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Battle of the Brands S01E03 Primark vs John Lewis
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00:01we love a shop-it-all experience we spend 32 billion pounds a year in department stores
00:08these days the undefeated doyenne of department stores is John Lewis trusted timeless and just
00:18a little bit posh 13 million of us visited last year John Lewis is the grand dame of
00:25the high street it's the last surviving department store but retail royalty can't rain forever as its
00:33biggest challenges left the field a new contender is taking them on there are not many giants left
00:40on the high street and Primark and John Lewis are actually to the last remaining to kind of slug it
00:46out the old department stores have gone but Primark has replaced them more budget than
00:52Bougie Primarks are hit when times are hard the cost of living crisis has been a godsend for
00:58Primark millions of us visit their 198 stores every week spending billions every year until someone
01:08confiscates my bank card I will always take a trip to Primark Irish upstart Primark has outlived all
01:15comers to become the unlikeliest of rivals to the Duke of department stores I think if you'd said
01:2010 years ago that these two arrivals everyone would have thought you were mad but now I think that
01:25is the case there was a long period of time when the John Lewis customer wouldn't be seen dead in
01:30Primark that's changed from five star luxury to five quid leggings it's all up for grabs as these two go
01:40all
01:41out to attract cash strap racks John Lewis and Primark are fighting it out in key battlegrounds over
01:49homeware I feel you find these in John Lewis not Primark beauty all of these experiences are free
01:58aren't they yes and the latest fashion John Lewis is fighting to stay relevant Primark's rivalry with
02:04John Lewis has changed how we think of department stores I did not expect Primark to have a great
02:09here's the bastion of bespoke against the king of cut price it's Primark versus John Lewis
02:23since John Lewis opened in 1864 they've tried to offer everything we need for a well decorated home
02:30our rivals first battle is for a slice of the four billion pound a year homewares market
02:39and for years John Lewis had a clear run at our soft furnishings John Lewis dominates on homewares
02:45they're the only big full-line department store with that kind of choice and homewares
02:57John Lewis artfully tells evocative stories about a store you can come back to throughout your life
03:03John Lewis want their customers to shop throughout the generations once we've got you for nursery
03:08we get you for baby and then you buy your house and you can see in that advert the woman
03:12goes through
03:12all of those life stages John Lewis was the undisputed Egyptian cotton heavyweight of the home
03:19it made 4.8 billion pounds worth of sales last year until an Irish interloper that had opened its
03:27first store in Great Britain in 1974 moved on to their town some people think that Primark has come out
03:33of nowhere but Primark actually started in like the late 60s in Ireland and then slow and steady grew
03:39originally it was fundamentally a fashion empire and that move into homewares of course homewares offer
03:46another reason to visit 20 years ago Primark was turning over 989 million pounds across its stores
03:54compared to John Lewis's 5 billion their strategy to propel themselves into the big league hinged on
04:01a genius decision to capitalize on other failing department stores growth of Primark is down to
04:08opening more shops and largely those shops have been in the old department stores which have closed of
04:15course it's taken over their shops in key locations on our high street and become ultimately the new
04:20department store in 2005 Primark bought 120 Littlewood stores in the war on the homefront they now had
04:29prime territory they could use to launch an assault on John Lewis since printed Primark home range
04:35literally become John Lewis making my way home but I thought I'd quickly nip in but I wish I had
04:39a problem with a lot because honestly look at the range of this store in just the last few years
04:44Primark has entered the homewares market with quite a vengeance and that's where they are a direct
04:50competitor to John Lewis bedding candlesticks plates pretty things to make your home more beautiful that's
04:59what Primark are now offering and they really are kind of they parked their tanks on John Lewis's lawn
05:11and go home homeware played its part in helping Primark grow sales to 4.5 billion pounds in the UK
05:21and Ireland last year it's now within a whisker of John Lewis's 4.8 billion pounds a year in sales
05:32Kitty Darlington is potty for Primark she's the classic customer Primark won over with his homeware
05:38I'm obsessed I feel like it's giving Pinterest but on a budget but I absolutely love it just know that
05:48I'm gonna get the same quality but for literally a fraction of the price Primark treated homewares
05:55like fashion and making sure that they had the the right trend led items and they're also very good
06:00at spotting in the same way they've done with fashion what are the designers doing in homewares
06:04can we do a cheap version very quickly I just think that the packaging looks expensive it's
