Isabel Macdonald outside her new store

Tamworth’s new John Lewis at Home opened its doors on Wednesday (12 October), eight months after I broke the news of its impending arrival.

The 42,000 sq ft shop at the edge-of-town Ventura Park is John Lewis’s sixth in the ‘at Home’ format, following the opening of stores in Poole, Croydon, Swindon (which I recently visited), Tunbridge Wells and Chester. Further John Lewis at Home shops are set to open in Ashford, Newbury and Chichester during 2012, while the retailer’s new Exeter store – originally announced as an ‘at Home’ shop – will, as I recently noted, be the first of a new ‘flexible’ department store format.

Cutting the ribbon at John Lewis Tamworth

While the ‘at Home’ stores focus on furniture, homewares, furnishing accessories, electricals and home technology, John Lewis’s strength as a multichannel retailer – highlighted in my recent Bdaily column – means that the full John Lewis range is available to Tamworth shoppers via ‘Click and Collect’. Products can be ordered online or instore by 7pm, and picked up from the store after 2pm the next day.

In a recent tweet, I suggested that John Lewis’s arrival in Tamworth was the biggest single retail event to happen in the town for decades – probably since the opening of the Ankerside shopping centre, in 1980, transformed the town centre’s retail landscape. The fact that there is now a store called ‘John Lewis Tamworth’ is remarkable enough in itself, but the 218 jobs that have been created by the £7m store – 200 of which are brand-new John Lewis Partners – also make it one of the biggest single retail investments that Tamworth has ever seen.

One of the Partners to have transferred from elsewhere is the new branch manager, Isabel Macdonald, whose career with the company goes back nine years – including seven years in the Reading store before her most recent stint as operations manager at Solihull. Hours after the store’s opening, Isabel took a few moments out to chat to me about getting the store ready for launch; the excitement of the opening morning; how John Lewis is seeking to establish itself as part of the Tamworth community; and how it is a “dream come true” to be branch manager of a store just twenty miles from where she was born and grew up.

Opening preparations

John Lewis at Home, Tamworth (3 Sep 2011)

John Lewis Tamworth’s transformation from a steel frame when I first visited in June to a fully-clad building in September and an operational store now is pretty impressive, and the efficiency of the process to train new Partners and stock the store is no less remarkable.

Isabel told me that her own work at Tamworth started seven weeks before opening, working with her team to ensure that the store had the “best-trained” Partners who would “give customers the service they would expect from John Lewis.” Meanwhile, she revealed that the process of filling the store with £3m of stock had taken just nine days to complete.

Three hours after the store opened at 9am, Isabel reported that cars had been “flooding in” to the 311-space car park, and that there had been 100 customers waiting in the queue for the doors to open – including one keen gentleman who had arrived at 6am. Early customer comments had been “lovely”, and the 80-seater instore café was also gaining positive feedback.

Shoppers enter John Lewis at Home Tamworth

Given Ventura Park’s reputation for traffic chaos, I was bound to ask Isabel for her view on how the roads had coped in those first few hours. While it was obviously early days, she suggested that the recent improvements to the road layout and traffic control – initiated as a direct result of John Lewis’s arrival and the nearby B&Q-anchored Cardinal Point development – seemed to be working. Clearly it will be something to keep an eye on, however; as Isabel noted, “We are keen to work with retailers and the council to make sure that Ventura Park is the most convenient place to shop for customers in the West Midlands.”

Range

A month ago, Retail Week reported that John Lewis was planning “tweaks” to the ‘at Home’ format in response to a performance that was “a little bit below what we expected”, and I raised this with Isabel.

While Retail Week suggested that John Lewis at Home stores will start to stock some lower-priced items – such as pictures, mirrors and rugs – Isabel was clear that the retailer’s longstanding ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ promise stands it in good stead: “What customers are saying is that they want to know they are getting value from John Lewis – that’s not necessarily being ‘cheap’, but offering value in terms of quality, price and service.” She gave the example of how the Tamworth store is offering a new, fully bespoke furnishing fabric service, where curtains can be ordered in custom sizes.

Birmingham

Not long after news emerged of Tamworth being the first John Lewis at Home in the Midlands, the Partnership announced, back in February, that a new full-line, 250,000 sq ft department store would open in Birmingham in 2014 – just 20 miles or 30 minutes’ drive away. With John Lewis already present in Solihull, Leicester and Nottingham, is this not a lot of stores in a relatively small area?

Seemingly not. Citing John Lewis’s investment in both online and shops, Isabel was clear that “the Tamworth and Birmingham shops have distinct catchments, and there is enough room for both to trade successfully”. While the Birmingham store is about having a presence in a major city centre, Tamworth – and the ‘at Home’ format generally – is “all about convenience”. The transport connections to Ventura Park seem to have been a big factor in choosing that location, with Isabel noting that the new Tamworth store will also serve towns such as Lichfield and Sutton Coldfield that have previously been outside a John Lewis catchment.

Town centre impact 

The latest CACI Retail Footprint map flagged Ventura Park as the UK’s tenth biggest retail park by expenditure; the arrival of John Lewis, with a new B&Q, Maplin and Next to follow, will surely propel it up the rankings. So, what does all this mean for Tamworth town centre – a location that has already rather struggled to define itself as major retailers like WHSmith and New Look have decamped to the edge of town?

Isabel was clear that John Lewis aims to work alongside the local retail community and to help “make Tamworth the best possible destination”. She observed that data following previous ‘at Home’ openings has demonstrated a “John Lewis effect for the whole area”, as shoppers take the opportunity to check out other attractions in those locations. The positive impact of the 200 new jobs will also filter through into the local economy, she argued, with many of the new Partners living in the Tamworth area.

Apart from the footfall and economic benefits, Isabel noted that her store is also working with three local charities – Tamworth Volunteer Centre, Rosie’s Helping Hands, and Bancroft Community Association – who took part in the opening-day ribbon-cutting ceremony and will each benefit from a donation from the retailer’s Community Matters scheme.

For all Tamworth town centre’s flaws – most notably its underwhelming market and lack of upmarket stores – there is, as I’ve observed before, much for visitors to enjoy. Visitors recently flocked to the Staffordshire Hoard exhibition at Tamworth Castle; the UltraSound Music Festival attracted a younger crowd to enjoy artists such as Tinie Tempah and The Wanted; and the town’s colourful floral displays this summer were, as always, among the best anywhere. The town centre also has some interesting and distinctive shops – notably the Irish fashion retaiiler, Dunnes; the independent Tamworth Co-op department store; and plenty of appealing independents.

John Lewis at Home is different to many of the other tenants at Ventura Park in that there was never any question of it being able to, or wanting to, open in Tamworth town centre. Ultimately, I would argue, it’s a format that works best on a retail park, and that was attracted to Tamworth specifically because of Ventura Park’s popularity and location.

However, if Isabel is right, and even a small proportion of John Lewis’s visitors check out what the town centre has to offer, the arrival in Tamworth of one of retail’s biggest names may indeed be cause for wider optimism about the town centre’s future.

