Primor Brand Guidelines: A Málaga Perfumery Named From a Reused 1953 Shop Sign

A 35-square-metre shop in central Málaga.

Primor began in Málaga in 1953. Modaes, the Spanish fashion and beauty business site, named the founder in 2015 as Juan Ricardo Hidalgo Álvarez, who opened a small perfumery for his wife; Málaga Hoy reported in January 2011 that he was then a director of the city’s old Hospital 18 de Julio. The shop stood on Calle Granada, in the centre of the city, and measured about 35 square metres, according to Diario Sur.

The name came from a sign. The premises had belonged to an earlier perfumery, Perfumes Quirón, and with little money left after buying it the family reused the existing lettering, picking six of its letters to spell Primor, Diario Sur reported in 2018 and El Correo repeated in 2024. In a 2011 interview with Málaga Hoy, the founder’s grandson, also named Juan Ricardo Hidalgo, recalled that the new name had to begin with a capital P, and said that some customers still claimed to know a “Señor Primor.”

Growth stayed local for decades. The founder’s son began helping in the business, and in the early 1980s the family took two more shops, on Calle Larios and Calle San Juan, which it still ran in 2011. In the 1990s the grandson joined as the third generation, and Primor began opening in Málaga’s neighbourhoods and in new shopping centres such as Rosaleda and Larios, Málaga Hoy reported. From 2000 the family also invested along the coast. By January 2011 it had 37 shops in the province, 22 of them in the city itself, and it ran several shops around Calle Larios alone.

In September 2018 Primor closed the Calle Granada shop where the business had started. Diario Sur reported that the small premises had been sold to an investor group and let to the Málaga ice-cream chain Cónico, and that Primor was by then looking for much larger shops to show its whole range.

From Málaga to Madrid, Bilbao and Portugal.

Primor’s move beyond its home province came at Christmas 2010. Málaga Hoy reported in January 2011 that it had taken three shops in the Madrid shopping centres Príncipe Pío, Plenilunio and Gran Vía de Hortaleza, acquired from the national chain Disperfum, which was then closing its stores; the grandson, by then running the company, said the chance came up in November and was taken quickly. Modaes later dated the start of the national expansion to 2011.

By March 2015 Primor had more than sixty shops, 26 of them in Málaga, with others in Barcelona, Seville, Córdoba, Marbella, Zaragoza and Valladolid, Modaes reported, as it prepared a 500-square-metre street shop on Calle Goya in Madrid. The same report said the chain was controlled by the group Persián Melón, and that in 2014 it had taken on the management of the Danish homeware chain Søstrene Grene in Spain. In 2015 Primor joined two other Spanish perfumery chains, Marvimundo and Arenal, to form Maremor, a joint chain meant to compete nationally, Modaes recalled in 2023; by then, it said, the initiative had lost momentum.

The shops then grew in size. In September 2018 Diario Sur counted about 90 stores across Spain, all family-owned and run by the company itself. In October 2019 Modaes reported a flagship of 1,400 square metres in the La Adriática building at number 39 Gran Vía in Madrid, joining three former shop units with the office floor above; it noted a shop at Puerta del Sol opened the year before, and Barcelona shops on Pelai and Portaferrissa. As of 2022, Modaes reported in June 2023, citing Kantar data, Primor had 165 shops.

The north of Spain followed. In mid-January 2024 Primor opened in central San Sebastián, in a unit formerly used by H&M, and in February 2024 El Correo reported that it had taken the former Springfield premises on the Gran Vía of Bilbao, its street site in the city alongside a shop in the Zubiarte mall. The paper put the network at more than 220 points of sale across Spain and Portugal, with more than 2,300 staff.

Perfumery in Spain.

Spain’s high-street chains present themselves through their stores as much as through their advertising. Shop windows, store interiors and the logo over the door are where the fashion groups show each change of identity, and they announce those changes in company statements that trade papers such as FashionUnited then report, describe and date.

Inditex runs its chains as separate store brands, each with its own name, logo and stores. Its group head office is in Arteixo, near A Coruña; Pull&Bear is run from Narón in the same province; Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Oysho and Lefties from the Tordera–Palafolls complex in Catalonia; and Stradivarius from Cerdanyola del Vallès, according to FashionUnited in February 2025. Between 2019 and 2023 the group gave Zara, Stradivarius, its own corporate identity, Pull&Bear and Bershka new logos in turn, and moved their stores towards bright, neutral interiors in which the clothes supply the colour; since then several chains have added warmer materials, zoned rooms and spaces for music and social media.

The perfumery and grocery chains in this series are covered in the same way: by the store formats, own-label ranges and logos they publish, described only as the companies or dated sources name them, and without claims about what their products do.

Ownership is part of each identity too. Marta Ortega Pérez became Inditex’s non-executive chair on 1 April 2022, FashionUnited reported in April 2023; other companies in this series are privately held or run as cooperatives. Each guide that follows takes its founders, owners and listings from corporate pages and dated press, and describes every owner only in its business role.

Large shops, many brands, one family.

Primor sells perfumery, cosmetics, make-up and parapharmacy products under other companies’ brands. Modaes named Clarins, Lancôme and Bourjois among them in 2015; El Correo in 2024 named Dior and Chanel fragrances, said the shops also stocked goods as varied as wireless headphones and baby food, and listed supply agreements with groups including L’Oréal, Puig, LVMH, Coty and Procter & Gamble. Its shop formula, the paper said, rests on low prices, large premises and a strong online channel.

It remains a family company. El Correo described Juan Ricardo Hidalgo, the founder’s grandson, as owner and president in 2024, and both it and Modaes describe the chain as a Málaga company. In June 2023 Modaes called Spain an exception among large European markets: family perfumery chains such as Druni, Primor, Perfumerías Avenida and Aromas had held their ground, while Marionnaud left the country in 2020 and Douglas cut back its Spanish shop network sharply in 2022.

Its name is itself a small piece of sign-making history: six letters salvaged from a previous perfumery’s fascia on Calle Granada, according to Diario Sur, kept on a shop the family ran for 65 years.

For a design guide, Primor shows how a family shop can carry a name made from a reused sign into a national chain. Compare Druni, the perfumery chain from the Valencia region, and El Corte Inglés, the Spanish department store group. For this guide we use a deep plum, a soft rose and warm ivory with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Primor’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.