Banana Republic to open in Grafton Street

ongarboy

According to today's Irish Times. I actually like their menswear (prefer it to Gap) Bought my first suit there many years ago. Speaking of US chains, what has happened to Abercrombie and Fitch opening in College Green?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/commercialproperty/2012/0201/1224311043055.html

baby and crumble

YAY! I love BR. Woo hoo.

Twee.

Ooh this will be good! They have some really lovely stuff.

Hermione*

Boo, the story has now been removed from the Irish Times website

I would love Banana Republic to open here. Their clothes have great cuts and great materials, two of the most important considerations for me when clothes shopping. They're reasionably priced for the quality too, imo.

amdublin

Ooh! Love BR.

cson

This'll be handy once I'm in the 30-40 age bracket. :pac:

compsys

It would be great for Grafton Street and Dublin retailing in general if another major international retail chain such as BR were to open up here.

However, The Irish Times ran a very similar type story about A&F opening up here around a year ago and that never happened.

Although The Irish Times are usually very good with their reporting, due to the state of the economy and all the uncertainty I won't believe that BH are opening up until that actually begin to start work on fitting out the premises.

ongarboy

that's odd that Irish Times removed the link as normally they do not archive articles from the past year. Briefly, it said an official announcement was due shortly from the retailer but that they would be merging the units formerly occupied by Richard Alan and Zerep on Grafton St. They are also expanding in UK where they have a number of outlets already.

I since googled about A&F and it seems that with the continued downturn, they have delayed their plans for the old Habitat store and want to see how well their subsidary, Hollister performs in Dundrum first. From what I hear though, Hollister is one of their top performing non US stores so surely a good omen?

compsys

ongarboy wrote: »

that's odd that Irish Times removed the link as normally they do not archive articles from the past year. Briefly, it said an official announcement was due shortly from the retailer but that they would be merging the units formerly occupied by Richard Alan and Zerep on Grafton St. They are also expanding in UK where they have a number of outlets already.

I since googled about A&F and it seems that with the continued downturn, they have delayed their plans for the old Habitat store and want to see how well their subsidary, Hollister performs in Dundrum first. From what I hear though, Hollister is one of their top performing non US stores so surely a good omen?

I've also heard that the Hollister store in Dundrum is one of their top-performing stores worldwide.

Also, the rent on the Dundrum store is €750,000 plus 10% of turnover while the agreed rent on the bigger former Habitat store was 'only' €750,000 ASAIK. It does seems strange that A&F pulled out. I wonder how long the store can stay empty until someone else tries to take it.