Former Woolworths (now temporary BHS), Swindon (11 Sep 2011)

If you saw my earlier post about the shiny new BHS in Swindon, you might be wondering what happened to the retailer during the 18-month period that its old store was being redeveloped. Well, rather conveniently, there was an empty unit in nearby Regent Street where it was able to open a temporary store: the site of Swindon’s former Woolworths.

At the time of Woolies’ collapse in 2008, the Swindon store (store #38) was one of the longest established in the country. It opened at 23-25 Regent Street on 12 September 1914 – almost 97 years to the day before my visit – and underwent a series of extensions and redevelopments in 1936, 1973, 1980 and 1995.

Old postcard of Woolworths in Swindon, c.1960

Sadly, the rather functional present-day frontage bears no resemblance to the more elegant, cinema-style façade that existed previously – similar to the one still found at Chester-le-Street. However, the attractive turreted Next building (in the middle of both shots, above and below) ensures that there is at least some visual link between the 1960s and present-day views along the street.

A similar view along Regent Street today (11 Sep 2011)

Now that BHS’s new store is open, I’d rather expected to find the former Woolworths store vacated again. However, BHS looks to be hanging on to the space for the moment, badging it as a BHS Furniture Clearance Outlet.

When you visit Swindon, that word – outlet – seems to assail you at every turn, with both positive and negative consequences for the town. In the Swindon Designer Outlet, owned by McArthur Glen, the town has one of the busiest and best outlet shopping centres in the country, housing 120 stores in the Grade II-listed Great Western Railway Works – a truly fantastic series of spaces.

Swindon Designer Outlet (11 Sep 2011)

With outlet stores from big names such as John Lewis, Next and M&S, as well as designer brands like Aquascutum, Hugo Boss and Tommy Hilfiger, there’s little wonder that the centre was packed with shoppers when I visited. Indeed, according to CACI Retail Footprint data, the outlet centre alone generates £160m of annual expenditure – equivalent to Tamworth’s vast Ventura Retail Park.

Swindon Designer Outlet (11 Sep 2011)

However, while bringing shoppers and their spend into Swindon, the Designer Outlet is perhaps just a little too far away from the town centre – a good 10 minutes’ walk – to have much of a positive knock-on effect. On the contrary, there are bound to be some names whose presence at the Designer Outlet rules them out of taking space in the town centre proper.

House of Fraser Outlet, Swindon (11 Sep 2011)

Once in the town centre, the outlet theme continues, somewhat controversially. In 2008, Swindon’s established House of Fraser store was rebadged as a House of Fraser Outlet, featuring end-of-the-line branded stock from other stores in the chain. While better than losing House of Fraser completely, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a retrograde step.

Looking around the store on Sunday, it felt rather like a more upmarket TJ Hughes, with a slight ‘jumble sale’ feel and the sense that it’s no longer really a proper department store. For that, shoppers must go along the street to Debenhams, which itself makes a fairly unglamorous impression from the outside.

Debenhams, Swindon (11 Sep 2011)

Swindon might have a shiny John Lewis at Home on its outskirts, and the country’s most modern BHS in its centre, but I have to confess to being slightly underwhelmed by the town centre – both in terms of its retail offer and the overall quality of the public realm.

Perhaps my expectations were too high? After all, with annual retail expenditure (according to CACI) of £350m, Swindon town centre is barely a third of the size of nearby Bristol or Reading (each £1.2bn), and ranks below both Darlington (£360m) and Middlesbrough (£430m) in the North East. In my previous post, I cited John Ryan’s assertion that the new BHS was “without doubt the best shop in Swindon”, and it’s hard to really argue with that claim.

So, against this mixed backdrop, what might the future hold for Swindon’s former Woolworths site once BHS finally moves on? Usefully, the town’s growth and regeneration company, Forward Swindon, commissioned a ‘Town Centre Healthcheck’ from GVA Grimley in May last year, which reported in November.

Drawing from the FOCUS real estate database, this report found that a relatively small number of retailers (30) had a requirement for space in Swindon, particularly in comparison to other large centres in the south, such as Oxford, Reading and Bristol. Of these, just two – Asda Living and the now-much-reduced TJ Hughes – had a requirement for more than 15,000 sq ft of retail space.

Of course, Swindon’s recent BHS development – and similar retail schemes elsewhere – remind us that if developers build the right quality of space in the right locations, retailers will often find a requirement. As Swindon looks forward, I can’t help thinking that the Woolworths site might need another redevelopment of its own if it’s to have a sustainable and long-term future as prime retail space.

Habitat, Bristol (22 Feb 2011)

It’s hard to dispute that the last couple of weeks has been a torrid time for the UK high street, with a succession of well-known names either announcing bad news or collapsing into administration.

While HMV has a stay of execution for now, other retailers in that section of the alphabet – Habitat, HomeForm, Haldanes and TJ Hughes – have teetered, joined by others such as the clothing chains Jane Norman and Life & Style.

Thorntons, Bishop Auckland (24 Jan 2011)

Comet and Thorntons, meanwhile, look set to follow Mothercare’s recent lead in radically slimming down their UK store estates. When Thorntons becomes the most popular trending topic on Twitter, as it was earlier this week, you really know that the high street’s travails have entered mainstream discussion.

So, what are the key headlines from, arguably, the most intense period of bad retail news since a flurry of retailers – among them Woolworths, Zavvi, Whittard’s and Adams – all collapsed in the final weeks of 2008?

Habitat's Tottenham Court Road flagship - which is staying open (6 Apr 2011)

• The iconic furniture brand Habitat, and three of its central London stores, have been bought by Home Retail Group, owner of Argos and Homebase, for £24.5m. However, the remaining 30 UK stores are in administration and threatened with closure, with 750 jobs at risk. Harrogate, Edinburgh and York are among the locations affected, but there have been no Habitat stores in the North East since the Eldon Square branch in Newcastle closed in the late 1980s.

• HomeForm, the private equity-owned home improvement business that owns brands such as Moben, Kitchens Direct and Dolphin filed for administration on 23 June, putting 160 showrooms and 2,800 jobs in danger. Locations in the North East include Darlington, Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Newcastle and Sunderland.

• TJ Hughes, the Liverpool-based discount department store chain, collapsed into administration on Thursday morning, two days after announcing that it was planning to appoint administrators. The chain has 57 stores, which employ 4,000 people and account for almost 2 million square feet of retail floorspace – slightly more than the entire sales area of Metrocentre. TJ Hughes stores in Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough are among those at risk.

• Young fashion chain Jane Norman collapsed into administration earlier this week. On Tuesday, it was announced that Edinburgh Woollen Mill had bought 33 of the 94 shops, saving nearly 400 jobs, with a possibility of buying 28 more stores. However, the remaining 33 sites will close – including the branch in Newcastle’s Eldon Square – and the future of Jane Norman’s 82 department store concessions is uncertain.

• Clothing and homewares chain Life & Style – the rebadged Ethel Austin – collapsed into administration for the third time in as many years last month. 22 of the rump business’s 90 stores are already closing, with 274 staff losing their jobs.

• A week ago, Kesa-owned electricals chain Comet reported a 6.8% fall in sales compared to a year before, and annnounced plans to close 17 stores and downsize 9 others.