06:11high quality I feel you find these in John Lewis not Primark hey we're focusing more on how are we
06:18living at home and what are we doing so we're spending more time at home we're eating more at home
06:23we're having our friends run more at home lockdown made us all spend more time at home but the cost
06:30of living crisis that followed meant we had less money to make our homes nice Primark was perfectly
06:36poised to capitalize ahead of their premium rivals I love hosting for my friends I love setting the
06:44table out all little snacks I probably see this in John Lewis and it could be about 35 pounds but
06:51here
06:51it's only eight there's an iconic jug in the shape of a fish called the glug jug the original version
06:58costs 45 pounds but Primark is selling a version for 12 quid and you wouldn't know the difference
07:09if you're putting tanks on John Lewis's lawn you need a homeware army to do it
07:23what's been the biggest surprise recently probably the biggest one is the teddy bear bow collection
07:27it's a trend that Sinead and I were in and Seoul in Tokyo looking for inspiration and there's a trend
07:33that we spotted on apparel and we brought it back to homewares on duvets on bow cushions on teddy bear
07:39bath mats and it's just been even on social media posting oh we'd love to see that in blue or
07:45we'd love
07:45to see that in red or we'd love to see that in a pink option so we're even reading all
07:49that information
07:49understanding getting those cues from the customer as well well that's a great example where the team
07:56would show me that and I would say I don't get it I don't get it however you know what
08:02you're doing
08:03good influential skills I need to now step away and let you just I just don't get it Primark is
08:09stuffing
08:09John Lewis in the cushion wars the secret to their success is to spot changing lifestyles and predict
08:17trends months in advance so this is our second biggest bite for the first half of the season so
08:23lovingly named Nantucket we've taken Nantucket it's incredibly luxury this year Primark is betting
08:31big on something John Lewis would be proud of cottagecore it's very much New England preppy style in
08:39fact with the gold ornate bows as you can see up there but again it's back into that New England
08:43it's
08:43almost like borrowing items from your grandmother's home or what you might have seen in your grandmother's
08:50home and when the Cotswolds or New England it's quite nostalgic yeah leaning into that aesthetic
08:55which has actually become very very popular and what kind of customer do you have in mind for
08:59this range with the younger kind of mid-twentieth generations interesting they're drinking less
09:06booze they're having more tea parties our market Intel will tell us Gen Z are in a bit of their
09:12hosting
09:13era socializing at home socializing with friends muscling in on the trendiest home where helped
09:19Primark spread its department store wins with budget brands barging in John Lewis found itself in a
09:28turf war over tea towels the issue with John Lewis is there a bit stuck in the middle and stuck
09:34in a
09:34muddle because they're trying to get consumers that are not necessarily high-end luxury consumers and
09:41they're not low-cost discount retailer consumers with their homeware under pressure on price
09:47John Lewis needed a response to win over cash strap Brits if you're a retailer you're trying to appeal to
09:54all people at all times you are going to come unstuck and I think that's part of John Lewis's problem
10:00because
10:01if you are appealing to the upper end of the market with a lot of disposable income how do you
10:06also appeal to
10:07people who desperately they don't want a bargain they need a bargain in response the homeware OG rolled
10:16out a brand new budget range to charm the bargain hunting massive who had started going to Primark
10:21instead John Lewis were really trying to kind of cover all basis can we compete right at the bottom
10:29end with homewares so they came out with this any day range it was cheap it was cheerful it was
10:34good basics
10:35done well any day launched in 2021 it was functional but not trend-led like Primark it soon started to
10:44attract back some of those people tempted by Primark's prices 125 million pounds of sales in just nine
10:52months and 800 products flying off the shelves every hour any day has been incredibly successful for John
11:00Lewis the original aim was to decrease the price of the ranges by up to 20% and it's been
11:06the most
11:07important pivot into value-led products in the history of the company one of the questions the
11:14teams that John Lewis will be asking themselves is had we not introduced the any day version of the
11:19product would we still sold the higher value item any day did attract half a million newcomers who had
11:27never shopped at John Lewis before but it didn't solve all their problems
11:36with John Lewis fighting back in the affordable homeware market Primark doubled down they've just
11:42introduced a standalone homeware store in Belfast and in Manchester and with more waiting in the wings
11:50the fight for our front rooms is far from finished there's actually far more of an overlap between
11:56the customers of John Lewis and Primark as Primark extends its product range into homewares the two
