Tesco is gunning to more than double its number of Homeplus non-food stores in the UK.
Tesco Homeplus operations director Alison Horner said the UK’s biggest supermarket will add 10 shops to its existing portfolio of seven Homeplus stores.
She added that Tesco has identified six new sites, but a time frame for openings will depend on how quickly landlords can finalise contracts.
The supermarket giant has tested different approaches in each of its Homeplus stores, but Horner said its most recent launch, at Bromborough in Merseyside, earlier this year is the “most successful store to date”.
She added: “We are a lot clearer about our format now and it will probably be along the lines of Bromborough.” However, she stressed Tesco would continue to refine the format. “We need to do some work on the blue print with [non-food chief] Terry Green,” she said.
Tesco Homeplus stores provide an extensive non-food offer, including clothing and beauty products and Costa Coffee
cafés. They also house Tesco Direct service desks, where customers can order and collect products from its catalogue and web site offer.
Three of its Homeplus stores, including Bromborough, measure 50,000 sq ft – a size that Horner said allows Tesco to optimise its non-food offer. The other stores total about 35,000 sq ft.
Rival Asda has largely adopted the same format for its non-food fascia Asda Living, which it aims to roll out to 300 UK locations. At present, the UK’s second-biggest supermarket has nine Asda Living stores and plans to add a further four shops before the end of November.
However, Retail Knowledge Bank senior partner Robert Clark said that standalone non-food stores are more important for Asda, because it has far fewer UK stores than Tesco. “Asda has suffered from a lack of outlets in the past 10 years,” he said.
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