• On Tuesday, chocolatier Thorntons revealed that it would close up to 180 shops over the next three years, accounting for almost half of its entire company-owned store estate. The additional 227 franchisee-owned stores are not affected.

All these stories are worthy of a discussion in their own right – and will more than likely crop up again in future blog posts – but, looked at as a whole, what do they tell us about the condition of UK retail right now?

TJ Hughes, Sunderland (7 Sep 2009)

Whenever a familar high street name is in danger, it’s easy to wheel out all the usual arguments about the effects of online shopping, supermarkets’ assault into non-food, and the bane of quarterly rent payments or upward-only rent reviews.

Squeezed consumer spending is clearly also a huge issue at present. The sectors that Comet and HomeForm inhsbit – electricals and home improvement – are both among the most challenging places to be right now, as demonstrated by difficult trading at Dixons, Best Buy’s struggle to make an impression in the UK, and the recent collapse of Focus DIY.

Focus, Consett (4 Jun 2011)

Without a doubt, these economic or market factors have all contributed to the recent bad news, but they don’t explain why some retailers are collapsing when plenty of others are, if not exactly thriving, at least weathering the economic storm. The John Lewis Partnership, for example, today published its healthiest weekly sales figures for some time, with the Delia effect at Waitrose and the launch of the John Lewis Clearance pushing up turnover by 12.5% compared to a year ago.

Just as John Lewis can usually be relied upon to deliver good news, it’s very rarely a complete surprise when a particular retailer goes under. Look at this week’s casualties, and you’ll see that most of them share one or more of the same attributes:

• Lack of clarity regarding the brand or proposition
• A perception of being a ‘legacy’ retailer
• Stronger competitors within their sector
• A reputation simply for being cheap, rather than offering value
• Instability and a lack of strategic direction through constant changes in ownership or management.

Habitat fascia, York (17 Jul 2010)

In its heyday in the 1960s and 70s, Habitat, for example, was truly a design and retail innovator. However, squeezed between Ikea at the value end and Heal’s and John Lewis at the top end, Habitat has since struggled to define its niche. Meanwhile, a shrinking store estate over the years – 33 now, from a recent peak of 42 – has reinforced the impression of a business in decline.

Closed-down Habitat, Birmingham (18 Mar 2010)

Jane Norman, too, has seemingly lost sight of the reasons that made it successful in the first place, with my female friends bemoaning what they see as its move downmarket – a dangerous shift, that brings it into more direct competition with bigger, and cheaper, chains such as Primark, Peacocks and New Look.

Those big names in the clothing sector have also caused difficulties for TJ Hughes and Life & Style – raising their fashion credentials in order to offer customers all-round value, and leaving behind those retailers that have sought to compete primarily on price. Add in Life & Style’s record of previous collapses (as Ethel Austin), and the fact that TJ Hughes has had four owners in the last decade, and there’s little wonder that both have become distracted from what needs to be their core focus – being top-notch retailers.

In Thorntons’ case, many of its difficulties seem self-inflicted, throwing away the upmarket cachet of its brand by spreading itself too thinly. Creating a bloated estate of 600 shops would be unwise enough, particularly when quite a lot of them offer uninspring store environments in unglamorous locations. However, letting your product be sold in supermarkets and Wilkinson was always likely to be a disaster – undermining your brand’s reputation for quality while simultaneously removing the need for shoppers to visit your own stores.

What does all this mean, looking forward? Well, those retail businesses that simply aren’t up to scratch in terms of proposition, brand, strategy or customer experience will need to up their game in order to survive. However, there’s no reason why those businesses that are well-run and have a clear reason to exist shouldn’t continue to prosper.

John Lewis Tamworth (17 Jun 2011)

Following the confirmation, in April, that John Lewis will indeed be opening one of its ‘At Home’ stores in Tamworth, work on site seems to be proceeding rapidly ahead of the Ventura Park store’s planned autumn opening.

Screens around the site make it difficult to get a good photograph, but when I dropped by earlier today the steel frame looked to be largely in place. Meanwhile, the vast scale of the 42,000 sq ft shop is already apparent, with the premises dominating the main route into the retail park (below).

John Lewis Tamworth (17 Jun 2011)

The Tamworth store will be the fifth John Lewis at Home shop to open since the concept launched, in Poole, in October 2009, and one of two (with Chester) to open this year. Two more stores are scheduled to open in 2012: one in Newbury, and another – announced this week – in Ashford.

However, work on the ‘at Home’ store that was originally announced for Exeter city centre appears to be on hold, with reports that a full-line John Lewis department store is now planned for the site instead. Wednesday’s Ashford announcement cites all the other future openings, yet any mention of the Exeter store is noticeably absent.

Cardinal Point, Tamworth (17 Jun 2011)

Barely 100m from the Tamworth John Lewis, work is also progressing on the separate Cardinal Point retail development, which will house new stores for B&Q, Next and Maplin.

Cardinal Point, Tamworth (17 Jun 2011)

These developments add to a sprawling retail cluster that already includes a large Sainsbury’s, Asda and M&S, as well as more than twenty other retail park staples such as Boots, Outfit, Homebase and Hobbycraft.

Ventura Park stores (17 Jun 2011)

However, the way in which Ventura Park has grown up over the years means that it comprises half a dozen distinct, but adjacent, retail zones, each with its own car park. This, and the distinctly unfriendly pedestrian environment, means that shoppers will often move between two or three different car parks over the course of one visit, adding to the traffic pressures.

Road improvement works at Ventura Park, Tamworth (17 Jun 2011)

I was therefore relieved to see that improvements are being made to Ventura Park’s overburdened road system, which – in a case of very bad planning – also includes the main access route between Tamworth and the A5 dual carriageway.

With the John Lewis and B&Q developments likely to attract even more visitors to what is already one of the Midlands’ busiest retail parks, these improvements surely can’t come soon enough.

Not what you expect in an upmarket department store

Apologies for the Richard Whiteley-style headline and the rather gruesome photograph, but if Mary Portas was looking for another retail-related programme idea she could do worse than turn her attention to customer toilet facilities – celebrating the good and exposing the horrible.

Customer loos are a staple of most department stores, and a necessity for those that have a restaurant or café. In the context of shops’ facilities increasingly taking the place of those that local councils once provided, many retailers do an admirable job.

As you would expect, John Lewis’s toilets are usually spotless – resplendent with upmarket Dyson hand driers, and showing the attention to detail and superb customer service that has underpinned the recent success of the Partnership’s business. Given the high footfall, the big four supermarkets also do a pretty good job of providing facilities that are clean, pleasant and well equipped – the same qualities that you expect to find on the supermarket salesfloor.

Alas, not all shops’ toilet facilities are, quite literally, as sparkling, particularly where stores are in older buildings or in need of a refit more generally. The example above – photographed yesterday – looks like a dodgy backstreet loo, but in fact it’s the gents’ customer toilets in House of Fraser in Darlington, serving both the restaurant and the wider store.