12:02brands come closer together coming up with Primark stealing John Lewis's exclusive seat at the homeware
12:09table John Lewis went off the shelves and in our faces I look like you've injected three hours sleep
12:16into my face and Primark takes the idea of borrowing to a whole new level it's such a good dupe
12:22of
12:22Charlotte Tilbury's Beauty blush wand normally 30 pound
12:33Primark's assault on our home furnishings rattled John Lewis from 10 stores in 1978 Primark now has 198 in
12:42the UK to John Lewis's 36 to try to make up ground lost to its fast-growing rival John Lewis
12:50upped the
12:50glamour forcing Primark to fight on its home turf beauty one of the big successes of recent years has
12:59been beauty we love a glow-up last year we spent over 30 billion pounds on lipsticks blushes and facials
13:06that's six times more than we did on health and fitness beauty is a category that's incredibly
13:12important for all department stores for John Lewis and now for Primark it drives traffic John Lewis is
13:20the makeup maestro 62% of install sales are products like perfume and makeup beauty accounts for 15% of
13:29their overall turnover when times are tough a lipstick can always put a smile on your face beauty is a
13:37critical area for growth it seems to be recession proof they always said if you can't afford the
13:41dress you buy the lipstick but beauty always grew even in tough tough times and I was a senior buyer
13:47of beauty at John Lewis for five years Primark's main money spinner is own brand so to lipstick it to
13:53their rivals John Lewis concentrated on getting the biggest names in cosmetics into their stores one
13:59thing John Lewis are really leaning into is can we get exclusivity on a certain brand if something is
14:06going viral online can we secure that deal some South Korean beauty brand or whatever the new Brazilian
14:12one might be and that again gives you a reason to come into store perhaps the hottest product of 2023
14:18wasn't a traditional skincare brand it was a skin firming cream for your bum I think one of their
14:25best-selling individual items in 2024 certainly with soldiers generos bum bum cream which became this
14:33kind of viral sensation it's exotic and tropical vibe was played out in sunny ads I had kind of funky
14:42packaging silly name it flew off the shelves once you try this nothing else will ever even reach
14:49that level Beauty is hard to crack but done right can charge a huge premium Sol de Janeiro was the
14:55must-have brand and John Lewis made sure you could get it there before almost anywhere else got to get
15:02the new brand you know people want newness they want newness the whole time John Lewis added 170 new
15:07brands across its stores in 2023 and beauty led the charge in boosting profits those brands that
15:14give you the cool factor but for John Lewis to get on that journey quickly because it was the brand
15:19so
15:19investing in those beauty halls and making sure they are relevant is very very important while sales in
15:25homeware were losing ground to Primark in 2024 getting big-name brands on board meant sales in Beauty
15:31were soaring up 40 percent in the previous five years own brand specialist Primark could only blush
15:40at the thought of matching those big brand beauty sales one of Primark's aims is to be that one-stop
15:46shop that people come for home fashion beauty and beauty was one of the categories that they didn't
15:51really play into as a business Primark was falling back they couldn't compete on branded cosmetics so they
15:58went in totally the opposite direction to get a bit of the big brand boost without the big brand
16:04budgets they would have seen the opportunity to create own brand beauty and own brand skincare which
16:10will have had a higher margin they would have been able to introduce products that were very of the
16:16moment that they wanted to control and really just capitalize on that market share their sneaky
16:22strategies to compete in the lucrative beauty world was to offer big brand allure without involving the
16:29brands themselves so I love soldier De Niro and these are giving off the same kind of look I'm not
16:39sure if
16:39they give the same scent let's try it out yes that I definitely will pick one of these up and
16:47they are
16:47only 350. the copyright on fragrances is a legal gray area you can't copy the recipe but Primark felt
16:56they could be inspired by them welcome to dupe by Primark available at a fraction of the cost of the
17:03one in fancy packaging also I've heard that Foxy Nude at Primark is a really good dupe for subculture at
17:10Mac and this is only 75p whereas in Mac you're probably looking at about 20 pounds for one of
17:17these soldier De Niro jet set dupe souls we go for 30 pounds Primark's just six pounds by making their
17:26own version of designer cosmetics far cheaper Primark felt they could steal some of John Lewis's
17:32bombastic beauty business we know we're going to have an immediate hit with this because there is
17:38already a demand for this product so it's quite an easy win because they can almost ride the success
17:44of the actual product that they're then making a dupe of now I think this may be a dupe for
17:50the
17:50Charlotte Tilbury airbrush foundation I absolutely love that foundation so if this is anything like
17:56that one we're in for a good time if you are 14 or 15 you're not going to be buying
