Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
John Lewis is investing £6m in launching a new shop format focusing exclusively on the home sector, including kitchenware.
The new format – the retailer’s first for 20 years – will be a third of the size of a typical John Lewis department store and will sell the retailer’s home, electrical and home technology assortments. The offer will include all the John Lewis cookshop lines.
Additional features will include an espresso bar, customer collection and a gift list service. The retailer believes there are approximately 30 locations across the UK which would support such a shop. The first will open this autumn in Poole, Dorset and will create 100 jobs.
The 45,000sq ft selling space within the new shop will launch a new way of working for John Lewis. The selling support area and stockholding areas will be much smaller than normal in order to create an efficient supply chain function from distribution centre to shop floor.
A spokesperson told HousewaresLive.net that the new stores will be given a separate identity, although no name has yet been decided on.
Retail director Gareth Thomas said that the new format had been “based on an enormous amount of research, which showed us that there are areas of the country where consumers wanted to be able to shop at a John Lewis branch within a 40 minute journey of their home.
“We know our competitors have a much higher level of coverage in the UK than we do and our research has shown that there are growth opportunities for our business in smaller format shops, giving our customers more convenient access to John Lewis products.”