Let’s be clear – the state of a store’s toilets alone probably isn’t going to put a customer off going there to shop. However, grimy, unmodernised facilities aren’t what you expect to find in a department store that positions itself at the premium end of the market. By all means invest in celebrating the relaunch of Biba – but don’t forget the small, yet important, details that can impact negatively on your brand.

John Lewis logo

No, don’t choke on your cornflakes… that’s a serious question.

My interest was piqued last month when the Tamworth Herald ran a story under the headline ”Striking design’ of unit to be built next to Herald offices’, on the town’s ever-growing Ventura Retail Park.

In it, the piece gave a few more details about what the new unit would be like, describing it as “similar in size to [Ventura's] Marks and Spencer, ASDA and Sainsbury’s” and “one of the more dominant outlets on the retail park.” It added that “while no details of which retailer will move into the building have been revealed, the building’s ‘striking’ design was unveiled last month.”

M&S at Ventura Park, Tamworth (24 Dec 2009)

This immediately got me thinking. After all, there aren’t many retailers, besides John Lewis and Best Buy, who are currently opening massive, ‘strikingly’ designed stores on retail parks. B&Q was another possibility, but the same edition of the Herald had revealed that the DIY retailer was already going to be opening a new store behind Sainsbury’s, at nearby Cardinal Point, alongside a new Next and a branch of Maplin.

Publicly available planning applications are often a good source of extra information, but it’s taken me until now to check out the application for the development in question (0648/2010) – which was submitted at the end of November and approved in January. It seems that a development of the size proposed was actually already approved for this site in 2008, so the application was for a ‘variation of conditions’, with revised plans and elevations, rather than an entirely new proposal.

I was curious to see the ‘striking’ design of the building, so took a look at the elevation drawings attached to the application. Here’s a screenshot (click image to view in larger size):

Screenshot of elevation drawings

Hmmm… a large building with lots of double-height glazing, grey cladding and white lettering. Where have I seen that before? Let’s do a Google Image Search for ‘John Lewis at Home’… (again, click to see it a larger size)

Google Image search for 'John Lewis at Home' (16 Feb 2011)

What do you reckon? In the event that the new store isn’t going to be John Lewis, it’s certainly doing its very best to resemble one.

The idea of ‘John Lewis Tamworth’ may sound far-fetched to begin with – after all, the town is not known for attracting more upmarket retailers, and has a town centre that has become increasingly value-focused. However, John Lewis’s new ‘at Home’ format makes the prospect quite plausible.

Largely based on out-of-town retail parks, four such stores have opened to date – in Poole, Croydon, Swindon and Tunbridge Wells – with two more planned for Exeter (on a city centre site that used to be Debenhams) and Chester. Each John Lewis at Home offers the retailer’s full range of  furniture, furnishing accessories, electricals and home technology, though items from other departments – including fashion, beauty and nursery – can be ordered instore for home delivery or next-day collection.

If John Lewis is looking to plug the gap between its Solihull, Leicester and Nottingham stores, Tamworth’s sprawling and bustling Ventura Retail Park – which attracts visitors from all across the Midlands thanks to its strong offer and easy connections to the motorway network – begins to make good sense as a location.

Of course, two other important debates – what the continued expansion of Ventura Retail Park means for local traffic congestion and for Tamworth town centre – must not be neglected, and key to this is making it easier for Ventura visitors to access the town centre’s attractions.

Still, if John Lewis were to open in Tamworth, that would be rather a fantastic coup, wouldn’t it?

John Lewis Oxford Street, London

Given how long it’s been since the weekly trading figures for John Lewis department stores last recorded a year-on-year fall in sales, it’s little wonder that the 2.2% sales drop announced today seems to be causing a few jitters. 

On the back of this month’s VAT increase and an apparent “astonishing” plunge in consumer confidence, it’s inevitable that any sign of a wobble in trading at the UK’s retail bellweather will catch the eye of commentators. We’ll have to wait for future weeks’ figures to see whether this fall is merely, as John Lewis suggests, a weather-skewed blip, or if it does mark the beginning of something more unpleasant. 

John Lewis Leicester

For the half year as a whole, however – which ends with next week’s figures – it’s hard to argue that a 10% year-on-year rise in sales is anything but impressive, even if the stellar rise in online sales (38.9% up year on year) does to some extent mask a comparatively less strong performance from John Lewis’s shops. Of those, the half-year performances at Cambridge (+9.4%), Leicester (+8.8%) and Oxford Street (+8.1%) are the most improved.

Thinking about the John Lewis sales figures brought to mind my third ever blog post – a whole 170 posts ago – written back at the height of the recession in July 2009 when weakened retailers, post-Woolies, were still dropping like flies. It’s worth placing today’s 2.2% John Lewis sales drop in the context of the trading picture that I described back then. By way of reminder, here’s some of what I wrote 18 months ago:

Giving a picture of slightly longer-term trends, the comparisons given for the current half-year, rather than just the last week, tend to be more insightful.

These remind us just how challenging John Lewis’s trading was between February and April – even after what is now 13 successive weeks of positive figures compared to 2008, Cambridge is still the only physical store to have enjoyed better sales (up 1.5%) over the current 24-week period than it did during the same stretch a year ago.

In contrast, it’s interesting that John Lewis’s worst performing store over the last 24 weeks has been John Lewis Bristol at the out-of-town Mall at Cribbs Causeway, where sales are down a whole 12.5% compared to last year.

Comparing figures for that half-year with the most recent one show just how much things have improved. Cambridge’s recent +9.4% performance is clearly much better than the +1.5% that I wrote about in July 2009, while Bristol – down 12.5% year on year back then – is currently registering a sales fall of only 0.6% for the current half year. Of course, the flipside is that these comparisons remind us how bad things could yet get, if all the worst fears of a double-dip recession are realised.

John Lewis Bristol. Photograph by Mark Leaver

While Bristol was the weakest performing John Lewis store in early 2009, it’s interesting that current half year figures award that slightly dubious status to Newcastle. Sales at the former Bainbridge are down 3.5% compared to a year ago, with Liverpool (-1.3%) the only other store to record a sales decrease of more than 1%.

However, just as I observed back then that the Bristol store’s figures were undoubtedly impacted by the recent opening of Cabot Circus, one must imagine that the opening of Newcastle’s Debenhams-anchored St Andrew’s Way, in February last year, has had a similar effect on the John Lewis up here. In the same way as Bristol’s figures have now smoothed out, it will be interesting to see what the JL weekly stats for Newcastle look like once the opening of the Eldon Square extension is no longer skewing the year-on-year comparisons.

Even with the overall boost in sales and footfall that the Eldon Square extension has surely given Newcastle city centre, it was always likely that there would be some cannibalisation of existing stores. However, the apparent impact of Debenhams’ opening raises interesting questions about how far Newcastle could support any more upmarket department stores, with House of Fraser, Selfridges and Harvey Nichols all having been linked to the city at various points in the last twenty years.

Maybe we should just be content with our John Lewis, Fenwick and Debenhams – after all, since the closure of Joplings last year, it is still two more department stores than Sunderland has…

Hotel Chocolat website (2 Nov 2010)

Upmarket chocolate specialist Hotel Chocolat is to open a store in Newcastle city centre, it has been revealed – its most northerly standalone shop to date.