18:01Charlotte Tilbury or
18:01Mac or Chanel at those prices but you are going to be buying a dupe it's not the same quality
18:07but that isn't what it's all about Joe Malone's 24 pounds for 9 mil Primark's three pounds for 20 mil
18:14most of the money is in the brand and the marketing so if you can come up with something that
18:19smells
18:19very similar and functionally does almost as good a job of course you know that's what you need to do
18:26as a retailer if you're someone like Primark duping their rivals key brands has helped Primark's
18:31profits smell a bit better sales across all Primark stores globally rose from 7.8 billion pounds in
18:412019 to 9.5 billion last year Primark started introducing their own brand beauty and it has
18:48grown over the years and it's now a multi multi million pound apartment look how similar they look
18:53to the milk makeup jelly blushes they even have this cooling effect so when you touch them they're
18:57really cold just to give you an example they have a five pound moisturizer that they sell six every 60
19:02seconds across the world but it can't compete with John Lewis's 700 million pounds or so in beauty sales
19:10Primark don't separate their beauty sales but admit it's a drop in the ocean compared to their fashion
19:16and homeware sales John Lewis wanted even more people to come through the doors I guess the feeling
19:24of walking around the beauty floor that actually you can really get involved you can really try stuff
19:29is that what you're going for is that a kind of change in direction absolutely be one the customers
19:34to come into a hall and spend the day make make a whole experience out of it this is in
19:40launch of the
19:40new beauty area that's just been completed in John Lewis it's absolutely beautiful to turn
19:45shopping into even more of an event they're upgrading six stores at a cost of 800 million pounds adding
19:5270 treatment rooms and more than 400 beauty services so what new experiences are you offering in store
20:00so we've got the Dermalogica treatment room and we've got non-invasive treatments like chemical
20:06peels we've got the retinol treatment we've got cryo micro needling John Lewis is famous for its
20:13wedding list now it seems they want the whole bridal party to come for a pampering too if they buy
20:19a few
20:19things while they're at it
20:20and so all of these experiences obviously they come at a cost but a lot of them are free aren't
20:25they
20:25every time you go and buy get a treatment and you end up buying that product Charlotte Tilbury is a
20:30great example so they're really popular with bridal consultations or party makeovers and every time
20:37the customer comes in they'll buy the lipstick that they want to top up throughout the night
20:41customers do spend more when they have that one-to-one experience I'm sold
20:48beauty is the ultimate make yourself feel good for not a huge amount of money
20:55Primark too wanted to glow up their stores to compete with the beauty big shots
21:00Primark want people to spend time in their stores which is why they've put the hairdressers in
21:05they've put the nail bars in because the more time you spend in the store the more money you will
21:09spend they've installed 16 new nail bars across their stores to appeal to fans like Kitty
21:17it's great having a beauty bar in Primark you have your nails or brows or anything to get done
21:22why not while she's shopping turns it into a day out Primark may want you to spend more time in
21:28their
21:28stores but so far they've been unable to lay a polished fingernail on John Lewis in the Beauty
21:34Game offering it more as an add-on to their triumphant fashion and homeware market coming up the fight
21:42to sell everything including the kitchen sink gets super high-tech may I collect of course you can let
21:48me get you checked out John Lewis calls in the robots bye bye and Primark swaps online sales for online
22:06influence Primark changed the way we decorate our homes sinking its rival with low prices John
22:12Lewis fought back offering experiences to tempt you to splash the cash but Primark now has five and a
22:19half times as many physical shops as John Lewis you might be forgiven for thinking Primark have left John
22:25Lewis in the dust but there's a whole other territory that John Lewis is fighting over and you can't see
22:31it on the high street it's online to make up for its lack of stores John Lewis has made winning
22:37the online
22:38war a vital target John Lewis is actually one of the first to invest in the online business they realized
22:45early that the customer had started to shop away from the physical high street the UK online shopping
22:54market is the biggest in Europe 30% of our purchases are now made through our devices and in the
23:00battle
23:00for digital dominance John Lewis was iterations ahead of its tech phobic rival without a shadow of a doubt
23:07John Lewis's online presence allowed them to grow where others couldn't and they built a knowledge and
23:13an expertise about the digital world that their competitors failed to build during the dot-com boom in
23:20the late 90s John Lewis's bubble had burst profits fell in the last two years of the decade
23:27so at the start of the 21st century they introduced a game changer selling online
23:33John Lewis did it very very early within two months they were getting a thousand orders a day and profits
