John Lewis intends to reopen of nine more stores on June 25, after it initially reopened in Kingston and Poole on Monday and 11 more later in the week.
John Lewis has introduced a raft of social distancing and safety measures in stores including “customer service hosts” to welcome customers and manage queue numbers, prominent signage and protective screens at checkouts and service desks.
The retailer has also limited other customer services such as beauty consultancies and closed fitting rooms for the foreseeable future.
John Lewis said there had been a positive response from customers returning on June 15, when top-selling categories included homewares, electrics, children’s clothing and haberdashery.
The stores reopening on June 25 are:
- Cribbs Causeway, Bristol
- Leeds
- Liverpool
- Milton Keynes
- Newcastle
- Peter Jones, London
- Southampton
- Tunbridge Wells
- York
John Lewis Partnership executive director for customer service Bérangère Michel said: “The overwhelmingly positive feedback from both customers and partners on our first 13 department store reopenings this week has given us the confidence to open in more locations.
“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.
“We are already applying lessons learned from our first store openings earlier this week. We’ve learned how crucial our newly created host roles – which help customers adapt to the new social distancing measures and new ways of shopping – are in ensuring customers have an enjoyable experience.
“We found that in some shops we were able to increase the number of customers and still maintain robust social distancing, and made our signage clearer in order to help customers navigate the changes.
“Although we are not able to offer every single experience that we used to, we are still managing to offer 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, and get the personal advice they expect from our partners.”
No comments yet