Tag: John Lewis

It appears that small could become increasingly beautiful in retail land judging by the interest shown by merchants in smaller outlets.

For many years it has simply been about getting ever-bigger sheds near large conurbations while small stores in small towns have been left to remainder book sellers and charity shops.

But we could now be experiencing something of a renaissance in the smaller outlet. The mobile phone retailers have realised that saturation has been reached in the larger towns around the UK and are now focusing their attention on servicing lesser towns through stores with reduced footprints and in the case of O2 it is tying this in with franchising whereby it can run these stores from lower volumes.

B&Q is the latest operator to turn its attention to smaller outlets as it looks to better tailor this part of its portfolio in what are typically smaller towns. The ability to successfully edit the range of such stores to local markets is of paramount importance and ultimately determines the success or failure of smaller stores. But where retailers today have assistance with this tough task is through the use of in-store kiosks with broadband connections where orders can be place by customers for home delivery.

There is also a rekindling of interest with smaller stores in the US where the forthcoming opening of Tesco’s chain of smallish neighbourhood food stores is leading to all the main US supermarkets – including Wal-Mart, Safeway and Whole Foods – to take a look at copying the format and using them to compliment their massive sheds.