Holland & Barrett has set a target of opening nearly one store a week in 2025.
The health and beauty retailer plans to open 50 new stores next year, having added 35 new sites in the past 12 months.
It also refurbished a further 280 during the past year, as part of an ongoing store investment programme by owner LetterOne.
Nick Gerrard, Holland & Barrett property and format director, told The Grocer the health and wellness retailer was in talks with new partners about expanding its network of in-store concessions, alongside its high street footprint, under the next stage of the rollout. The focus would be on sites located on retail parks in particular, which included supermarkets, he said.
H&B currently has just under 50 concessions within Tesco stores, having restarted the UK rollout last year. The latest opened in Burnley this week, and there are plans to open add another “eight to 10 by Christmas”, Gerrard said.
It also currently has three concessions within Next stores, under a partnership that launched in July, and has also opened a swathe of new concession formats within garden centres over the latter part of the year.
“There are some undeniable facts, we want Holland & Barrett to be accessible,” Gerrard said. “We’ve only got 19 standalone sites on retail parks, because generally the size of boxes available to us are too big.
“However, there’s partners in those retail parks, be that Tesco or Next or whoever, who actually have spare space and want to make their offer more interesting to the customers that shop with them.”
A traditional Holland & Barrett store is typically around 1,600 sq ft in size, whereas space available on most retail parks was typically 6,000 sq ft, Gerrard said. H&B’s biggest store, in Manchester’s Arndale Centre, is 4,000 sq ft.
“We are talking to potential partners and we’ll see where it goes,” Gerrard said.
Holland & Barrett first began adding lines to Tesco stores in 2016. However, the UK rollout was paused during the Covid-19 pandemic, while the retailer focused on Tesco stores in Ireland.
Holland & Barrett reaches store expansion ‘milestone’
LetterOne has ploughed more than £70m into H&B stores and supply chain, since the completion of a £700m debt buyback deal in November 2022.
Aside from its traditional high street sites and concessions, H&B is also targeting more travel locations, following the opening of its store at London Bridge Station, and a small kiosk in the Jervis Shopping Centre in Dublin last year.
It’s set to open new stores in Paddington Station, and Liverpool Street in London in the coming months, and sees long-term opportunity for “30-40” travel stores “over time”. It also has an ongoing travel fixture trial with WH Smith.
The wider renovation programme began three years ago, with its high street store in Chelmsford. Around 500 of H&B’s 800-store estate is “pretty much in the format we would want them to be in”, Gerrard said, adding that it was aiming to complete the transformation next year.
While Holland & Barrett had previously opened lots of stores, Gerrard said that the footprint had “lacked investment”.
“We needed to bring it up to date, get it high street fit and show the best of Holland & Barrett today. But equally, give ourselves a platform that we could quickly change in time to come as well,” Gerrard said.
Alongside the introduction of new tech, a major part of the work “front of house” has involved the replacement of bespoke fixturing with standardised shelving and cabinets that will more easily be able to introduce range expansions in the future.
H&B now has a “standardised blueprint” for how stores are laid out. It includes more visual merchandising aimed at “storytelling” through PoS and digital screens, as well as better lighting.
At the “back of house”, H&B has been upgrading and expanding holding areas, as well as improving staff areas in the back of stores.
“Stores used to feel like a bit of a library for vitamins and supplements,” Gerrard said. “That’s quite confusing for customers and we wanted to demystify that.”
H&B had seen a “good double-digit bounce” of new customers as a result of the investment. he added.
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