As highlighted by Flange at SkyscraperCity, Hotel Chocolat is set to open at 29 Blackett Street, close to Grey’s Monument. That site has been empty since early 2009, when the previous occupant, Ecco shoes, moved out.

The Newcastle store comes at a time of expansion for Hotel Chocolat, following its £3.7m fundraising – through the sale of ‘chocolate bonds’ – earlier this year. Other new stores are set to open this year in Belfast, Guernsey, Jersey, Kingston-upon-Thames and London’s Leadenhall Market, taking the retailer’s UK standalone store count to more than 50.

Hotel Chocolat already has a shop at MetroCentre, opened in 2006, as well as selling via John Lewis stores, but this will be its first standalone high-street store in the region. As yet, there are no Hotel Chocolat stores in Scotland.

Peacocks, Northumberland Street (25 Jun 2010)

The arrival of Hotel Chocolat is another vote of confidence in Newcastle city centre, which has had a pretty strong year given the economic climate. Several long-vacant units have found new occupants (such as Peacocks in Monument Mall and Millets in Market Street), while many of the units freed up by retailers moving to St Andrew’s Way have been quickly taken over by other stores.

With US fashion chain Urban Outfitters set to open on the old Green Market site next year, there is a sense that the area around Grey’s Monument could be turning into Newcastle’s fashionable retail quarter, attracting the types of names for whom Northumberland Street is perhaps too mass – or even down – market.

With its Grainger Street shop sat in the middle of these new arrivals, one retailer that will need to up its game in the face of Hotel Chocolat is the traditional market leader, Thorntons. Amid own-store sales falling 4.3% in the first quarter of this year, and no chief executive currently in place, Thorntons has struggled to define its market positioning in recent years. This may only get worse if Thorntons’ plans to “localise in-store ranges” comes to fruition, accentuating the divide that already exists between some of its smarter stores, in good locations, and the more dowdy, uninspiring ones.

What Hotel Chocolat gets right – and Thorntons often doesn’t – is that if you are buying quite expensive chocolates you need a little glamour and sense of luxury to go with it. With the former’s like-for-like sales growing at around 15% this year, Britain’s chocolate lovers certainly seem to be voting with their wallets.

Yet Another Sale

This guest post was written by Simon Barnett. Graham has kindly allowed me to write a few words on the subject of discount retailing. I have experience in this area and regularly contribute to a website about online discount codes.

Reading Graham’s post about his visit to Barnard Castle, I was struck by his observations of the discounting approach that’s been taken by the Edinburgh Woollen Mill chain of stores. Like many retailers, it seems that here is an example of a business that believes that the best way to succeed is by trading at the “bargain bucket” end of the retailing spectrum.

It’s clear that many retailers take such an approach because they believe that serious discounting will lead to a significant increase in sales and profitability. But such thinking may not necessarily ring true. Competing on the basis of price in this way has some inherent dangers.

Damaging the brand

In my local high street there are a number of stores that seem to have cropped up in the last few months. They are selling “everything for a pound”, or are already having a “clearance sale”. They probably won’t be there by Christmas. But they’ll be replaced by other stores with similar product ranges.

As consumers, what do we think of these shops? We may well think that there’s the chance that we can pick up a bargain. But we also know that they are unlikely to sell high quality goods. We probably wouldn’t choose to buy a High Definition television set, for example, in one of these stores. That’s because we tend to think of cheap goods as being of a low quality.

This encapsulates the problem that faces many retailers, both on the high street and when trading online.

If they discount too heavily then consumers will naturally start to question what is being offered. Are the products going to be safe? Will they last? Why were they so much more expensive to begin with?

Once consumers start to question the quality of products on offer, it’s a slippery slope for the retailer. Before long, customers will start to drift towards alternative stores when it comes to making quality purchases.

In short, the brand will have suffered.

Hitting profitability

But this damage to the brand is not the only danger. The problem with discounting too heavily is that it starts eating into margins. This means that the move is likely to be heavily reliant on a significant uplift in sales.

That uplift in sales may not be as dramatic as expected. Alternatively, it could occur but cause its own problems. A retailer would need to consider, for example, whether they would be able to handle a doubling of sales. Do they have the warehouse capacity, the staff numbers and the necessary stock levels?

If not, the increased costs could actually wipe out any gains that have been achieved through the improving sales. Or worse still, the slashed prices could actually cost the retailer more than is earned.

A failure to maintain the low prices, or to provide the required level of service, could lead to yet more problems. Disgruntled customers are often keen to discuss issues with friends, family members and, increasingly, using internet forums.

Understanding online retailing

The internet has allowed many new entrants to appear in numerous markets. It could be argued that it’s never been easier to open a store. It’s certainly never been easier to reach a wide audience.

This has led to many inexperienced business owners looking to the internet as some sort of cash cow. The reality, however, is often frighteningly different to their expectations.

Attempting to compete with other internet retailers by constantly lowering prices is a hazardous approach. Many larger retailers will have negotiated better deals with suppliers, ensuring that they have larger margins to work with. Sometimes a smaller store simply can’t compete on price. At least, they can’t if they wish to remain profitable.

The key to success is surely understanding that selling online isn’t always about pricing strategies. Consumers are actually willing to pay more if they believe that they are receiving high quality products and a good level of service. As mentioned above, negative stories soon spread online, but positive ones do too.

If a retailer can build up a good reputation online then they can actually charge a premium for what they have to offer. Does this mean ignoring pricing? No, but it does mean taking a realistic approach.

Provide great service levels

John Lewis, the UK department store chain, are famously “never knowingly undersold”. They promise to price-match with competitors. By doing so, they ensure that they are seen as offering a good deal. But they don’t desperately discount products. In fact, they won’t price-match with online retailers.

That’s because they know that some internet retailers are simply offering unrealistic prices. But it’s also because John Lewis don’t need to compete on those terms.

They’ve built up a strong reputation. Their staff are generally knowledgeable and customer-focused. These are the things that consumers will pay extra for.

Building a great business should be all about the customer. We all want to feel like we’ve got a bargain deal. But that’s not just about the price – it’s about the entire shopping experience. That’s something that some retailers are still learning.

Clas Ohlson fascia

I’m not sure whether Clas Ohlson’s people are reading this blog, or whether – more likely – the obvious locations for new UK stores are fairly easy to identify.

Either way, I was interested to spot that the Swedish retailer has this week signed contracts for new stores in shopping centres in Cardiff and Norwich – following on from my post, in June, where I suggested that “Nottingham, Cardiff, Norwich, Bristol and Southampton [are] among the top retail centres that could well be on Clas Ohlson’s hit list.”

Both shops are scheduled to open in December, shortly after the previously announced new store at Merry Hill, and will be similar in size to the existing Clas Ohlson shop at Liverpool’s Clayton Square. Their opening will increase the number of Clas Ohlson stores in the UK to ten.

The Norwich store is to be located in unit 13 of the Chapelfield shopping centre, occupying retail space of 1,570 sqm (16,899 sq ft) in what I understand used to be the lower level of the city’s Borders store^{[broken link removed]} – a prime spot opposite H&M.

