Over 100,000 products across homeware, hobbies, pets and crafts will be available. Customers can filter by department, find their local store, view the latest offers and check the status of their orders.

Since opening its first store in 1989, The Range has gone onto introduce a D2C offering in 2016 and launched it marketplace for third-party brands in 2020.

Rebecca Haynes, marketplace manager at The Range, recently spoke to ChannelX World. She noted: “Since launching the Marketplace service back in 2020, we’ve served millions of customers. As a well-established UK retailer with a recognisable brand, marketplace partners benefit from The Range’s huge online presence and loyal customer base.

“By joining our 1,100 marketplace partners, you can list your products on our well-established website, which holds a significant market share across various categories. We offer a simple, category-based percentage model with competitive commission fees or a unique cost-based model. The commission is the difference between your regular sell price and the retail price we set. But most importantly – No sale, no fee!”

Currently, The Range’s marketplace offering focuses on its core categories: furniture (indoor and outdoor), DIY, garden, toys, pets, and home décor. However, Haynes stressed the retailer could be open to expanding this to areas such as electricals, tech, gaming, white goods, children’s products, and sports equipment.

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Womenswear fashion retailer Boohoo is owned by the wider Boohoo Group, which today comprises a portfolio of 13 leading fashion brands, including BoohooMan.com, Nasty Gal, PrettyLittleThing, Oasis and Warehouse. The group was founded by Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane, who launched Boohoo.com from a small office in Manchester in 2006. The purchases of PrettyLittleThing and Nasty Gal followed in 2017. The duo remain in charge of the business today. 

Up-to-date fashion at great prices
The aim of the Boohoo brand remains to deliver up-to-date fashion and great prices, alongside choice, quality and customer service. Boohoo states its core values as being fun, fashion, social and inclusive. Its widely shared social campaigns have included #confidencebyboohoo and #boohoofilterfree. 

Boohoo and BoohooMan have more than 8.9mn active customers and the company has experienced a 38% uplift in revenues. 

As a fast fashion retailer Boohoo has, in the past, been criticised for its environmental impact but the company was one of only two (alongside H&M) of 15 of the UK’s largest fashion retailers invited and which actually shared evidence in person at a UK Environmental Audit Committee meeting in May 2024. 

The evidence hearing asked retailers in the fashion industry to share the steps they have taken to reduce their environmental impact since a 2019 report. In March, Boohoo also agreed to stricter controls around its eco claims, setting out clearly what products qualify for its eco ranges and giving precise information as to why certain fabrics count as sustainable. Boohoo will provide regular updates to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on what it is doing in this regard. 

Working hard on sustainability
Like many in the fast fashion sector, Boohoo is working hard to become a more sustainable brand. The company was among the first wave of retailers to begin charging shoppers to return online items, introducing a £1.99 charge in 2022, as it sought to reduce the impact of returns. This followed similar moves by Next and Zara. 

The Boohoo profile is one of six in the RetailX UK Fashion Sector 2024 report.

These include web traffic, share price over time, company revenue and company profit. As well as an in depth case study highlighting consumer behaviour including: M&S, Kurt Geiger, Secret Sales, Zara and Cider.

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In its final year results ending 31 December 2023, Crew Clothing’s EBITDA increased by 26% to £17.1mn, up from £13.5mn the year prior. Profit for the year after corporation tax was £12.2mn, up from £9.6mn the year prior.

The lifestyle brand – which has 105 stores, a D2C offering and is available via the Next, M&S and John Lewis platforms – saw instore sales increasing by 5%. Its ecommerce sales grew by 18%, and third-party retail sales were up by 28%.

Crew Clothing credited its investment in key areas of expansion, “including developing online presence and optimisation of the bricks-and-mortar estate”. In May, it opened its latest store in Canterbury. While, at the end of 2023 the lifestyle brand said a new paid social strategy had helped to increase new customer sales.

Looking ahead, the retailer stressed it remained “committed to growth across all areas of the business”, and to expanding its store network by targeting key locations in the UK. It also plans to expand its product ranges, widening its breadth of goods available across menswear, womenswear and childrenswear and key gifting categories including sleepwear and accessories.

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In a bid to enhance customer experience and boost revenue, the collaboration will add further third-party sellers over the months to come. Marketplacer’s platform will enable the supermarket to find and easily connect products from third party sellers at scale. 

Peter Filcek, marketplace director at Tesco, said: “We knew that we wanted to open up access to a wider range of products for Tesco customers; we could see customers were searching for products that we didn’t sell, and that we could be front of mind for. It became clear that exploring this advanced technology for industry partnerships would be advantageous for the customer experience and ensure a seamless integration experience for our seller partners.

