Pets at Home has a specialist offer, a service-led proposition and a ‘free zoo’ to entice shoppers. John Ryan visits the Friern Barnet store.

Retail parks are places filled with destination stores. The majority are only accessible by car, owing to generally desultory public transport, meaning that for a retail proposition to succeed it has to have real pulling power.

Pets at Home is a destination store par excellence and its 16,000 sq ft flagship in Friern Barnet, on a spur off London’s North Circular, is a prime example of why pet lovers will fasten their seatbelts and head for the Friern Bridge Retail Park.

In some ways, this is a relatively out-of-the-way development. Yet on a quiet Wednesday afternoon on one of the hottest days of the year, shoppers were filing into the store. And the reason they were doing so became more obvious once inside.

The caveat is worth making, because from the outside the shop looks like nothing particularly grand. Pets at Home chief executive Nick Wood says it is “something of a Tardis”. It is, with the relatively small frontage giving way to a large space within.

Before entering the visitor will notice the small Maginot Line of A-boards and ‘standees’ outside the shop, each of which carries a different promise about the in-store offer. The shopper will have been made aware of the Vet Surgery, the offer available on pet insurance and the existence of the VIP Club. The latter is an acronym for Very Important Pet and serves to highlight what Wood says is one of the principal reasons shoppers visit Pets at Home: “To get advice about their pets.” That may sound like a truism, but it is not the case in every pet shop.

Now step inside and the format, which has moved on since design consultancy 20.20 created the template for the massive New Malden store a little over half a decade ago, is immediately about live animals. Wood says that the focus in any Pets at Home store is on putting live animals centre stage. “Our focus groups tell us that we offer a great free zoo,” he says.

And indeed, the first thing that the visitor encounters is a large glass house with a legend above it inviting onlookers to ‘come and meet our degus’. A degu turns out to be a rat-like creature from Chile that enjoys running on wheels and moving around rapidly. There are 19 males in the degu pen and it’s quite hard not to pause and take a look at what they’re up to.

Service with a smile

The visitor will also have spotted the ‘welcome’ notice quite close to the main door that provides an at-a-glance list of the various services available in store. These range from nutrition consultations to a microchipping service and bear out Wood’s comment about the store’s mission to offer pet care advice.

Next to this there are photos of the store staff. Wood says that many of the colleagues are not only enthusiastic about particular pet categories, but have undertaken extensive training in order to be able to provide appropriate advice.

After that, it’s off to the rest of the store. At this point the benefit of the high-level graphics package that details the various in-store zones becomes apparent. “The aim is to get people to the part of the store they need to be in quickly,” says Wood.

That means icons and pictures are used as much as words in order to get shoppers through the space, and there are live animals throughout. Beyond the degu pen there is a hen house. More accurately, this is a hen palace, such is the scale, with common or garden gravel scratchers on one side and more exotic looking variants on the other.

Wood says that the chicken house has been modified in this store and that the avian offer also includes “finches, which we’re trialling here”.

A brisk walk from front to back will take the shopper past everything from rabbits to reptiles, with tropical fish awaiting at the rear of the store.

It is the range of services and the manner in which they are presented that make this a pet store with a difference, however.

The graphics notwithstanding, it will be relatively easy for the customer to locate the area they have driven to the store for thanks to a very spacious layout. Space is cheap on retail parks, at least when set against high streets, and therefore inserting additional value-add elements may not affect profitability greatly.

Wood instances the RSPCA rehousing area at the back as an example: “We trialled this in Stockport [another large store]. When you think of the RSPCA you tend to think of inspectors. But the other part is around rehousing of animals. Animals, puppies and kittens in particular, tend to get abandoned, particularly in the poorer parts of the country. So we support the RSPCA from a rehousing perspective by bringing them to where the customers are.”

Practically, this means there is a house-like room, fitted out like a front room of the kind where pets are likely to be found, which is the RSPCA Animal Adoption Centre. The invite extended to shoppers by the organisation is to ‘visit our home’, and the area is next to the Groom Room, where doting owners can make their dogs and cats look a little better.

Customer engagement

Mention should be made of the digital features that have been put into this store, ranging from a hospital waiting-style screen for the RSPCA’s home room to mini screens around the perimeter that provide hints on pet welfare. Beneath the latter are the names of members of staff and handwritten notices informing the shopper about what kind of pets they have. This is quite similar in feel to the staff endorsements of books that you find around the shelves in a Waterstones branch and is about offering greater engagement, according to Wood.

The store opened in March and the 350th branch will open shortly in Barnsley. Wood says that both the in-store offer and the interiors are constantly evolving: “If you looked at a store that opened at the beginning of the year and one that opened at the end, you’d probably see half a dozen changes.” This is a retailer that is growing at pace. Pets at Home opened 32 branches last year and Wood says that format roll-out “is an important part of our proposition”. He adds that typically payback on a store of this kind will take place in three to four years - fast enough to fund continued expansion.

This is a highly specialist retail proposition but for pet owners and those who wish to become such, it has great appeal. It is also almost perfectly adapted for the retail park environment - a very different animal from the average high street.

Pets at Home, Friern Barnet

Location Friern Bridge Retail Park

Size 16,000 sq ft

Opened March

Pets at Home store total 349

Interiors Survey

Retail Week is conducting a short survey to learn more about the current trends in store design and the challenges facing the sector, as well as find out what retailers have the best store designs.

The survey should take no longer than 2 minutes to complete and all participants will be in with a chance of winning a £50 Amazon voucher in our prize draw.

To complete the survey go to: tinyurl.com/interiorssurvey