At 1,640 sqm (17,653 sq ft), Cardiff’s store, in the St David’s centre, is a similar size to the one in Norwich. St David’s was extended and refurbished at the end of last year, with an impressive new John Lewis as its centrepiece, and I’m assuming that Clas Ohlson will occupy one of those new units that has not so far attracted a tenant.

Interestingly, both Chapelfield and St David’s are owned (wholly and partly respectively) by Capital Shopping Centres. With CSC also owning Watford’s Harlequin and Manchester’s Arndale (as I noted here), it will mean that four of Clas Ohlson’s ten UK stores are in CSC locations.

On this basis, how long can it be before CSC’s Eldon Square in Newcastle or MetroCentre in Gateshead also gets in on the Clas Ohlson act?

UPDATE, 30 August 2010: It’s been announced today that Clas Ohlson has also signed for a 1,760 sqm (18,944 sq ft) store in Doncaster’s Frenchgate Shopping Centre. There seems to be no word on the exact location yet, though I’m wondering if it will be the still-empty former Woolies site.

Existing Kingston store

The much-blogged-about Swedish hardware retailer Clas Ohlson published its sales figures for June yesterday.

What’s interesting is that sales for the UK are now being stripped out from those of Finland, giving us a much clearer idea of how the UK business is doing. Total sales were SEK 442m, of which the seven UK stores accounted for SEK 15m. A year ago, the UK business delivered sales of just SEK 5m, with the June 2010 figures representing a seemingly impressive 176% increase – or 203% in local currency. Sales in Clas Ohlson’s home market of Sweden, in contrast, were unchanged year on year.

The trouble, of course, of eyecatching percentage figures like these is that they are not based on like-for-likes – in other words, the year-on-year comparison takes no account of any stores that may have opened or closed in the intervening period.

To give another example, this is why, at a time when the business is expanding rapidly, the John Lewis Partnership’s trading figures – which again show only the raw increase in sales, not like-for-likes – need to be interpreted carefully. There’s no doubt that both the eponymous department store chain and Waitrose are trading well right now, with the latter’s latest weekly figures, published today, showing a 13% sales increase compared to a year ago. It’s just that once you take out the effect of new stores opened in the last 12 months, the actual sales increase in the established stores is inevitably lower than the headline figure.

Clas Ohlson fascia

Apply this to Clas Ohlson, and you realise that while the June 2010 figures are for seven stores (two of which had, admittedly, only been open for a month), the June 2009 stats are for just two (Croydon and Manchester). On this basis, the threefold increase in UK sales is just about what you would expect, especially since two of the five new stores are the smallest in the estate.

By way of an alternative measure, what happens if we look at each country’s sales figures for June 2010 in relation to the number of stores?

• For the UK, sales work out an average of SEK 2.1m for each of the seven stores.
• Finland has 16 stores and a turnover of SEK 35m – so that’s SEK 2.2m per store, a little higher than the UK.
• There are 42 stores in Norway – with total sales of SEK 182m, that’s an average of SEK 4.3m for each shop.
• The rest of the stores – 56 – are in Sweden. If total sales are SEK 210m, that works out at SEK 3.8m per store.

What does this tell us? Well, it basically confirms the trends that Clas Ohlson highlighted in its own year-end report for May 2009 to April 2010. Here, the retailer notes that “the response from customers to the newly opened stores in the UK has been positive and the number of visitors to date has been higher than the Group average”, but that “the conversion rate and average purchase in the UK have been lower than the Group average, which is generally the case in conjunction with the penetration of new markets.”

Looking forward, the report explains how “Clas Ohlson anticipates that establishing its brand name and position in a completely new market will take time, and that the conversion rate, average purchase and sales will gradually increase in coming years.”

In other words, while the sales densities for the UK stores are indeed currently lower than those of the more established Scandinavian branches, Clas Ohlson’s message is that this is just a normal part of entering a completely new market, and that they’re in it for the long haul.

As more UK stores open, and the Clas Ohlson brand becomes more widely known among British consumers, it will be interesting to see how quickly the UK sales densities can catch up with those in the retailer’s more mature markets.

Wool display in the North Shields Wooly Minded (18 Jun 2010)

My coverage of the upcoming Wooly Minded store in Newcastle’s Clayton Street seems to have prompted quite a bit of interest on Twitter, so – never one to shy away from a retail challenge – I thought I’d dig around a little further. 

Given that the best way to find things out is from the horse’s mouth, I paid a visit to the existing Wooly Minded shop in North Shields, where the delightful staff were more than happy to fill me in, and to let me take some shots of the colourful and well-stocked interior of the store. 

Interior of Wooly Minded in North Shields (18 Jun 2010)

As I suspected, the Newcastle Wooly Minded and those in North and South Shields are one and the same business, run by Susan Cain. The South Shields shop is apparently the bigger of the two, but the ladies were telling me that both shops draw in people from quite a wide area, with customers coming from as far away as Hexham. 

Wool display in the North Shields Wooly Minded (18 Jun 2010)

Perhaps surprisingly, the Newcastle branch will actually be smaller than either of the existing stores. However, though the unit faces Clayton Street alongside Tesco and Poundland, it’s easy to forget that the shop is wider than it is deep, given that it backs on to the lower-ground floor of Topshop and Topman. 

Existing Wooly Minded in North Shields (18 Jun 2010)

Reinforcing my impressions from Google Street View, it’s true that neither the North Shields Wooly Minded nor the South Shields branch (which I visited a little later) have hugely eyecatching frontages. In both cases, this is due in part to the predominance of brown – rarely an inspiring colour – and some challenging fascia proportions that result in less than half the shopfront actually being window. However, given the shops’ specialist market and ability to draw in shoppers from outside the area, this is less problematic than it would be for a business reliant on attracting passing trade.

I do still think though that the window displays could have more zing – I love the vibrant colours of all the wool inside the shop, and it would be great if more of this could be showcased to the outside world, instead of the pastel shades that currently predominate in both the signage and merchandising.

Existing Wooly Minded in South Shields (18 Jun 2010)

In Clayton Street, however, having a brand new unit with a much higher proportion of glazing should immediately give Wooly Minded an easier canvas with which to work, and I was reliably informed that the new shop *will* get a bolder and more eyecatching treatment – apparently based around a lime green and black colour scheme, and featuring “flying sheep”.  

Wooly Minded's Newcastle shop (17 Jun 2010)

The Newcastle store will also apparently stock more higher-end wool ranges than the two existing shops, perhaps mindful of the main competition coming from John Lewis and Fenwick, and no doubt also reflecting the significantly higher rental that a city centre spot is bound to incur. 

Interior of Wooly Minded in North Shields (18 Jun 2010)

Though a firm launch date for the Newcastle shop is yet to be set, shopfitters are apparently on site already, with an opening likely in mid to late July.

You might quibble over aspects of the existing stores’ shopfront design and window displays, but my overall impression of Wooly Minded is that this is a business that serves its loyal customers really well, thanks to staff that know their stuff and are passionate about what they do – the hallmark, indeed, of many a successful independent retailer.

