What is it about Ireland that makes UK retail fail here?

According to their job ads, River Island refer to their staff as "islander's" and expect them to uphold "British values". Not sure how well either of those go down.

I think Argos had a time and it did well in Ireland.

What effected it was the rise in online shopping, they also had a clunky website, they gave up the catalogue and in the UK they do a lot of click and collect in Sainsbury's which wasn't an option here.

I was never in a Weatherspoons but always found there was a lot of negativity about the place.

Iceland never really took off in Ireland. I always found the quality to be poor. Then the price after Brexit didn't help.

Some UK retail has done well in Irealand but others haven't for various similar to the above I mentioned.

Argos just seem to have lost interest, their Irish website was awful and not fit for purpose.

TV3 became Virgin Media

70 mill population versus 5 mill. Work it out.

Penneys you mean.

The Irish market is often profitable, but also comes with enough difficulties that sometimes it's easier to sacrifice it for their 'core' UK market. I've keenly kept abreast of shops like Iceland and Argos over the years. I had written a huge essay here, but no one has time for my mental, over detailed musings on the topic. My condensed opinion:

Iceland threw away a very strong market position in 2005 in Ireland in order to bolster its founders reacquisition of control of the company in the UK. By some accounts, his senior management team knew it was a mistake, looks like they tried to undo for real by 2013, but they never regained the momentum and BREXIT trading rules scuppered them.

Argos was really busy/successful but had some difficult trading years in the UK. Argos Ireland wasn't stupid, had a bunch of plans in the works re updating the website and delivery etc (that was according to someone on a forum that I personally believed at the time, but I understand that's not a citable source). They were probably a bit too slow, but when Sainsbury's bought over Argos, all interest in the Irish stores evaporated. That it took them so long to run it into the ground was a testament to how resilient the store was.

Sports Direct taking over Heatons was an odd one I personally didn't quite understand. I'm probably not their target demo, but I think they didn't understand the customer base of Heatons and their own brand recognition gaps. I often wonder is it paying off in some other way, like some sort of UK wide stock balancing exercise, is poor performance being masked by online sales, are costs so low they profitable or what.

Overall, I think BREXIT is certainly a major factor, but not the only one. I think, for example, it would be silly to ignore the personalities of the leadership teams involved in these companies in the UK which can be very strong. Also, they may still be trying to treat their Irish operation like regional UK branches a little too much.

Paddy tax was a major one for me personally. We can see the price on the UK site, we know we're getting ripped off! I once drove up to Omagh to buy a lawnmower from Homebase. It was almost 50% cheaper than my local store.

Amazon played their part in killing off Argos, but as has been mentioned they seemed geneuinely uninterested in their own survival and brexit was just the final nail in the coffin. I'd often check out their sales and without fail all the good deals were out of stock, usually country wide, versus plenty of stock in UK stores.

Peculiar Irish attitudes to eating or drinking at a Spoons.

The very same people don't have any problem shopping at uk mega chains Tesco, Boots, M&S, etc. over say SuperValu or home based independents. I guess they got faceless ceos no one thinks about.

The market here is too small for some of these business to survive, let alone thrive.

Dealz is Poundland. Some shocking price differences in there compared to our stores.