Rivals may tire of hearing it, but when it comes to innovation in retailing today, no one is doing more than the John Lewis Partnership.

And John Lewis’s extension of its Never Knowingly Undersold price pledge to the internet is another indicator that the once stuffy organisation understands as well as any business how the multichannel age is changing retail.

The move isn’t without risk, particularly in the electricals market, where it is likely to have most impact and where margins are wafer thin. John Lewis has covered its back by applying Never Knowingly Undersold to bricks-and-clicks rivals only and not pure-play etailers, but that doesn’t diminish the significance of the move.

Tomorrow’s customer will have no time for price pledges that apply only to one channel, or retailers that charge one price online and another in stores. The transparency that multichannel retail offers, and the increasingly complex combinations of channels, means retailers will need to be consistent in their prices and in their messaging.

Retailers might have to accept a margin hit in competitive categories, and John Lewis’s move will undoubtedly put pressure on Dixons and Kesa. But it’s a tide no retailer can hold back and nor should they try to, because ultimately - and with a handful of exceptions such as Amazon - the winners online will be multichannel retailers able to leverage their brands and their store portfolios.

Treating the web as an integral part of the business and leveraging offline points of difference online - as Boots has with its Advantage Card tie-up - will give multichannel retailers advantages pure-plays can’t match.

Stores of the future?

And where does that leave stores? There will probably be fewer of them in the future but the real implication of the growth of multichannel is that the ones retailers do have need to be better, combining great service and design, and integrated with their other channels.

The good news is that’s what retailers are doing, as those who were at the Retail Week Interiors Awards on Tuesday will testify. You can read about the winners, and the latest in store design, in our new quarterly interiors supplement, the first issue of which is free with today’s issue. Edited by our stores editor John Ryan, the UK’s leading expert in the store design field, it will be the definitive guide to store design and shopfitting. We hope you enjoy it.