Penneys Mary Street

 Fun fact. 

Did you know that Penneys is only Penneys in Ireland, that every where else in the world it is Primark?  This is because when it moved outside of Ireland and in to the UK there was an American retailer (JC Penney) who already had the right to use the Penneys name.

 

On Saturday Enid and I were in the Penneys in Mary Street.  This is their where their headquarters are and it is also the site of their very first shop.  It is actually quite an historic building as it is built on the site of Dublin's first cinema The Volta.

 

The store was renovated around 2014 and it is big and modern looking.  (Very big - they reclaimed some space that was being used for stores back into retail space).

 

As part of the "do-up" there are some cute photographs of their history in Ireland on display on a wall.  I love these type of sociological photographs. I think they it's great they are diplaying them (for posterity) so for more reasons of posterity I have posted them here.

 

 

"Low prices are back in fashion"  Some things never change for Penneys

 

Lol! How about this for a uniform?!

 

I would think this is late 70's early 80's.  I don't remember there being a separate mans/ladies shop.

 

Penneys in Killarney with zany 1970's branding

 

I think this was a uniform.  And strangely enough I think I remember it or something similar to it. 

Operation Penneys aka The power of Facebook and Viber

I have been searching for the perfect boots for the last few weeks.  I cannot tell you the amount of boots I have tried on and I was getting really frustrated because none of them were like what I had in my head.

The good news is that although I do not actually have the boots in my possession yet, the search is over.

And all thanks to the power of facebook and viber!

Firstly I saw the fabulous Alison Canavan wearing my dream boots in a pic on her facebook page.

I posted on the picture and asked her where they were from.

"Penneys", she said!

"How long ago", I wondered, "I am heading to the Towncentre in the morning and hopefully they will be there".  Alison replied again and said she got them about 8 weeks ago.

In Blanchardstown (towncentre) there was good news and bad news.  The bad news was there were none in my size (5) :-(

Just rows and rows of size 3's and a few straggler size 8's.

The good news was the price - €24!

This afternoon I went in to town to check O'Connell Street and Mary Street branches.  

Again just size 3's everywhere.

Operation Penneys!

I sent a viber message to some friends to see if they had any in their local Penneys..

As it happened my friend was in Cork city anyway and said she'd go to Penneys.  There were only three pairs of them left (all size 3 of course!) and while the girl was checking the stock room she looked around and tucked in with different shoes she found, literally it seems, the last size 5 in Ireland!

We have a visual!

Stand down all agents.  Operation Penneys a success :-)

Just need to figure how to get them from Cork to Dublin now...!