House of Fraser is launching a small footprint store devoted to fashion to bolster its numbers in town centres.

The new stores, which will be between 40,000 sq ft and 50,000 sq ft – half the usual size of its full-line department stores – will be branded HOF. They will focus on fashion, including its own labels such as Linea, Howick and Untold.

House of Fraser chairman Don McCarthy – who is a board director of Baugur, the Icelandic company behind the consortium that acquired the department store chain almost a year ago for£351 million – said that he wants the own-label business to expand from a£30 million business to a£100 million one.

“We want to make sure that we don’t just look at cities and towns and think that the only option is one big-size format,” he said.

He cited Cambridge as one city that could sustain a smaller store rather than a full-scale department store.

The department store chain has 61 stores in the UK and four are set to open in White City in west London, High Wycombe, Belfast and Bristol.

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