Nobody's Child and ELC shops to open in M&S stores

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Mar 14, 2022

M&S may be about to lose its CEO, but the company is confidently continuing its turnaround strategy and is reportedly set to open more external brand spaces within its stores. 

Like major rival Next, the firm sees a successful future for itself by including many more external brands and with that in mind, it's planning to open spaces within its massive store estate for labels including Nobody's Child (in which it owns a 25% stake) and Early Learning Centre (ELC) while expanding its Seasalt distribution, The Guardian reported.

While the ELC shop-in-shop spaces don't have a fashion connection, they’re hugely important because a toy shop will be a major attraction for family shoppers. The toy shops will open in 10 stores by the end of this month, including Bluewater, Longbridge and Liverpool. ELC previously had a store at Bluewater in Kent, but that closed sometime ago so it will be interesting to see the impact that the new store has an M&S’s visitor traffic.

Director of brands Neil Harrison said the company aims to become “more relevant more often” to families and that it has already tested ELC products via its webstore.

Along with the opening of the ELC spaces, the company will also double the number of shops selling the Seasalt brand to 20 and will also add the Nobody's Child label to nine of its stores. The company is also planning to take the Jaeger brand that it acquired out of administration in 2021 into its international locations.

Richard Price, MD of the Clothing & Home division, said that the 35 brands on sale through the M&S webstore have accounted for 3.5% of its online sales so far with 1.2 million people buying those brands.

Importantly, the firm said that consumers who shop for those labels tend to spend a lot more and also come back to shop again more quickly.