“In a dynamic shift change, this marketplace model allows us to take a more holistic approach to customers’ household needs and give us a competitive edge. We’ve benefitted from the Marketplacer team’s deep ecommerce expertise and understanding of our business in navigating some common scaling challenges to stay on the right track. Our secure and scalable marketplace proposition now looks set to attract additional sellers, therefore streamlining that onboarding process is critical for us to grow and scale.” 

RetailX Event’s dedicated marketplace conference will return this October. ChannelX already has Debenhams, eBay, Google, Mountain Warehouse, Sony Playstation, THG and many more signed up to speak.

New to 2024 are the Executive Brief’s, SubscriptionX II and Retail MediaX II. A timely update to be kept abreast of trends and analysis in a roundtable, panel and working group format.

Registration is open now!

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More sports consumers shop online in some way, shape or form than don’t and, compared to other retail sectors, the proportion of online shopping in sports goods is relatively high.

When those that buy both online and offline are factored in, sports has one of the highest levels of hybrid retail of any sector. At around 80% of consumers buying sports online mostly or sometimes, it sits with nutrition and fitness supplements (85%) and consumer electronics (82%), and above fashion (78%), cosmetics and beauty (75%) and homewares (72%).

This hybridisation is a result of sports goods and equipment being a ‘try-before-you-buy’ industry that sees consumers sticking with specific brands. Take running shoes as an example. To pound the pavements or to do ultra-marathons, one’s footwear has to be a perfect fit, which is why many keen runners have a brand and style with which they stick. While initial purchases may be made instore, like-for- like replacements are then often repeated online.

Conversely, since new running tops may need to be tried on, the consumer heads instore. The same applies to sports accessories, equipment and technology, which need to be handled before they are bought. Of course, many will be trying instore then buying online – as is seen in other retail sectors such as fashion – and so the channels used are increasingly hybridised.

However, the picture varies from country to country. The hybrid model where shoppers are buying equally instore and online is strongest in the US, Australia, UAE, Egypt, China and the UK – although it is also relatively strong in several other markets. In many of these, there is also a very strong use of stores for buying sports, with Canada interestingly enough showing a good degree of hybrid and instore-only retail and relatively low online-only shopping.

India stands out due to its heavy online-only sports shopping cohort (57%), significantly ahead of all other markets. This is likely down to the country’s burgeoning young middle-class who want to be fit and healthy but who are very much mobile-first when it comes to shopping. Similar demographic- driven statistics are seen in South Korea and China, where sports markets are the preserve of a young, relatively wealthy mobile-first generation.

This is a global trend, which sees 70% of sports shoppers around the world using smartphones to buy sports goods some or all of the time at rates behind only fashion (72%) and cosmetics (79%). This is seen in how online sports retail is predominantly carried out on mobile devices globally, accounting for 65% of total online sports goods spend.

Social sports commerce
Part of the push into shopping on mobile, especially among younger consumers, comes from a growing proportion of it happening on social media.

Research shows that 41% of global consumers have purchased sports goods through social media in the past year, ahead of fashion, homewares and groceries. Of these, 29% have used TikTok to buy sports goods, while a surprising 22% have shopped via YouTube.

This rise of social commerce in sports retail is part of a wider trend in retail to sell through these sites. Many consumers – especially as they become mobile-first – are spending more of their time on social media.

As with fashion, social media is the ideal place to showcase sporting triumphs, tips and hacks, as well as being a perfect venue for influencer content around sports kit, which is naturally photogenic.

The natural next step is to turn that promotional content into something shoppable and, with TikTok’s user base growing globally, it’s no surprise that many consumers are now using it as a platform for purchase.

Similarly, YouTube’s success in sports goods social commerce relies on its global ubiquity, its popularity and that it is often a place where consumers who are into a specific sport or hobby turn to for tricks, hacks, highlights and comment, making it an ideal platform for both sports advertising and commerce.

Subscriptions score big with sports goods shoppers
According to ConsumerX data, 18% of sports goods shoppers buy their sporting materials through subscriptions – a figure comparable to the level of subs seen in fashion and cosmetics, and only 11% behind groceries, where subscriptions have long been a natural fit.

The reasons behind sports subscriptions services are myriad but coalesce around two main themes. Firstly, as said, sports shoppers often buy the same products on repeat, be that running shoes, tennis balls or water bottles, with regular replacements as their exercise or sports regime dictates.

Secondly, they are driven by cheap, free and fast delivery. As we have already discussed, a relatively large proportion of sports shoppers want the items they buy online delivered the same or next day, which drives them towards subscription services. Indeed, 59% of global sports shoppers receive free delivery through their subscription services, with 18% of shoppers saying it’s why they subscribe.

