{"id":24260,"date":"2023-09-28T12:55:24","date_gmt":"2023-09-28T12:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/?p=24260"},"modified":"2023-09-28T12:57:13","modified_gmt":"2023-09-28T12:57:13","slug":"premier-investments-smiggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/2023\/09\/28\/premier-investments-smiggle\/","title":{"rendered":"Premier Investments to open 20 Smiggle stores in Middle East by end of 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- VideographyWP Plugin Message: Automatic video embedding prevented by plugin options. --><br \/>\n<span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Australian company\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.premierinvestments.com.au\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Premier Investments<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0is planning to open 20 standalone stores of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/2023\/08\/21\/saudi-arabia-school-supplies\/\">stationary<\/a> brand Smiggle in the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The first seven stores will open\u00a0before Christmas, followed by a further 13 in 2024 in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Within a decade, Preimer aims to have at least 60 Smiggle stores in the Middle East within a decade to step up its overseas growth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Smiggle already has a presence in the Middle East via store-in-store concession operations, which was first brought to the region in 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The offshore expansion comes as Premier reported that overall sales in the six weeks between August and the first half of September at Premier\u2019s retail chains declined by two per cent compared with the same time a year ago as shoppers cut back on discretionary spending.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">As a result of the lockdown, the brand had to shut 30 stores in the UK.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Premier Investments chair, billionaire Solomon Lew, said the \u201csize of the opportunity is big\u201d for Smiggle beyond the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Mr Lew declined to name the \u201cpartner\u201d which Premier was working with in the Middle East. While the initial plan includes 60 stores, it may be just the beginning of the expansion, he emphasised.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The global store network was reduced by about 50 compared with 2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Mr Lew noted that the Premier&#8217;s retail brands \u201cagain outperformed the market\u201d against all the odds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Premier Investment has a strong presence in Australia and New Zealand and is growing into new markets including Singapore and the UK. Its Just Group\u2019s brands include Smiggle, Peter Alexander, Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Portmans, Jacqui E and Dotti.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Premier Investments, headed by Solomon Lew, is planning to have a minimum of 60 Smiggle stores  in the Middle East within a decade <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":24261,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24260"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24266,"href":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24260\/revisions\/24266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meretailnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}