her goodbyes pretty swift. It was still shouty but these guys looked after their own. I loved that about them and I will never have a bad word to say about them.
Arthur was very tough old style but I used to get some laugh off him too. One product that the christmas buyers bought was 10,000 units of a 100 pack xmas cards. By mid December all the xmas cards were sold out but the company still had 8000 of these things at 3 quid a pop. Mr Ryan asked buyers , managers, everybody why they were not selling. Nobody could tell him. He was walking out the door of my shop one day and he had one of these boxes of cards in his hand shaking his head . He turned and asked a weekend staff member , a little girl around 17 years of age just there for the drinking money :
"Any reason why these don't sell?".
The little girl replied "How many friends have you?"
Mr Ryan replied "What ??" in a really abrupt manner.
The girl calmly said again"You must have loads of friends but I only have 10 so I wouldn't need 100 of them so I buy a 10 pack".
Mr Ryan looked at me and smiled "How many friends have I got? "and started roaring laughing.
"I've asked my head buyers, managers and best traders in retailer why these don't sell and someone finally gave me the answer""Thank you very much young girl, you have a bright future, and I don't have that many friends either maybe 15"
He rang up the head buyer of homeware & xmas(He always referred to the buying office as Hollywood). "Il ring Hollywood" he used to say. "Ann Marie(director of buying ), quick question , how many friends do you have........?" Ann Marie was the next in the firing line! 😂

This was the very start of my career before I moved to Spain and Germany to expand the company and made sure the natives stuck to our principles . More to follow next week. Upvote if you would like to hear more.