23:39grew
23:39every year for the next seven years they have 50% of their sales online think John Lewis has really
23:45flourished in the power of its
23:46online and its shops Primark was left in the digital dust it has never offered a fully online way to
23:53buy their products
23:54Primark not being online is weird I mean it just is weird because how can you survive in this day
24:02and age and have
24:02basically no online presence even during the period we could only shop at home
24:09Primark refused to get digital even when they risked losing a billion pounds during lockdown
24:15for Primark online seemed more trouble than it was worth the unique thing about Primark is it's only got shops
24:24which means it avoids the costs of a costly online operation in terms of deliveries expensive returns and warehousing
24:31Primark's business model is to keep prices low and with going online the logistics that are involved
24:38in that can and would drive Primark's main prices up by going through that process it means it's not
24:45on the shop floor if it's not on the shop floor it can't be sold and if it can't be
24:49sold then Primark's
24:50not making money from that product in 2020 up to 70% of John Lewis sales were made on the
24:56internet
24:56lots of new TVs to binge watch our favorite shows it helped their profits only drop 2%
25:03despite the pandemic online purchases are still 50% higher than they were in 2019
25:10Primark couldn't carry on being a digital denier
25:14Primark recently started selling some of its ranges online for click and collect only and I think that
25:23shows that it has hurt their business by not selling online up until now
25:32ah backstage backstage at Primark
25:36techno come lately's Primark only introduced click and collect across all its stores in Great Britain
25:42in 2025 a full 17 years after John Lewis so do you pick these orders from your shop floor no
25:50orders are not picked from the shop floor the customer places an order online and then that's picked individually at
25:56a distribution center and the store receives it and then the customer is notified and they can come and make
26:02a collection
26:04as bizarre as it might seem in this digital age Primark still doesn't offer delivery
26:09it seems they want to make you do the legwork you still have to go to the shop to collect
26:15it costs so much more to ship the products directly to you rather than have you come to the store
26:22and take them away
26:24they have such high volumes of products at such low prices that to make it cost effective to get an
26:32order to you they might need to charge you a minimum delivery threshold
26:37if you are selling something online that's below say £10 you're going to cost more to send the item online
26:44than actually the profit you're going to make in it the profit is very very small
26:49no offence but a lot of people have been doing click and collect in retail for a long time
26:57yeah why is it taking you this long we are a business that's totally focused on our stores pick up
27:05your purchase and any additional items that you might choose to make a purchase for whilst you're browsing
27:10I mean that's interesting what you said then so people will come in collect click and collect and purchase any
27:16additional items will people buy more
27:19we know that about half of the people that that shop with us on click and collect purchase additional product
27:24when they come in half
27:26yeah the 18-month trial of click and collect was successful enough that Primark rolled it out to the whole
27:32of Great Britain in 2025
27:34but it all feels a bit too little too late by 2015 John Lewis was already processing 6 million click
27:42and collect orders a year and around the same direct to our homes
27:45but the cost of it was crippling them the cost of selling online is very expensive the delivery cost is
27:52very high
27:52people want free delivery they've grown up with it retailers have realized too late in the day it costs us
27:58a fortune to get that dress or saucepan from our warehouse to your home
28:04the problem was made even worse by the fact you can't try stuff on
28:09the critical thing that is pretty tough for fashion retailers is the returns on fashion are very very high up
28:16to 50% online
28:18you're going to be one of those people who buy three copies of the same dress try it on and
28:22send two back that is ruinous
28:26to stop online syncing them outright John Lewis had to think of ways of bringing down the cost of delivery
28:33in 2016 they invested half a billion pounds in technology to help them maintain their lead in the online game
28:41you can order by 8pm this evening and receive in any of our waitrose supermarkets or our John Lewis department
28:49stores the following day by 3 o'clock so and that's an industry leading proposition
28:55humans are costly and frankly slow so the secret to making orders efficient is to speed things up and the
29:02answer is robots
29:04what do i do just press go on the screen okay
29:08um
29:11buh-bye
29:12there you go and the next one k
29:14wow wow just set them off okay
29:16and the next one k
29:19wow gosh they got quite a lick don't they
29:22there we go keep going k
29:23oh keep going
29:24oh my goodness right
29:27everyone everyone says bye bye
29:29there we go
29:29off they go off they go
29:30let's go
