World-famous fabric and furnishings retailer Laura Ashley is heading for Swansea.The company is set to open a home furnishings store alongside Currys at Pontarddulais Retail park in Fforestfach.
It should be up and running for business by the end of July.
The news comes hot on the heels of an announcement by posh lingerie chain La Senza that it is to open in June in the city centre. Cosmetics company Lush is also on its way to the city with M &S investing millions in a big revamp of its Oxford Street store.
The investment by Laura Ashley will create 17 new jobs.
The company has had a store in Carmarthen for four years. It also had an outlet at the Homebase DIY store in Parc Tawe but pulled out in 2005.
Its new outlet will be certain to pull in extra shoppers to Swansea although experts say they are sorry it is going to an out-of-town site rather than the city centre itself.
Denise Road, chairwoman of city centre-based JT Morgan, said: "It's nice to see another well-known brand coming to Swansea.
"It's just a shame they didn't come to the city centre."
Chairman of Swansea Business Improvement District, Peter Birch, said: "I would have preferred them to come to the city centre.
"The town is developing fantastically, there's a buzz about the place so it does surprise me they have gone out of town."
Laura Ashley was the Merthyr Tydfil-born fashion and fabric designer who created a global company and brand.
The business was to become an outstanding Welsh success story.From humble beginnings working on the top of her kitchen table, Ashley made mats, napkins and tea towels, which she carried and tried to sell to various stores while in a small basement flat in London's Pimlico.
Ashley and her City stockbroker husband Bernard missed Wales and moved to Powys.
Factories were opened in Mid-Wales and by the mid-1970s Laura Ashley dresses were being sold across Europe.
There were stores in London, Paris, Geneva and Brussels as well as Llanidloes as the company's unique designs and floral patterns grew in popularity.
The booming business had 5,000 outlets throughout the world by 1981.In 1985, on her 60th birthday, Laura fell down a flight of stairs and died after nine days in a coma.
At the time the company was on the verge of expansion and employed 4,000 staff.
But the 1990s saw the company's styles fall out of fashion and in 1999 the last of her five factories in Wales was closed.
Fiona Rees of Swansea Futures, a company set up by Swansea Council to promote the city to a wider audience, said: "Laura Ashley is going through a bit of a resurgence and it is good news that a company like that sees Swansea as on the up."
