- Expand and modernise our city centre stores;
- Continue to extend our existing out-of-town stores while opening new stores where appropriate;
- Continue to improve our presence in retail parks;
- Invest in our High Street stores; and
- Build on the success of Simply Food.
We have achieved a great deal over the last 12 months, opening 75 new stores including two new flagship stores in Colliers Wood and Westfield. We also remodelled a further 24 stores bringing 80% of the portfolio into the modernised format. We continue to build on the significant investment we made in our
property portfolio over the last three years to ensure our stores are in the best shape possible for the future.
We have revised down capital expenditure in property for 2009/10. Although we will continue to operate across the five areas of the plan, we will be giving stronger emphasis to extending larger stores and opening new stores in retail parks.
In 2008/09 we closed 26 stores, 24 of which were Simply Food stores that were
either too small to act as a sufficient pull for footfall, or in markets too small to sustain them. We took these decisions in order to continue to manage costs tightly and focus our investments on sites that better suit our
customers’ requirements.
Modern stores run more efficiently, but they also ensure customers enjoy their shopping experience. They are designed to be bright and contemporary, with easy to shop food halls, efficient systems and a range of hospitality options.
As one of the anchor stores at Westfield in London, we went to great lengths to design a high specification store, fitting for one of Europe’s biggest retail developments this decade. The store is designed to offer M&S; customers an unrivalled shopping experience with a boutique style layout of our clothing brands, improved navigation, and a full complement of hospitality options including a new M&S; Café format. As ever, attention was also given to green features such as solar panel lighting and energy saving systems for refrigeration and heating, in line with Plan A.
We are now able to take much of this specification and incorporate it in our
modernisations across the country, for instance in Liverpool and Leeds which will be remodelled in the coming year.
We have extended a number of out-of-town stores allowing us to offer a greater selection of products to our customers. Culverhouse Cross in Cardiff, Brooklands and Tamworth were all extended in the year.
We have been monitoring a growing trend for customers to travel to retail parks where they can park and shop at a leisurely pace. In response we increased our presence on retail parks in 2008/09 with three key openings in Malvern, Aintree and Cardiff Capital. Since the year-end, we have opened in Swindon Orbital and Longwell Green in Bath.
We continually review our High Street stores to ensure they are the right size and in the right location.
In the last year we relocated in Wrexham and Luton and consolidated two stores into one at Worcester. We have modernised a number of stores including Worthing and King’s Lynn. We have also closed two underperforming stores in Woking and Bracknell. We will continue the process of flexing our store portfolio in 2009/10 to ensure we give our customers stores where they want them, and at a size that accommodates a wide variety of products.
We now have more than 300 wholly-owned and franchised Simply Food stores in the UK. We opened 13 standalone Simply Food stores in 2008/09 in locations including Epping and Dunblane. They join our franchise ‘travel hubs’ which continue to work well, as reflected in Waitrose’s decision to enter this space in partnership with Welcome Break.
We reached the 100-store milestone with our BP service station franchise this year and opened the successful M40 Beaconsfield services in March.
In everything we do, we strive to offer something special – the M&S point of difference. Our cafes and restaurants are no exception, and during the year we broadened our offer so that our customers can choose from a coffee or a snack to a sit down meal. This not only provides an enjoyable store experience for our customers, but encourages them to spend longer in our stores. For many it also tempts them to try new things that they can then pick up in our food hall.
At the same time we are increasing other in-store food options by introducing deli counters, as well as improving our cheese counters and in-store bakery. This builds on our reputation for offering premium fresh produce, and our commitment to provenance – knowing where every ingredient in every product has been sourced.
Our long-term strategy remains in place. We will continue to improve our retail space by increasing and extending into new locations and markets, as well as continuing the refurbishment programme over the next few years. But we will also continue reviewing under-performing stores to ensure we are working the portfolio to its fullest potential.