City, Liverpool, Bluewater and Kingston Stores as part of its partnership with The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG). The London 2012 shops are showcasing more than 600 official products, and the retailer is also helping to furnish lounge and reception areas at Games venues. Street reports strong trading for the London 2012 shops.


“It has been well above expectations, and there was a spike for Christmas gifting,” he says, noting how pleased he is with the quality of the merchandise. He adds: “We are very confident and will give over more space to it, for instance in our Oxford Street store.” New concepts are also being introduced to existing stores


as they are refurbished. Refurbishment of John Lewis Cheadle was completed in October 2011, and has seen the 16-year-old store become the first to showcase its Beauty Retreat concept. Premium beauty brands such as Decleor, Blink and Jessica are being used to deliver services including facials, manicures, eyelash tinting and threading. Other new concepts in the store include The Kitchen, a Mediterranean-style restaurant serving meals and sharing platters, and a new concept electronics department, which allows customers to fully interact with products in the electri- cals and home technology ranges for the first time. The idea of ‘experience’ is becoming more important to all


Andy Street with former Olympic athlete Lord Sebastian Coe (left) reports strong trading in John Lewis’ London 2012 stores, which are part of the retailer’s tie-up with this year’s Olympic Games


sq ft. John Lewis has identified at least 10 locations that could support a store of this size and the assortment available in each will be tailored to the particular catchment area. Another new confirmed development in the pipeline will


be in the centre of Birmingham. Although there is already a store on the outskirts of the city in Solihull, Street says this is an example of where the retailer can create greater demand by investing in new space. To be situated on top of New Street Station in the city centre, Street says it will be quite different from the Solihull shop – which he describes as more of a local store – and a draw for consumers from across the region. He adds that while the new store will also be different from


the established Selfridges store in Birmingham city centre, he expects it to similarly attract consumers who make a special trip into the centre of Birmingham to visit the store. In fact Street, who hails from the Midlands himself, was appointed in May 2011 as the first chair of the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership, which has been set up to aid economic rejuvenation in an area with a population of almost 2 million.


Game plan Within its existing store estate the retailer is also innovating to keep like-for-like sales rising. John Lewis is operating offi- cial London 2012 shops within its Oxford Street, Stratford


John Lewis stores. Other recent initiatives include a touring retail installation called the Fashion Pavillion. Created by Grimshaw – the architectural company behind the Eden Project – the installation was designed to create an inspira- tional space to showcase fashion collections. Private-label designer collaborations shown in the installation included Clements Ribeiro and Tracey Boyd. It was able to be configured in different ways for stores including John Lewis Oxford Street and John Lewis Cardiff. Finally, we could not interview Street without mentioning


the much-discussed 2011 Christmas ad campaign, and his thoughts on this in a way sum up the retailer’s thinking about how the business operates. The £6m campaign, which featured a cover of


The Smiths classic Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want was expected to be viewed by at least 44 million people at least once through TV, in-store, online and social media marketing channels. While Street says the results and impact of the retailer’s Christmas ad campaign have yet to be fully analysed it takes the same long-term view as it does for other areas of the oper- ation. “For any ad campaign we see what sales do, but we are also trying to build a brand over time, so we are not looking for immediate sales conversion.” He adds that giving consumers the idea that John Lewis is


a retailer for people like them is crucial, and adds that one metric that suggests the ad resonated with a large number of people is the 4 million YouTube hits it received. Whether its future developments are store-based, online or


in emerging channels such as mobile, perhaps the key to John Lewis’ continued success is that it does always make sure it delivers a proposition that lets its customers get what they want, and increasingly how they want it too. l


spring 2012 9


Visits to the site from mobile phones on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2011 were up 127% on the year before, and sales were up 65%


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