John Lewis to expand into Europe

|©DE BIJENKORF

John Lewis, the iconic British retailer, is taking its first physical venture into Europe with the opening of seven shop-in-shops in partnership with the Netherlands’ leading department store, de Bijenkorf.

 

The first three shop-in-shop departments will open in spring 2016 at de Bijenkorf’s flagship stores in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. This will be followed by additional openings in Eindhoven and Utrecht by the end of next year and in Amstelveen and Maastricht in 2017. 

 

The John Lewis departments will be between 28m2 and 46m2 (300ft2 and 500ft2) in size with the retailer’s in-house store design team coordinating the look and feel of the retail space.

 

On offer to customers will be the best of John Lewis’s own-brand home and lifestyle products across bed, bath, living and gifting assortments. European customers have been able to shop with John Lewis online since 2011 as the brand employed a web-first expansion strategy ahead of opening stores based on the success of online performance.

 

However, this is not the first time the retailer has gone global; earlier in 2015, John Lewis opened 14 shop-in-shops across Singapore and the Philippines and by 2014 it had opened seven shop-in-shops in South Korea.

 

Andy Street, managing director, John Lewis, said: “We’re delighted to be debuting our first European shop-in-shop and de Bijenkorf is the perfect partner to enable us to bring John Lewis to a new customer base and country. Our existing shop-in-shops in Singapore, the Phillipines and South Korea have been well received and are trading well. Whilst we remain committed to our UK physical expansion we hope to announce more international collaborations in 2016.”

 

John Lewis operates 45 shops across the UK (32 department stores, 11 John Lewis at home and shops at St Pancras International and Heathrow Terminal 2) as well as johnlewis.com. It is part of the John Lewis Partnership, the UK's largest example of worker co-ownership with all 30,000 John Lewis staff as partners in the business.

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