These numbers lag behind other retail sectors where subscriptions are more entrenched but they do point to how the sports sector is one that may well be ripe for expansion of clever subscription services in the future.

This excerpt from the RetailX Global Sports Goods 2024 report was authored by Paul Skeldon.

Download the full report for more on how sports shoppers are buying differently, as well as the main factors driving this change. It also looks at what we might expect in the future and how retailers and brands can plan for that.

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The brand started life in 1975, when Arnacio Ortega opened its first shop in A Coruña, Galicia. Its first website was launched in 2010. Zara is now the largest brand in a wider Inditex group, alongside Pull & Bear, Stradivarius and others. The group has 5,962 stores and sells in 213 markets around the world. In full-year 2023 financial results, Inditex reported EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax and asset write downs) of €9.9bn (+13.9%) on turnover of €35.9bn (+10.4%).

Across the group, online sales grew by 16%, and accounted for 23% of retail sales. Store sales grew by 7.9%. Inditex mobile apps had 152mn active users during the year and its websites saw 6.5bn (+10%) visits in 2023. Its social media channels had 251m followers. Most Inditex sales are made in Europe – 14.8% in Spain and 48.7% in the rest of Europe. Zara net sales came in at €26.1bn (+10% year-on-year) and pre-tax profits at €5bn.

Oscar García Maceiras, chief executive of Inditex, said at the time: “Inditex’s performance in 2023 has been excellent. Our teams have been able to take advantage of the opportunities to keep growing profitably. We are investing to drive future growth and continue to offer an attractive remuneration to shareholders.”

In its 2023 full-year statement, Inditex set out its strategy thus: “The growth of the group is underpinned by the investment in stores, the advances made to the online sales channel and the improvements to the logistics platforms with a clear focus on innovation and technology. Sustainability is a key part of the strategy.”

A Zara Pre-Owned platform is now available in 16 European markets. Via the platform, shoppers can donate, repair or resell used clothing. A Sustainability Innovation Hub works with more than 350 start-ups on innovations such as making new materials made from textile waste.

In 2024, Inditex is holding live-streaming events in the US and UK, as part of plans to explore new ways to communicate with customers in order to improve their shopping experience. It is also investing €900mn a year in 2024 and 2025 in expanding logistics in order to underpin its potential for growth in the medium to long-term.

On its website, Zara links to its pre-owned service from home page navigation. Its website is mobile- first, with a focus on finding the right products from its range through search, navigation, and recommendations, offered throughout the customer journey. Shoppers can engage with the brand by signing up to its newsletter, following it on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Pinterest and YouTube, or using its live chat service.

This company profile, authored by Chloe Rigby, is one of five in the RetailX Top500 Brands D2C: Europe 2024. It also looks at:

• Apple
• H&M
• Ikea
• Uniqlo

This new report explores how brands from around the world sell to shoppers in the 30 countries of the European Economic Area (EEA), plus the UK and Switzerland. We rank brands by footprint sizes and by performance in four value chains, which are designed to assess how brands build profitable businesses around the customer, the product, operations and capital.

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Sephora UK’s regional expansion is growing fast with a recent opening in Manchester’s Trafford Centre, and the announcement of two new stores opening in the North East – Newcastle’s Metrocentre and Eldon Square.

“We’ve once again harnessed the power of listening to our customers to shape our expansion plans around the UK, and the appetite that our beauty community in Birmingham made was profoundly powerful,” said Sarah Boyd, managing director, Sephora UK.

“The demand we have seen on social media and customer enquiries, particularly on the back of the Manchester opening and Newcastle announcements has been phenomenal, and we are thrilled to announce that we will be welcoming Birmingham customers in the iconic Bullring location in Winter 2024.”

Customers can shop from a selection of brands available across makeup, travel, fragrance, skincare, haircare, grooming and wellness. The latest store will also provide in-store beauty services.

Beauty buyers in the Midlands should also become familiar with Sephora UK’s new MySephora Loyalty Programme, which launched earlier this month. This new tier-points based loyalty program is designed to engage and reward Sephora UK’s community through benefits such as deluxe birthday gifts, upgraded delivery proposition, and early access to brand events and sales.

Learn more about Sephora in an exclusive interview with Alexandre Meerson, chief digital, data and technology officer EMEA, Sephora, as part of the RetailX Global Beauty 2024 Report.

Meerson spoke to Emma Herrod about the beauty retailer’s approach to omnichannel and personalisation.

