M&S opens transformed Oxford Street flagship
M&S has opened the doors to its transformed ‘Pantheon’ flagship store on Central London’s Oxford Street.
Extending to almost 100,000 sq ft of trading space, the four storey flagship offers products from M&S’s food, fashion, home, and beauty categories.
The fashion, home, and beauty floors have been renewed with a new R&D concept, which has created a blueprint for future stores. Successful features will be rolled out across the retailer’s wider estate over time.
Key features of the store include a new bespoke suiting offer, a first for M&S menswear, a dedicated Body Shop lingerie room, a babywear room, and a beauty hall offering M&S ranges and third-party brands, including Korean beauty.
M&S said its store renewal and rotation programme is a key priority as the retailer looks to invest in its growth. The Oxford Street flagship is one of six stores M&S is renewing in the capital this financial year, alongside four brand new store openings. Across the UK, two new full-line stores, 18 new food stores, four extensions, and a number of renewals are planned.
Stuart Machin, chief executive of M&S, said: “In 2019, we built the blueprint to modernise our Food business, with a new food format designed to capture the soul of a fresh market. We started at Clapham St John’s Road and have renewed 160 of our food stores since then, including here at Pantheon.
“Now we’re taking that same approach into fashion, home and beauty. Pantheon on Oxford Street, where we’ve had a store since 1938, is our first full-line flagship and our R&D store for Fashion, Home and Beauty. It’s where we’re testing how we make shopping our ranges easier, more curated and more inspiring, from clearer product moments to how the store looks and feels overall.
“It’s a good example of our strategy to protect the magic and modernise the rest, holding on to the quality, style and value people know and trust us for, while making the experience more modern.
“We’ve still got a lot to do modernising our estate, with 25 years of catching up to do. But Pantheon is a big step forward.”