29:32let's follow her
29:34hey you actually have to walk at quite a pace don't you
29:37yeah
29:38John Lewis have bet big on speed if you can deliver fast not only will it save you money but
29:44people will be more likely to pay your premium prices
29:47this ability to deliver very quickly is something that's important and everyone has had to up their game and John
29:53Lewis have certainly had to do that
29:55but it definitely drives the costs up because people want things quickly they're not prepared to wait so you have
30:00to balance the cost of what that is for your business
30:04when the warehouse is operational humans don't walk with the robots they wait in designated aisles to pass the items
30:11the robot has asked for to be whizzed to the packing area
30:14so what do we do now
30:16you're looking for a cord gingham jacket size 8
30:20and find the right pigeon hole
30:24by staying in the packing area and letting the robot do the run to dispatch I can fulfill many more
30:30orders far more quickly
30:32with lots of different items in the lockers there won't be a logjam if something sells like hotcakes
30:37you know what I was expecting to see was maybe that jacket in lots of different sizes all here one
30:44one skew
30:45yeah
30:46but there's actually a range of different things
30:47yes this storage device is what's called a chaotic storage device its actual name
30:52every location is a random selection of garments if you have all the same products in one area and it's
30:58a really fast selling line
30:59hey all the robots be queuing up and all the people will be stuck with each other
31:03so this gives you an opportunity to disperse your kind of activity across a wider space
31:08got it
31:09okay
31:09well we've got our first
31:10yeah we've got our first
31:13it's cost John Lewis 150 million pounds to service its online growth over the last five years
31:19but with three billion pounds of John Lewis's sales a year
31:24it's helping dominate Primark when it comes to digital warfare
31:29in the battle of techno shopping the robots pay for themselves
31:32we've seen a sixty percent increase in productivity
31:36each of these robots saves us about seventeen hundred pounds per month
31:40seventeen hundred pounds per month yeah
31:43with a hundred and sixty robots here that's more than three million a year in savings
31:52in a decade's time will Primark still not offer online
31:56I mean you're risking just shutting out half the market
32:01are you really going to suggest to people that you have to come in store to pick up that bedding
32:07or you know the lamp
32:09or all those kids clothes
32:11I mean that's a big ask
32:15Primark might be dial up compared to John Lewis's high speed online presence
32:19but there's another battleground where Primark's use of online has saved it a fortune
32:25the quality of these are so good and the prices are so reasonable too
32:29I wore this one to church
32:30boy I was giving my Sunday best
32:33every year John Lewis spends millions on TV ads
32:36and Primark has found a modern lo-fi alternative
32:39Primark doesn't tend to post huge amounts of content
32:42it lets its consumers and its shoppers do the talking
32:45and it does this masterfully by kind of seeding some of these products
32:48pre-launch to creators and influencers
32:51so a lot of the content that's going to set fire on TikTok for Primark
32:54is actually from the creators rather than actually the brand itself
32:59they pay content creators to do that most modern of social set pieces
33:03the haul
33:04using simple self-shot clips that seem like they were filmed by a friend
33:08one of the great things that has come out of social media for Primark
33:12is when influencers get their product
33:15and then tell every single person that they know about these products
33:18you can shop the Stacey Solomon Kidswear Collection in store now
33:22Primark partners with around 300 influencers every single month across its markets
33:28John Lewis also works with influencers but on a smaller scale
33:31I am so excited because Primark opening their first ever home store
33:38it's far cheaper than traditional advertising
33:40and authentic seeming relatable advice is far easier to get direct into the streams of a generation
33:46who watch around two hours of TikTok a day
33:49I am doing a Primark haul
33:51once an influencer like Molly May does a haul on Primark
33:55her followers are going to go and buy that product
33:57here we have all of the stuff
33:59the woman suggested that I got the non-paper bags because I had that much stuff in each bag
34:04it's great marketing for them because they're using their network to tell everybody to go and buy these products
34:10it's not a wonder that products sell out so quickly
34:14celebs speaking to camera just seems to grab attention
34:17and I feel like Primark zippers are that cheap it would have been rude for me not to pick up
34:20a pair
34:21oh guys these were £3
34:23these were £3
34:24like what?
34:26£3 for these
34:27is that a joke?
34:29when these younger consumers come into the stores
34:32that actually they might come for the one item they've seen in their TikTok feed
34:36but will end up picking up a whole host of other things in the store itself
34:40it makes John Lewis's annual Christmas ad, however glossily produced, feel a little old fashioned
34:46not to mention expensive
34:49what took you so long?