If the Newcastle Wooly Minded can replicate this friendly and knowledgable service, while creating a store look and feel that reflects its higher-profile location, there’s every reason to expect that it will be a success.

The empty Oil & Vinegar store this evening (6 Jan 2010)

After work, I trudged through the snow to the delightful Eldon Square Waitrose this evening, though not before giving the store a call to check that it was opening its normal hours. It was, though quite a few shops en route had signs in their windows announcing that they had shut up earlier than usual (a similar picture to elsewhere in the UK, according to Retail Week), including Waterstone’s at the Monument which was citing “staff shortages” due to the weather. The service in Waitrose was, as always, friendly and efficient, alleviating what might otherwise be the stress of negotiating a busy supermarket.

After my Waitrose food shop, I was sad – but not entirely surprised – to notice that the Oil & Vinegar store next door in St George’s Way appears to have closed down. The shutters were down, and the unit looks to have been stripped of both stock and fixtures. I’m not sure how long it’s been gone, but the store was certainly still open when I walked by before Christmas, and is still listed (for now, at least) on the Oil & Vinegar website (below). [Update, 8 Jan 2010: Not sure if it's my influence, but the Newcastle page has now been removed.]

Page for the Newcastle store on the Oil & Vinegar website

It’s a disappointing end for a store that only opened at the end of 2008, and was featured, almost exactly a year ago, as Retail Week’s ‘Store of the Week’. It was, as John Ryan’s review suggests, a really appealing shop, with a rich and interesting instore environment.

However, the problem signs were probably there from the beginning. Regularly walking past on my way to the bus station, it’s fair to say that I’d never seen more a couple of customers in there at any one time – and often there looked to be no-one in the shop at all. Equally, the recent shrinking of the store – moving forward the back wall to reduce its size by about half – started to ring my alarm bells.

So what went wrong? To some extent, I’d suggest that Oil & Vinegar is the kind of shop where people go in, look at the lovely stuff on offer, and leave without buying anything. Certainly, it’s more of a giftware retailer than a place to buy things for yourself, reflected in the Netherlands-based company’s description of itself as a “culinary gift shop”.

On the other hand, Eldon Square’s previous Oil & Vinegar store – a franchise rather than a company-run shop – always seemed to do well. It lasted from 2003 to 2007, and reportedly closed due to supply chain issues, not because of any trading difficulties. (When it shut, I remember there being a notice in the window that suggested it was not the franchisees’ own decision to close down.)

The key difference between the two incarnations, I would argue, is location. The original Oil & Vinegar had a pretty good spot in Earls Way (where Geoff Steven & Son Opticians is now situated), close to the side entrances of both Marks & Spencer and John Lewis, and therefore with plenty of middle-class shoppers passing to and fro. The store, though small, benefited from being wide and shallow, therefore having a much more prominent frontage on the mall than might be expected, given its size.

In contrast, it’s fair to suggest that St George’s Way – the location of the current store - has struggled a little since it opened in February 2008. Two years on, four of the 16 units remain empty, with Argos and Waitrose (both often busy, though rarely thronged) the only major footfall drivers. (Though John Lewis and Boots both have entrances onto St George’s Way, they lead into the lower ground floor levels of those stores; instead, the entrances on the main shopping level above tend to be much more frequently used.)

Most importantly, I think Oil & Vinegar’s particular location within the mall has been problematic – next door to Waitrose but barely visible from its entrance; adjacent to two empty units; only passed by shoppers if they are going to and from the Eldon Square bus station; and deep and narrow in form (so with a limited frontage), rather than shallow and wide. Instead, the layout of St George’s Way and, particularly, the orientation of its escalators seems to makes the opposite stretch, from Waitrose to Old Eldon Square, flow as a busier and more obvious route.

Looking to the future, the Oil & Vinegar website indicates that there are still opportunities to open franchise stores in the UK ^{[broken link removed]}, stating that “following a country re-structure and development strategy Oil & Vinegar UK are looking to grow the UK & Ireland with 8 [stores] in 2009 and 10 in 2010″. If this is so, perhaps we will yet see Newcastle welcome its third – and hopefully lucky – incarnation of an Oil & Vinegar shop.

Fascia of former George Rye store, Newcastle

Walking through Newcastle’s Bigg Market last Sunday, I was interested to see that part of the William Hill bookmaker’s fascia appeared to have dropped off, exposing some much earlier signage underneath (above).

I was also curious to note how the height of the fascia had evidently been increased from what it was previously, with the top portion of the adjacent doorway concealed as a result.

The uncovered ‘Geor’ is, of course, a remnant of the George Rye shoe shop that opened on the site in 1879, and that lasted there for 128 years before finally closing at the end of 2007. Though the George Rye wholesale business continues to operate successfully from its base in Cramlington, the retail operation was seemingly the victim of the Bigg Market just not being a major retail destination any more.

In contrast, in George Rye’s early years the Bigg Market would have been a major retail thoroughfare. In 1885, the Bainbridge department store (the forerunner of today’s John Lewis Newcastle) acquired the Coach and Horses Inn in the Bigg Market; the inn was promptly demolished, with a new three-storey building for Bainbridge’s House Furniture Department constructed in its place.  This opened up a direct route through the store from Market Street to the Bigg Market, creating a short cut that was affectionately known, for many years, as ‘Bainbridge Street’.

George Rye store just prior to closure. Photograph courtesy of Citikey.com

Interestingly, the exposed fascia is not the one that George Rye sported immediately prior to its closure (above); rather, it would seem to be an earlier version that George Rye had already covered up itself. That’s one of the fascinating things about new shopfronts – generally speaking, it’s easier simply to cover up what’s already there, rather than to rip it out. Most of the time, nobody on the street is any the wiser; it’s only when something is unexpectedly exposed that we get a tantalising reminder of what was there before.

The photograph of the George Rye store prior to closure is courtesy of Citikey.com, the free local directory.

Image by Zoran

I was quite chuffed, this morning, to have a short article on web usability published in The Journal. Much of what I wrote is, or at least should be, common sense: essentially, the need to understand what information your customers are looking for, and to give it to them in a way that is clear and engaging. Though the examples I used in the article related to tourism websites, the same principles apply across the board, including to retailers.

To be fair, many of those retailers with ecommerce sites have become increasingly adept at offering an easy and stress-free user experience. On the pure etail side, for example, Play.com’s clean, uncluttered interface makes it a pleasure to use – sometimes, it has to be said, more so than the increasingly complex Amazon.co.uk. Similarly, in more niche markets, many of the sites submitted to my Home Interiors Directory and Garden & Landscape Directory manage to combine a user-friendly online shop with a quirky and distinctive tone of voice.

Among those retailers that straddle both bricks and clicks, JohnLewis.com is particularly effective at conveying those brand values of space, quality and attention to detail that are similarly prominent within its stores. In contrast, I tend to find the Ikea website confusing to use, and normally end up heading to the physical store at MetroCentre instead.

Generally, though, I often find that it’s those retailers with simpler sites – providing basic information about the business, rather than e-commerce functionality – that would benefit most from an online revamp. So, using the example of department stores, how about some candidates for those retailers that I think are most or least effective at managing their basic online presence?