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The technology retailer will work on 50 of its largest stores, which will see the inclusion of new categories. Health and beauty, pet tech, portable power, and fitness will all be introduced in line with customer needs and the latest trends.

Seasonal ranges will include the launch of categories such as BBQs and gardening equipment in summer, back to school tech & supplies in the autumn, and new gifting ranges & services in winter.

“We couldn’t be more excited to get these products into the hands of both our customers and colleagues” explained Vicky Bennion, Currys’ head of new and growth categories.

“It’s great that customers can go in stores, test drive the tech, and also speak to our capable & committed colleagues to understand our products, better than anyone else. From the latest hair styling equipment and automated litter trays to satellite broadband and treadmills – we’re helping everyone enjoy the latest and most amazing technology.” 

The megastores investment plans are already underway, with the Swindon, Merry Hill, Brentford and Solihull megastores all newly relaunched.

This aligns with Currys’ commitment to its omnichannel model, comprised of 301 stores across the UK&I and an online presence. It also follows the recent announcement of the reimagining of 65 store layouts to make the retailer’s mid-size superstores more navigable. Overall, this means Currys plans to transform a cumulative 115 stores throughout 2024/25 – building on its retail fundamentals, critical to making the customer shopping experience easier.

Read an exclusive interview with Currys’ services director Steve Pendleton on the retailer’s repair offering, in the DeliveryX Returns 2024 report.

Pendleton explains how Currys has seen a normalisation of second-hand shopping when it comes to technology and why this is a “real result” for consumers and the environment.

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Hobbycraft stressed, whilst simplified access to the online world has led to a shift in prioritisation for many retail businesses, it regards stores as a vital hub for its customers with arts and crafts shopping seen more as an experience than a simple transaction.

“Our continued store roll out across the UK illustrates the importance we place in providing customers with a physical presence to gain the full art and craft experience,” said Dominic Jordan, CEO at Hobbycraft.

“We want to build a communal space for crafters across the UK to build their passion for craft and enhance their creativity, with seven new stores scheduled to open in 2025 and further expansion thereafter”

Every new store consists of a dedicated digital crafting space and haberdashery area allowing customers to test drive products before purchasing, which has led to a year-on-year rise in sales of stitching kits (11%) and fabric by the metre (43%).

Furthermore, regular workshop sessions are hosted by a store colleague designed to give everyone the opportunity to master a new craft or refine a long-time favourite, leading to a year-on-year rise in workshop sales (23%).

Some 325 new job roles have been created over the last three years, with a further 105 roles expected to be created with Hobbycraft’s scheduled store openings for 2025. Store colleagues have the opportunity to join Hobbycraft’s unique Artisan programme, providing them with additional training to develop their writing and presenting skills, learn how to effectively use social media, and participate in training days centred around business skills and development.

In addition, Artisan colleagues are provided with the opportunity to pitch and produce products and help develop Hobbycraft’s workshop programme, all while continuing to deliver world class customer service to customers.

Hobbycraft is ranked in the Top100 retailers in the tenth RetailX UK Top500 2024 report

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Health, nutrition, sports and beauty products will be on sale with Holland & Barrett colleagues on site to give personalised advice. The first concession will open in Next’s Martlesham Heath store in Ipswich on 10 July 2024. This will be followed by an opening in North Shields and a third site later this year.

“We’re very excited to partner with Next with our brand-new concession formats which will compliment Next’s retail offering, giving its customers easy and convenient access to the latest and trending health and wellness essentials,” said Nick Gerrard, property and format director at Holland & Barrett.

This latest partnership is part of a wider strategy that will see Holland & Barrett invest £70mn in physical retail. The wellness retailer plans to open new stores, refit and relocation. Holland & Barrett said in 2024 and 2025 it is investing in at least one store a day through its store refresh and refurbishment programme.

“Holland & Barrett has an ambitious three-year transformation strategy to become our customer’s first choice for wellness products, advice services and solutions,” Gerrard added.

“To help achieve this we’re investing in revitalising our store experience, taking a flexible approach to space planning and piloting new locations and store footprints.”

While Next was ranked in Elite in this year’s RetailX UK Top500 report in part due to its third-party brands offering. Through its Total Platform business, it now operates a UK multichannel business of brands including Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Reiss and Joules, taking a financial stake in many of them.

Next is ranked Elite, and Holland & Barrett sits within the Top50 of the tenth RetailX UK Top500 report.

Download the full report for a strategic overview of the UK retail sector; an interview with Sue Harries of Elite retailer Screwfix; analysis of the UK Top500 and why are these retailers so good.

There are also company profiles on Amazon, Ikea, Asda, Dunelm, Boden, Richer Sounds and Very.

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