34:52you
34:54Primark is very good at mastering the TikTok feed
34:57you know it turns up to the TikTok party
35:00but John Lewis on the other hand kind of arrives when the dance floor is already clearing
35:03you know John Lewis turns up wearing a tie
35:06it kind of feels slightly dated
35:10coming up
35:11in the next stage of the battle to sell it all
35:14Primark add an unexpected new department to its offering
35:17yeah I did not expect Primark to have a Greg
35:20and John Lewis bets on making you feel a million dollars to get you to buy more eye-wateringly expensive
35:26clothes
35:26it's not about me, it's about you
35:37Extending into homeware meant new kid on the chopping block Primark became the high street's unlikely rival to John Lewis
35:44Primark has actually become the new department store
35:48the aisles are wider, the ranges are broader, the windows are more exciting, the services are growing
35:57both John Lewis and Primark are battling over our clothing coin
36:01but fashion is falling out of fashion
36:04we spent 3.5% less on it in 2024 than the year before as the cost of living prices
36:11squeezed
36:12retail is moving faster than ever, if you are not agile and you don't evolve you will die
36:19the pressure is stronger than ever for Primark to keep their rivals at bay in the battle for fashion
36:26there was a long period of time when the John Lewis customer wouldn't be seen dead in Primark
36:31that's changed, the gap between the style, the perception, the quality, the perceived quality is narrowing
36:39which means that now more John Lewis customers are creeping in the back door of Primark and having a look
36:44John Lewis pitched its tent on high quality and good service
36:48to make a dent in their £1.2 billion fashion sales
36:53Primark's strategy is to aim at a different market
36:56the John Lewis customer will be a mid to premium customer who wants to buy quality and value
37:01and wants something for longevity
37:03they will buy fast fashion items but not in the same way that the Primark customer would
37:08they're looking for fast fashion and they're looking for throw away fashion
37:13getting a bargain or you know being savvy with not spending too much but looking great
37:18is now something that people celebrate
37:23Primark want to pile it high and sell it cheap
37:26the difference between us and the rest of the high street is that everything we buy is at scale
37:31and we utilise that economies of scale
37:35in addition to that our margins are low
37:38we don't work on the same margins as the rest of the high street
37:41so your profit margins are low?
37:43very low, so it's all about the volume
37:45but for every item the profits are not huge
37:48but obviously you multiply that up by a number of items
37:50it's a profitable business
37:55Primark's operating profits are around 12%
37:58over 10 times John Lewis's 0.9%
38:04while John Lewis wants customers to shop for life
38:07Primark focuses on younger shoppers
38:09who want the latest fashions at the keenest possible cost
38:17have you tried on a lot of these jeans?
38:20honestly I have tried on every single pair of jeans
38:22and it's probably one thing that I can say very comfortably
38:25to tailor a bigger cut of the fashion market
38:28Primark have to pore over every detail to make sure the price is right
38:33how do you make this for 16 quid?
38:36well actually originally I think when Trudy came into the sign off
38:39it was £18 and we felt £18 is probably too pricey for our customer
38:43so Trudy you went away
38:46yeah we looked at the whole garment with the design team
38:49and looked at how could we kind of re-engineer that
38:51to put that out at 16 to match the leg
38:54re-looked at the pockets
38:55they had flaps on them, two pockets
38:57there was a lot more detail on the sleeve
38:58we were able to go back to our supply base, renegotiate the price
39:01so for you, this started out at £18 and you thought
39:04no, that's too high, we want to knock two quid off that
39:07bring it down to £16
39:08and you made the tweaks accordingly
39:10totally
39:11by focusing on price so closely, Primark can ship more shirts than anyone else
39:16they're the UK's largest clothing retailer by volume
39:20John Lewis couldn't compete
39:21John Lewis can't afford to sell cheapest chips
39:25when you're making £5,000 of the same item
39:28you can get incredible cost efficiencies
39:31it hasn't got the volumes to be able to sell so cheaply
39:38John Lewis's counter-attack was to build on what it knows best
39:41and go up market
39:43we've been here for 160 years
39:45you know, this spot where I'm standing used to be our draper store
39:49we've always had fashion in our blood
39:51it is a competitive market, I don't think that's a bad thing
39:54and it's not something that we are scared of
39:58all about making sure that we stay ahead
40:00in those ways
40:02the critical thing for John Lewis is to be differentiated
40:05not to do what everybody else is doing
40:07you stick with what you're great at
40:11Rachel Cassidy is a John Lewis superfan
40:13and exactly the customer they want as they can get her to spend more
40:18every time I shop in John Lewis I feel like I'm at home
40:21it represents a certain amount of nostalgia for me
40:24it's a place that I used to come to when I was a child
40:26so to come here as an adult and still shop without my mum
40:29it's like a full circle moment
40:31I get a nice warm and fuzzy feeling when I come to John Lewis
40:34she's prepared to shell out for the personal touch
40:37we're really close to the customer at John Lewis
40:39so we spend a lot of time understanding them, getting to know them
40:44personal shopping was introduced by John Lewis in 2018
40:48online shops were taking people off the high streets
40:51and people spent less on clothes
40:53as they spent more on gyms and exercise
