Marks & Spencer has big plans for the Benelux

Multichannel in Amsterdam

This week M&S (re)opened its first Dutch store,
with a surface of 500 sqm, in Amsterdam. It is a special combination of online and
offline shopping: M&S calls its latest location “a showcase for the future
of retail to improve the customer experience”.

The store has an ‘e-boutique’,
where shoppers can look at pieces of clothing virtually. Not all clothes can be
taken home immediately, but everything can be ordered in the shop, via iPads of the staff or the mobile website on a smartphone.

At this brand new concept store customers will
not only find clothing: they can also come by for a number of convenience
products, such as sandwiches, salads, wine, food and ready-meals.

Dutch start

That M&S launches this multichannel formula
in the Netherlands, is not a coincidence: according to Laura Wade-Gery,
responsible for multichannel at M&S, online shopping is well established in
the Netherlands and the Dutch customer has already learnt to appreciate the
many advantages of this way of shopping.

With this e-boutique M&S improves comfort
for customers even further: they get to see an expansive collection, without M&S
having to invest in more square meters. Talk about a win-win situation…

Further expansion in Belgium and France

Marks & Spencer’s ambitions in the Benelux reach further: in
Amsterdam and in The Hague the chain will open a flagship store offering the
complete assortment of food, clothing and living accessories. The store in
Amsterdam will be a massive 4,000 m², including a food hall and a restaurant.

Belgian customers, who already got a new online
shop in November, can go shopping in Brussels from 2015. According to M&S, Belgians use the international delivery system M&S offers on its website
the most.

Paris will get three extra stores this year
alone and in Luxembourg the online activities will be expanded this week.

Collaboration with BP gas stations

The M&S comeback takes it even further: the
British retailer will also bring M&S Simply Food to the mainland. These
shops, which are adjacent to a gas station, have about 700 fresh food products
such as ready-meals, sandwiches and basic products on offer.

M&S has reached a franchise agreement with
BP, which has been the partner for more than 160 M&S Simply Food stores in
Great-Britain since 2005. The opening of the first M&S Simply Food in the
Netherlands is planned for September in Utrecht. Five more locations in the
Netherlands will open up by the end of this year.

Comeback after twelve years

Financial problems were the cause of the
departure of M&S in 2001. The 38 locations on the European mainland had to
close, so all attention could go to the British market.

That is all a thing of the past: M&S has
been working on a comeback and from now on wants to position itself as a
multichannel retailer. The opening of the first shop in Paris in 2011 clearly
was only the beginning.