The story begins in 1996 when we purchased Bow Bangles and their 50 UK stores. Three years later and we'd opened all of the stores you see today, and more. At our peak, we were opening an average of one store every four days.

The growth continued. We moved into mainland Europe in a big way, initially by buying Bijoux One in Switzerland, Austria and Germany, and Cleopatre in France. We then rebranded and opened these as Claire's stores. But by 2005, we were ready to open our own stores and build up our presence in Spain, Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands. So that's exactly what we did.

In 2007, the company was bought by Apollo and over the following two years we restructured our European business. We've been driving performance and growth in Europe ever since. We've had particular success in Eastern Europe; a relatively new territory for us. We now have stores in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Award-winning stores too. We've recently been awarded the coveted title of ‘Speciality Retailer of the Year' at the 2010 CEE Retail Real Estate Awards in Warsaw. The win recognises the hard work and dedication of everyone involved in opening stores in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Today, our European retail network is over 1,000 stores strong, and stretches from the UK and Ireland to Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland and Austria, plus our stores in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic.

But we won't stop there. Last year we opened 69 new stores and we plan to continue expanding, opening another 115 stores across Europe this year (2011). We've also restructured our retail support operations. We now manage all key support services from our European Head Office in Birmingham.