Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
Habitat is to launch four Mini Habitat concession stores within Sainsbury’s supermarkets by mid-November.
The 2,000sq ft stores will follow the same footprint as the brand’s six existing Mini store-in-store formats.
The new locations are Sainsbury’s Monks Cross in York, launching tomorrow (Wednesday October 25); Sainsbury’s Cheadle, Manchester (November 1); Sainsbury’s Newcastle Heaton, Newcastle (November 8) and Sainsbury’s Wandsworth, London (November 15).
Each Mini Habitat will showcase an edited range of over 600 products designed by the Habitat design team in London, with a range of price points across furniture, upholstery, lighting, homewares and textiles.
Customers will be encouraged to touch and feel products on display as well as browse the habitat.co.uk website on integrated in-store digital screens and iPads, which allow access to the full product portfolio of over 4,500 products.
Dedicated Habitat staff will be on hand to explain product features and highlight additional product options online, that can be ordered for home delivery or Click & Collect from over 2,000 Sainsbury’s locations in the UK.
Habitat managing director Clare Askem said: “We’ve learnt lots of lessons from our six trial Mini stores in Sainsbury’s this year and these have been addressed in our upcoming store openings.
“We’ve refined our product range based on customer feedback, while our in-store visual merchandising and service proposition has been adapted to what customers want on a ‘weekly shop’ basis.”
“Our customers increasingly want choice, flexibility and speed, and we are evolving the brand into a truly multi-channel business that allows customers to shop how and when they want – be that online, in-store or a combination of the two.”
She continued: “We believe physical stores will remain important to Habitat which is why we are evolving our store offer and rolling it out to four further shops.”
With over 60% of sales now made online through the www.habitat.co.uk website, this investment in smaller footprint concession formats is aimed at expanding Habitat’s brand awareness with Sainsbury’s customers.
