John Lewis to open a further nine department stores this week
John Lewis is to reopen nine more department stores this coming Thursday following the successful reopening of an initial 13 shops last week.
The stores are situated in Cribbs Causeway, Leeds, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Southampton, Tunbridge Wells and York. They also include the retailer’s Peter Jones shop in London.
Bérangère Michel, executive director for customer service at the John Lewis Partnership, said: “The overwhelmingly positive feedback from both customers and partners on our first 13 department store reopenings has given us confidence to open in more locations across the UK.
“We are still reopening our shops carefully and in phases to ensure that our safety measures are absolutely right, and remain prepared to stop and review our plans if need be.”
The retailer said it has already learned some lessons from last week’s reopenings. In particular, it found that some shops were able to increase the number of customers in-store and still maintain adequate social distancing. In addition, it has made in-store signage clearer to help customers navigate the changes.
Michel added: “Although we are not able to offer every single experience that we used to, we are still managing to offer customers a really varied shopping experience that is as close to normal and as enjoyable as we can possibly make it. Customers will still be able to touch products, lie on beds, try on and test wipeable products such as sunglasses, prams, and tech products, and get the personal advice they expect from our partners.”
The retailer will be announcing another tranche of shop reopenings in the coming weeks.
