Retail Market: Refurbishment of its flagship store will help Brown Thomas to meet growing competition from suburban centres and Henry Street. Gretchen Friemann reports
The department chain Brown Thomas is spending €15 million on extensive refurbishments at its flagship Grafton Street store in Dublin to strengthen its trading position in the run-up to the opening of leading UK retailer, House Of Fraser, in Dundrum Town Centre.
Over the next two years Brown Thomas will expand its designer, cosmetic and fashion lines by jettisoning most of its lack-lustre furniture and homewares products. It is also to relocate its audio-visual department to the lower ground floor, which is set to host an upgraded range of men's clothing and accessories. Ladies fashion, footwear and accessories, where sales growth is understood to be highest, will stretch over the first and second floors.
The overhaul was prompted by consistently dismal sales on the second and third floors, where the home furnishings sections are housed, compared to surging demand on designer fashion and cosmetic lines.
According to Ms Ann-Marie Cregan, buying director for Brown Thomas' homewares department, "both floors have been way out of sync in terms of returns per sq ft for some time now". She attributes the multi-million makeover to a renewed concentration on the company's core business of fashion.
She said: "Furniture was never really part of Brown Thomas' original business model to the same extent as fashion and cosmetics were. I think the reason that we've had such an extensive range for the last 10 years was a result of the Switzers takeover where homewares was much more an integral side of the business."
Ironically, it was the exit of Switzers' former owner, House of Fraser, that originally enabled Brown Thomas to build on its exclusive reputation when it moved into the redeveloped Switzer's Grafton Street headquarters in 1990 and acquired its regional outlets in Cork, Galway and Limerick.
Now the formidable UK retailing giant will return to the Republic in spring 2005 with a massive 12,335 sq m (133,000 sq ft) outlet in the new Dundrum Town Centre, forcing the Canadian billionaire, Mr Galen Weston, to spend €15 million on a store makeover to defend his company's increasingly threatened market share.
Ms Cregan confirmed that the store overhaul was in response to House of Fraser's arrival. She said: "We've known they were coming to Dublin for three years now and over that time we've had to ask ourselves what we can improve and how we can be better than them."
The company's solution is to devote a second floor to its popular ladies fashion and accessories department while limiting home furnishings to products that are in keeping with "themed" displays.
Described by the store as the "Living Division", the new third-floor home furnishings section promises to offer consumers a "unique" way to decorate their homes.
Rather than pieces of furniture lumped together in one section, Brown Thomas is adopting Selfridges' shopping as theatre strategy by presenting a certain look, such as a minimalist kitchen or an art deco livingroom, in its entirety with only those product lines integral to the style on sale.
According to Ms Cregan, all of this is about "moving away from the department store tradition of multiple home furnishing lines, such as those on china and glass wear, and instead moving it onto a different level by inspiring people to look at different styles which they can develop in their homes."
Work began on the "Living Division" section last January and since then the store has been heavily discounting products on its second and third floors in a rush to offload redundant stock. The new department, due to be unveiled in April, means home furnishings will be reduced from an original floor space of 3,158 sq m (34,000 sq ft) to just over 1,858 sq m (20,000 sq ft).
The second phase of the multi-million overhaul will then kick in as ladies fashion and footwear, two sections Ms Cregan claims have been "very tight on space", are expanded onto two floors.
Brown Thomas intends to boost the number of designer labels on offer and enlarge the range of existing ones.
Louis Vuitton, which is currently housed in a prominent position on the ground floor, is set to have its space more than doubled with product ranges on other labels, such as Gucci, Prada and Chanel, also set for a substantial increase.
The final phase of the multi-million refurbishment will be the transformation of the lower ground floor, which currently houses footwear, women's lingerie and menswear, into what Ms Cregan described as a "men's products world".
Brown Thomas hopes this expensive store fit-out will be enough to defend its market position against the increasingly high-profile anchor tenants cropping up in suburban shopping centres as well as the influx of multi-national fashion heavyweights into rival Henry Street.
