Marks & Spencer (M&S) is launching its first-ever beauty and clothing-only shop in the UK this autumn.
The British retailer’s standalone boutique will be smaller in format than its traditional stores and situated at London’s luxury shopping destination Battersea Power Station.
It will stock a range of beauty products, as well as a slimmed-down selection of the company’s premium women’s and menswear lines.
The single unit, branded ‘Marks & Spencer’, will not include the retailer’s food and home offering.
M&S confirmed to Cosmetics Business that it is one trial store and that the company is taking a test and learn approach to it.
The concept store comes amid a resurgence in M&S’s fashion business, with its total clothing and homeware sales rising 5.3% to £3.9bn in the year ended 30 March 2024.
Just two years earlier the company had announced a 34% drop in clothing sales.
M&S has also been expanding its premium beauty offering over the past year, securing partnerships with high-end players such as Floral Street and Estée Lauder.
Third-party brands now represent more than 40% of M&S Beauty’s total sales, the company told Cosmetics Business last year.
M&S CEO Stuart Machin told The Times the trial store would “showcase the best of M&S clothing and beauty at outstanding value”.
Battersea Power station is becoming a hotspot for beauty in London, with retailer Boots launching its first-ever beauty-only concept store at the shopping centre last year.
Aēsop, Chanel, Jo Malone London, MAC Cosmetics, Malin + Goetz, Rituals and Space NK all have stores there too.
M&S is just one of many UK supermarkets making a play to be seen as a credible beauty destination by shoppers.
Image credit: Marks & Spencer.
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