Poundworld has hired Lucre as its retained UK PR agency after parting company with its two-year incumbent Candid PR.
The cut-price store, which has recently opened its 126th outlet in the UK, aims to open a further 40 stores by the end of 2012.
Lucre will raise the chain's brand and corporate profile across its three brands Poundworld, Discount UK and Poundworld Express. There was no pitch process.
Poundworld marketing director Martyn Birks said: 'We have three brands that need to be promoted pro-actively and we felt moving to a bigger agency would help achieve this. We want Lucre to help turn our brands into household names as we plan to have our stores feature in high streets across the UK.'
Poundworld notched up sales of £133m last year, but is trailing Poundland, which posted a turnover of £642m for the year to March 2011.
Lucre founder and director Tamarind Wilson-Flint said: 'Poundworld is rapidly expanding and we will target consumers both regionally and nationally to tell its story.
'We will also target trade press to make sure Poundworld has a larger share of voice in this competitive market.'
Wilson-Flint will head up the account and report to Birks and trading director Chris Edwards Junior.
Lucre will manage Poundworld's media relations, press office and store launch activities as part of the brief.
The news comes as research carried out by Local Data Company - which studied shop numbers in 487 town centres - found that there has been a 14 per cent increase in pound shops in the year to the end of October.
Poundworld passed the one million customers a week mark at the beginning of November and opened, on average, one store every week during 2011.
