DundrumTownCentre: Luxury UK department store Harvey Nichols and children's chain Daisy and Tom will open their first Irish shops in Dundrum Town Centre. Jack Fagan reports.
Dundrum Town Centre, still on schedule to open next spring, has broadened its appeal even further by assigning a large retail unit to top UK department store Harvey Nichols and another one to a children's department store, Daisy and Tom.
The latest traders to sign up underline the enormous appeal Dundrum has had among top Irish, UK and European fashion multiples.
The centre will have the best choice of fashion retailers in this country, putting it in a different league to all other shopping centres in the Dublin area.
The decision by Harvey Nichols to open its first Irish store in Dundrum will be particularly satisfying for Castlethorn Developments' Joe O'Reilly and Liam Maye, who from the start of the marketing campaign have held out for the best names in retailing.
Harvey Nichols is an international luxury lifestyle store that will be in direct competition with Brown Thomas.
It also has stores in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Leeds and Saudi Arabia, and will be opening in Hong Kong as well as Dublin in the autumn of 2005.
Harvey Nichols has been assigned one of the best-located units in Dundrum; it will have a floor area of 3,716 sq m (40,000 sq ft) facing directly on to the civic square.
The normal rent on a store of this quality is around €1.5 million.
Daisy and Tom will also open its first Irish store in Dundrum, with a 1,114 sq m/12,000 sq ft store where it will offer nursery equipment, toys, fashion, books and even haircuts.
The company is noted for its innovative in-store entertainment, including carousels, puppet theatre, play areas, café and soda bars, party areas and storytelling sessions.
However, it is Harvey Nichols which will get most attention in Dundrum because of its international reputation for stocking many of the world's most prestigious brands in womenswear, menswear, accessories, beauty, food and home.
The company invests heavily in PR to promote the luxury department store's brands.
"There's an international awareness of Harvey Nichols already-helped by the fact that Absolutely Fabulous has gone global," says one of its PR executives.
"We've become generic for a fabulous lifestyle."
Although 40 per cent of Harvey Nichols' marketing budget is invested in PR, its press ads also generate column inches.
"If you don't have the largest marketing budget, you have to create ads that stand out."
An ad for Harvey Nichols' new shoe department depicting a glamorous mother-to-be giving birth in a pair of strappy heels and painted toenails, generated so much publicity that shoe sales were 20 per cent higher than planned that season.
"There was no need to advertise it again," says the PR expert.
Harvey Nichols, formerly listed in the UK, was privatised by flamboyant businessman Dickson Poon in 2002, and will be targeting the top end of the market when it opens in Dundrum next September.
It may even force Brown Thomas to take another look at its prices.
Harrington Bannon and Hamilton Osborne King are letting agents for Dundrum.
