Business And Leadership, Ireland's Business News Service

The brand story

Peter Mark was founded by Peter and Mark Keaveney in 1961 on Dublin's Grafton Street and has since grown to become Ireland's best-known hairdressing brand.

It has brought creative hairdressing to every corner of the country, with its 73 salons, and the Peter Mark team of 1,700 people is continually creating key looks across fashion spreads and catwalk shows, along with being consistent winners in major hairdressing competitions.

It’s the combination of highly trained and committed stylists and colourists and award-winning, cutting-edge salon design that makes the Peter Mark hairdressing experience work.

In fact, continuity of service has been an essential element in how the brand is perceived, as well as driving its success over the past 47 years. It means no matter what part of the country a client is in, he or she gets the same high standard of care and attention.

Today, Peter Mark leads the way forward in hairdressing in Ireland and remains one of Ireland’s most innovative and creative companies.

Products and services

Peter Mark offers a free consultation/ analysis service to help you achieve the perfect look. All salons carry an exclusive range of L’Oreal Professionnel products. In every salon, you can buy Peter Mark Gift Cards, brands such as L’Oreal Kerastase and Redken, Bumble & Bumble (exclusive to the group), Tigi and the GHD styling irons and styling range. The company also stocks professional hairdryers from leading European manufacturers.

Innovation and development

From the early days Peter Mark has never been afraid of trying something new — as far back as 1966, it opened its third salon in Ireland’s first purpose-built shopping centre in Stillorgan on Dublin’s southside.

The most recent Peter Mark project, the €10m Peter Mark College and Style Club located on Dublin’s South William Street is a prime example of the company’s commitment to innovation. The training college embodies the Peter Mark ethos of lifelong learning for its stylists.

At the college, stylists and colourists are further trained in advanced hairdressing techniques, management skills and personal development. In addition to the Peter Mark team of industry-leading educators, the list of visiting and guest lecturers reads like a ‘who’s who’ of the global fashion and hairdressing scene.

Peter Mark has won numerous accolades for salon design in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland, where the group has seven salons. The architects of the Mary Street salon won an award from the Retail Design Institute in New York recently for the project. 

Style Club, the group’s newest addition, has been described as the most cutting-edge salon in the country, both in terms of the salon design and the techniques and services offered to clients. A second Style Club has just opened in the Pavilions Shopping Centre in Swords, featuring a standalone contemporary mens’ barber zone, another first for Peter Mark. Style Club is a totally new concept for the group and brings the brand to an entirely new audience.

Marketing and promotion

Central to the marketing of Peter Mark, and indeed its success, are its core values of professionalism, expertise and creativity. These were reflected in the television commercials in the early Nineties entitled ‘A Brush with Genius’, featuring the distinctive voice of Alan Stanford. Threading their way through all Peter Mark marketing and communications, these core values have created a strong brand personality and helped set Peter Mark apart.

Peter Mark is not just about hair, it’s also about recognising talent. The company has always been in tune with fashion trends and creativity is something it has always applauded. 

Celebrating the link between fashion and hairdressing, Peter Mark has sponsored the National College of Art and Design Graduate Fashion Show for the past 10 years. The show, held most recently at Trinity College Dublin, has been an important stepping stone in the careers of such Irish designers as Orla Kiely, Eileen Shiels and Philip Treacy. Regular attendees of fashion shows around the country, viewers of popular TV shows and fans of Ireland’s great fashion magazines will be familiar with the work of Peter Mark stylists.