Kildare Village outlet sends Gucci Ireland revenues soaring

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Feb 13, 2018

Gucci Ireland saw its sales and profits rising fast last year as the Italian brand’s outlet store in Kildare Village enjoyed almost a full year of trading.

Sales of Gucci goods rose to €6.19 million, which is a small absolute figure but still represents a 58% increase year-on-year. And pre-tax profits rose 17-fold to €726,537 in the year to the end of February 2017. Its gross margin was 39%.

But while the Kildare Village store was a big contributor to the growth after its opening in July 2015, the fact that it closed in January 2017 could mean that current year results aren’t so strong.

We won’t know whether that’s the case for another year, of course, but we do know for now that a significant share of Gucci’s sales in Ireland were to tourists, again with the big lure of Kildare Village likely to have been a factor here.
As far as boosting future growth is concerned, the company said in its results that it continues to work towards building market share in the luxury sector by organic growth of its store network. But it also said that any downturn in tourism to Ireland could prove to be a risk to the business while exchange rate fluctuations could also make an impact.

The news from Gucci came at the same time as Swarovski Ireland said its profits rose 73% to €121,000 in its latest year as revenues soared from €1 million to €4.9 million. Swarovski also cited its outlet store at Kildare Village as being behind the growth surge.

The outlet centre near Dublin is part of Value Retail, the group that also owns the UK’s Bicester Village, which is also a major tourist attraction.