Located on the site of the old Pavilions Shopping Centre, the new Primark store, which opened in Birmingham yesterday, covers 161,000 square feet over five floors and is the biggest in the world.
On entering the store you are greeted with the welcome "Hello Brum.....Find Your Amazing".
And amazing it most certainly is. A huge monument to fast fashion, bringing rock bottom affordable prices to the masses. There is quite simply nowhere else like it. Unless you visit Primark Manchester. Or Primark Madrid for that matter.
An anticipated 5,000 people were expected to visit the store on opening day and it felt as if all 5,000 were there when I visited during the afternoon. Clutching huge baskets, brimming with garments, it was clear that the good people of Birmingham couldn't wait for this day to come.
They very much took footfall for granted, they always thought if they opened their doors, people would come. Primark understands what customers want and built their business around it
Kate Hardcastle
Primark famously eschews the online world and this writer for one applauds their staunch belief in the store based shopping experience. This new Birmingham store is evidence not only that stores are far from dead, department stores - if done well - have a great future.
For this is in effect what this is - a department store. And while others flounder and lose their way, Primark has shown us what good looks like.
From the Disney themed restaurant, to the barbers, to the beauty salon to the custom lab, the store manages to pull off that somewhat elusive trick. That of providing something new and unexpected around just about every corner.
It's About Giving People What They Want
The reality is that for many of us, many fashion retailers are just too expensive but equally, we want to be able to buy ourselves new clothes. While this might be experiential retail on steroids, affordability is what Primark does best.
Famous for low prices - Primark's doesn't really do advertising - it's needed to maintain this in the face of some fierce criticism of its environmental commitments over recent years, leaving the brand open to the question whether their low prices are at the expense of the environment?
They are a member of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and have signed the Bangladesh Accord and Cotton Pledge amongst other initiatives but according to Good On You which rates brands' ethical credentials, Primark has a way to go yet.
But that aside, they are very adept and laser-focused on one thing: giving the customer what they want, in a fun and enticing way.
Retail analyst Kate Hardcastle, from Insight with Passion, said people "foolishly" looked at Primark as a discount brand.
"It is anything but," she said. "They are savvy, they know what they are doing. The easiest way to describe the department shops of old was they were too lazy, they stopped putting the customer and changing demands at the heart of their vision.
"They very much took footfall for granted, they always thought if they opened their doors, people would come. Primark understands what customers want and built their business around it."
And in that analysis, we discover the core of why some are struggling where Primark are succeeding: putting the customer at the very heart of their business, giving them what they want, and in particular being famous for something.
OK so not everything was on point on opening day, the WiFi wasn't great and the lights briefly went out but these are minor glitches.
Because Primark, perhaps more than any other high street retailer, is very clear about what its brand stands for. No fuss, no tinkering, no misleading, just clear, honest to goodness retailing.
The department store is dead, long live the department store.