40:56Primark's low cost alternatives
40:57meant they were selling 7% of all the clothes in the UK
41:01John Lewis had to fight back
41:04and personal shoppers were their weapon
41:07another thing that makes us really different
41:10is that personal relationship we develop with the customer
41:13so our personal styling service is available in every single store
41:17they know that they can trust us to put their wardrobe together
41:19it's all completely free as well
41:21you'll see that a lot of the pieces I've selected from awake mode
41:25and I believe that you like awake mode
41:28so we're here to cater to you
41:30it's not about me, it's about you
41:32when it comes to fashion, John Lewis have a whole kind of range of difference
41:36they've got other people's brands, some of which are quite upmarket
41:39they then have their own brand, some of which are kind of basic-ish
41:42and then they've got this newish brand called the awake mode
41:45which is very much kind of exclusive
41:47you can only get it in John Lewis
41:49only a few number of pieces and when it's sold, it's sold
41:53it's kind of the whole, you don't want to sell a dress
41:55that every single woman's going to be wearing to every single wedding out there
42:01Primark often do sell the dress everyone's wearing to the wedding
42:04personal shoppers like Beth can often lead to several hundred pounds in sales
42:09in the six months after they were introduced
42:12they generated 20% of all John Lewis's women's wear sales
42:17John Lewis are offering the consumer a memorable experience
42:21and to do that they need to think about the retail theatre
42:24because the consumer is going to walk away thinking about every single aspect of that store
42:29and how it made them feel
42:31a personal shopper and Primark just don't fit as well
42:35but to get a little bit of that premium
42:37Primark called in a little glamour of its own
42:40oh my gosh, I've seen this everywhere on social media
42:44I've seen so many girls wearing it on TikTok for festivals
42:47and it's only 15 pounds
42:50Primark started attaching huge names to their clothes
42:53like Rita Ora and Disney
42:55a few years ago the fashion journalists used to laugh and just say
42:59Primark's become Primarnia because it's copying the looks on the fashion runways
43:03but by introducing the big names like Rita Ora and Disney into the brand
43:10Primark has actually suddenly got the gloss and the fame of the brands it was once copying
43:17Disney, you've got Lilo and Stitch, you've got Marvel and Star Wars
43:22I want to go for Disney
43:23an adult t-shirt
43:26Primark signed its first licensing agreement with Disney in 2011
43:30but went big in 2019, the year after John Lewis introduced personal shoppers
43:36they even opened a Disney cafe in Birmingham
43:40instead of the designer sub-shops seen in John Lewis
43:43Primark has Disney and Harry Potter in store shops
43:46as well as tie-ins with Friends and Minecraft
43:50what Disney and Marvel allow Primark to do is to tap into the popularity of these super brands
43:58and sell a wide range of products at affordable prices
44:01the challenge for the trademark owner for someone like Disney
44:06is how much do you have to be selling to make it all worthwhile
44:10but the truth is they're obviously selling a lot
44:12in 2023 collabs like this helped UK sales rise
44:17to cut John Lewis's cloth further
44:21they've created a whole new kind of department store
44:24if you're a department store
44:26and you're competing with online
44:29you've just got to every year
44:31you've got to give people another reason to keep on coming into the shop
44:34they've got to offer something new, something different
44:37so what they need is footfall into their shops
44:40Primark are investing in their stores in the same way as John Lewis are investing in theirs
44:44so a way of getting that buzz into their shop
44:47and what's more on brand than teaming up with another affordable retail chain on a winning streak
44:53I did not expect Primark to have a Greggs at all
44:57I think this is great whilst you're shopping
44:59come and get a little sausage roll or a pasty
45:02it's great
45:04Greggs has an in-store restaurant in Primark, Birmingham
45:07with 130 seats
45:09other stores even have sausage roll shaped swings
45:13the joy of Primark is you don't necessarily have to go in there and buy lots of product
45:19you can spend a couple of hours there having fun
45:21you know, going to the Greggs Cafe
45:23because the Greggs Cafe in a Primark is more fun than a Greggs on the high street
45:30there aren't many department stores left and the two biggest are constantly trying to get one over their rivals
45:37shoppers are no longer brand loyal
45:38they no longer, that's my department store, that's where we do our shopping
45:42whether you like budgets or bougie
45:45John Lewis is fighting to stay relevant
45:47it definitely lost its way for a couple of years
45:50and I think John Lewis have got their mojo back
45:52the way we shop has changed
45:54and these two last high street juggernauts will continue to slug it out
45:59and they are investing a lot in their shops
46:02so as the years go on
46:04I think we will see them more and more as rivals
46:07and it's going to be interesting to see who ends up on top
46:10the end of the world
46:11the end of the world
46:11the end of the world
46:12the end of the world
46:16ordinary folk take to the stage
46:19sing the songs that mean the most to them
46:21and share the heartfelt human stories behind each note
46:25your song starts Sunday at 9
46:27a retired police officer revisits the scene of the crime
46:31the worst first date ever
46:33make it right Fred
46:34a brand new series starts in an hour
46:36before that next new goggle box
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