One in 10 products sold in Poundland are no longer priced at £1, despite the business marketing itself as a major discounter.

The chain, which emerged on the high street in April 1990, has become a high street staple in the past three decades, known for its pound shop slogan and household essentials, food and even toys for just £1.

At launch, it triggered a boom in discounters, with Poundworld and Poundstretcher following the trend.

However, in 2017, the company moved away from a single price point in a bid to take on competition from rival discount chains such as B&M and Wilko.

The retailer, which now sells items between 50p and £10, even stocks its own clothing line 300 stores.

A deal with Fultons Frozen Food last October means chilled goods are now available to buy at 129 stores, with plans to expand this to 700 by 2023.

Poundland once marketed itself as a one stop pound shop (
Image:
PA)
The company now wants to compete for bigger purchases, such as frozen food (
Image:
Getty)

Poundland now has 917 stores in the UK and Ireland.

The parent company Pepco, which recently listed on the Warsaw stock exchange, said total sales across the business were up 4.4% to £1.7 billion, with pre-tax profits in the period up from £55million to £82million.

Over the pandemic, bosses also managed to reduce rents by around 50% on 44 stores and look set to cut rental fees on a further 211 stores within the next two years.

Poundland and its European equivalent Dealz saw a like-for-like sales increase of 1.4% during the six months to the end of March compared with the same period a year earlier.

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This was despite bosses saying stores, which remained open as "essential" retailers, were hit hard by the various pandemic restrictions.

Shoppers shunned its stores primarily due to their locations typically being in covered shopping centres or busy high street locations where the perceived risk of infection was higher, the company said.

Pepco chief executive Andy Bond said he expects to see improvements as customer behaviour returns to more normal shopping patterns.

He added: "We anticipate that the environment in which we operate will remain changeable and challenging in the short term."

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