Dr Martens eyes doubling of store estate after quick coronavirus recovery

Kenny Wilson said Dr Martens’ global store portfolio of 122 stores was small for a retailer of its size and its strong and speedy financial recovery from lockdown had put it in a good place to expand. 

“We feel that for a brand as big as Dr Martens, 122 stores globally is a relatively small number. Would I envisage that we’d try and build that to 1,000 stores? No, I wouldn’t, not in the modern world. 

“However, I could envisage Dr Martens doubling the number of stores over the next five years. There are a lot of cities around the world where we don’t have a store today. Major cities that we’d still like to be in,” he said

When Dr Martens’ stores were plunged into lockdown in March, Wilson noted there had been a “material impact” on sales.

However, he said the retailer was now already “back into growth” due to the strength of its direct to consumer and wider ecommerce channels. 

“In terms of how the business is trading, we’re back into growth now,” he said. “If we look at where we are today, we were impacted in our store business but we managed to make up what we lost in stores through outstanding ecommerce trading. 

“Now, we have virtually all of our stores open around the world, and we’ve seen sustained performance in ecommerce. The business is growing again, which is great.”

In terms of current store trading, Wilson said while footfall in major urban centres was down, conversion rates from customers in-store was much higher than pre-coronavirus. 

Despite the slower footfall recovery of cities around the globe, Wilson said urban centres would continue to play an important strategic role for Dr Marten in the future. To illustrate this, Wilson said Dr Martens had been opening new stores even during the pandemic, including one a few weeks ago in Paris.