CLOTHING CHAIN Gap made a pretax profit of €1.2 million from its Irish stores in the year to the end of January, down 8 per cent on the previous year.

Accounts filed at the Companies Office show turnover at Gap Stores (Ireland) Limited increased 24 per cent during the period to €10.4 million.

The company, which has standalone stores in Dundrum Town Centre in Dublin and Cork’s Opera Lane, and a concession in Arnotts department store, describes the biggest risk facing it as “the ability to gauge the fashion tastes of its customers”. It retained a net profit of more than €1 million, down from €1.1 million the previous year, and employed an average of 100 people in Ireland during the year, up from 72 the year before.

Parent company Gap Inc recently closed a fifth of its stores in the US, having over-expanded its chain and watched sales slide at a time when the price of raw materials such as cotton had increased.

Gap Inc, which also owns the Old Navy and Banana Republic chains, announced this week it was to break from tradition by opening almost 1,000 of its US stores on Thanksgiving later this month. The openings are part of its plan to get a headstart on competitors who open at midnight on the day after Thanksgiving, which marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season in the US.

Meanwhile, accounts filed at the Companies Office for women’s clothing and homewares retailer Laura Ashley (Ireland) show the company made a pretax profit of €417,818 in the year to the end of January, having recorded a loss of €778,291 in the previous year. Turnover fell to €9.4 million, down 5 per cent. The average number of people employed by the company was 54, down from 65.

The British retailer, which has five stores in Ireland and a concession in House of Fraser in Dundrum, closed its Grafton Street shop in Dublin last year. The accounts show it booked an exceptional gain of almost €800,000 during the period from the disposal of its lease on the store.