John Lewis will reopen more stores next week

John Lewis has announced plans to open nine more stores on Thursday, 25th June, following the reopening of an initial 13 locations this week.

The latest stores returning to action are Cribbs Causeway, Leeds, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Peter Jones, Southampton, Tunbridge Wells and York. Further reopenings will be announced in the coming weeks.

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“The overwhelmingly positive feedback from both customers and Partners on our first 13 department store reopenings this week has given us confidence to open in more locations across the UK,” says Bérangère Michel, Executive Director for Customer Service at the John Lewis Partnership.

He adds that the retailer is applying lessons learned from this past week, including the crucial role played by newly created host roles, who help customers adapt to new social distancing measures and new ways of shopping.

“We found that in some shops we were able to increase the number of customers and still maintain robust social distancing, and made our signage clearer in order to help customers navigate the changes,” Michel comments.

“Although we are not able to offer every single experience that we used to, we are still managing to offer customers a really varied shopping experience that is as close to normal and as enjoyable as we can possibly make it.”

“Customers will still be able to touch products, lie on beds, try on and test wipeable products such as sunglasses, prams, and tech products, and get the personal advice they expect from our Partners,” he concludes.