Fenwick website

One retailer whose website has always disappointed me is Newcastle-based chain Fenwick. Though the site’s content has been beefed up of late, and now provides core information about the company and its stores, its imagery and overall appearance is somehow cold and aloof; certainly, there’s no sense of the retail theatre that you get when paying a visit to its Newcastle flagship.

Williams & Griffin website

In contrast, the website for Williams & Griffin – a department store that Fenwick acquired in 2008 - conveys a much warmer and more engaging feel through its purple palette and use of colour photographs. Coverage of individual departments within the store is also more comprehensive than on its parent company’s site. Instead, Willie Gee’s main oversight is failing to tell us, anywhere on its home page or ‘about us’ section, where the store actually is. Thankfully, the ‘contact us’ page reveals that we can find Williams & Griffin in Colchester.

Bentalls website

Over to another Fenwick acquisition – this time Bentalls, in Kingston-upon-Thames and Bracknell – and yet another different set of brand imagery. The layout and content of the site is functional, but the overall look is cheaper and less slick than you might expect for a quality department store brand. Generic smiling women stock photos, an unreadable scrolling ticker, and – worst of all – an @btconnect.com email address (should you fancy the advertised cookery classes) all convey a less than professional image. Equally, the ‘copyright 2006′ tag and lack of any news stories give the impression of a site that is not lovingly maintained.

Beales website

If the Bentalls site conveys an image that seems at odds with its brand, Beales’ problem is that its site struggles to convey much of a personality at all. The home page is dominated – overwhelmed, even – by an enormous offers banner, yet the site gives only a limited feel for what it’s like to shop at a Beales store. Even the ‘about us’ page links to a ‘corporate statement’, its talk about ‘entry price points’, ‘trading policy’ and ‘assortments’ squarely aimed at shareholders rather than customers. Shoppers are unlikely to be wooed by the revelation that “value, at all levels of the market, plays an increasingly important part for our customers [sic] shopping basket”.

Encouragingly, we are promised a ‘new website’, ‘coming soon’ in autumn 2009; there’s even a countdown timer, helpfully informing us that the ’time until launch’ is ’34 days, 2 hours, 10 minutes and 26 seconds’. That’s undoubtedly good news, but it’s always a risky ploy to make such a big deal of an upcoming website revamp – not only are you building customers’ expectations about what they can expect in 34 days’ time (which is fine, assuming that the new site meets or exceeds those expectations), but you’re also effectively saying to shoppers that “we realise our current site isn’t very good”.

Lewis's website

One site that is too new to require a Beales-style makeover is that for the iconic Liverpool-based department store Lewis’s.  The Lewis’s site is largely effective, speaking with a distinctly local voice that successfully conveys the retailer’s independence and uniqueness. The site also celebrates the store’s heritage – with historic photos, and visitors invited to ‘submit their memories’ – at the same time as providing plenty of information about current and planned developments. If you were to pick fault, you might argue that the site sometimes has too much going on – for example, it might benefit from a little more white space, and less content disappearing off ‘below the fold’.

Rutherford & Co website

After so many niggles, we should probably end on a more positive note. One site that I particularly like is that for Rutherford & Co, an independent, family-owned department (or ‘lifestyle’) store based in Morpeth, in Northumberland. Where the Fenwick site fails to do the physical store justice, Rutherford & Co has packed its site with beautiful photographs that effectively convey the rich and quirky instore experience. “Welcome to the sumptuous world of Rutherfords”, the site’s home page declares, and – for once – it really does deliver on its promise.

Thank you to Zoran for making available the image used at the top of this post.

John Lewis Bristol. Photograph by Mattbuck4950

Perhaps it’s a reflection of my status as a retail nerd that one of the first things I usually do on Friday mornings is check out the John Lewis Partnership’s ‘Weekly Figures’.

These weekly stats are strangely compelling in that – probably uniquely for a major UK retailer – John Lewis publishes a store-by-store breakdown for its eponymous department store chain. Hence, as well as finding out today that overall sales in the last week were up an impressive 5.3% on a year ago, we also get to see which stores have been doing particularly well over the last seven days (High Wycombe, up 15.1%), and which ones are looking a bit less healthy (Edinburgh, down 9.1% on a year ago).

Giving a picture of slightly longer-term trends, the comparisons given for the current half-year, rather than just the last week, tend to be more insightful. These remind us just how challenging John Lewis’s trading was between February and April – even after what is now 13 successive weeks of positive figures compared to 2008, Cambridge is still the only physical store to have enjoyed better sales (up 1.5%) over the current 24-week period than it did during the same stretch a year ago.

In contrast, it’s interesting that John Lewis’s worst performing store over the last 24 weeks has been John Lewis Bristol at the out-of-town Mall at Cribbs Causeway, where sales are down a whole 12.5% compared to last year. Bristol, of course, has seen some major retail changes over the past year, the new Cabot Circus development transforming the city centre with its opening of 120 stores – including a relocated House of Fraser and a new Harvey Nichols. One must guess that the new competition from Cabot Circus is, at least to some extent, accounting for John Lewis Bristol’s relatively poor performance.

The fortunes and associated stories of John Lewis Bristol are an interesting illustration of the cyclical nature of retail development. The store’s history goes back to 1980, when it took over the landmark building at Broadmead – adjoining what is now Cabot Circus – that had previously housed Lewis’s Ltd (no relation).

Fast forward to 1994 and John Lewis’s announcement that it was going to vacate that store – in favour of anchoring the shiny new out-of-town Cribbs Causeway mall – inevitably left future prospects for the city centre looking gloomy. After all, losing its John Lewis store is, possibly, any city centre’s worst nightmare.

Since John Lewis moved out in 1998, its old premises have had a rather chequered history. The independent Kingston-based department store chain, Bentalls, had already agreed, in 1995, to take over the building upon John Lewis’s departure – not, in hindsight, one of the better decisions in British retail history. After an expensive refurbishment, Bristol’s Bentalls store only lasted for two years, making an estimated £20m loss in the process – presumably thanks to shoppers flocking to John Lewis at Cribbs Causeway instead.

Though Bentalls managed to dispose of its Bristol store to House of Fraser in 2000, the ill-fated experience left the overall business weakened, paving the way for Newcastle-based Fenwick to snap up the remaining Bentalls stores in 2001 – perhaps something to talk about in more detail in a future blog post.

In its turn, House of Fraser announced in 2005 that it too would be moving out, this time to anchor Cabot Circus, with Primark stepping in to fill the void. With House of Fraser’s new store opening at the end of 2008, the old Lewis’s building will once again come back to life when Primark finally opens the doors next month to its biggest store outside London’s Oxford Street.

Given the property’s status as something of a barometer of Bristol’s changing retail fortunes, it’s a nice touch that the building is going to retain a visual reminder of its fascinating history. Given Primark’s seemingly unstoppable success though, it seems likely that its stay may be a little longer than some of its predecessors.

Thank you to Mattbuck4950 for the use of the photograph of John Lewis Bristol, which is © Copyright Mattbuck4950 and licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Licence.