Arket opens this month, Maje and Sandro also plan new Regent Street stores

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Aug 4, 2017

H&M has announced the opening date for its new brand Arket with the debut store on London’s Regent Street being the latest example of a trend for brand conglomerates to open multiple locations of the shopping street.

Regent Street has increasingly become the thoroughfare of choice for higher-end and mid-market global flagships, winning out over the more mass-market profile of Oxford Street and the limited space on Bond Street.

Arket will open just before a key shopping weekend this month with a debut on Friday August 25. That weekend marks the final summer rush with a public holiday on the following Monday likely to mean a shopping bonanza on that day.

Meanwhile it has emerged that France’s SMCP will open a Maje store on Regent Street, hot on the heels of another of its brands, Sandro, opening there. The company already has Sandro, Maje and Claudie Pierlot stores on nearby South Molton Street, as well as concessions for those brands in Oxford Street’s Selfridges, but said Regent Street is important as the brand can bring “our Parisian style to London on a larger scale in London’s most popular retail and leisure destination.”

The new Maje unit will debut next spring in the space vacated by L’Occitane en Provence, which is relocating. The Sandro store opens later this year.

Meanwhile Arket’s London store debut will coincide with the European online launch for the new brand, although customers who sign up to the arket.com mailing list in advance will be able to access the e-store on August 23 and shop at a reduced rate for a limited period.

H&M has regularly chosen Regent Street to unveil its new brands with both Cos and & Other Stories debuting there in recent years. The company now dominates a whole section of the street close to Oxford Circus with a large H&M, plus Cos, & Other Stories, Arket and the new Weekday store occupying large units there.

Not far away, ever-expanding Coach has moved its London flagship to the former Jaeger store and now has Coach, plus its Stuart Weitzman and Kate Spade New York brands close together.

Inditex also has a strong presence on the street with Zara, Zara Home and Massimo Dutti.