Heal’s flagship refurb is ‘a step towards commercial viability’

With Habitat having been acquired by Sainsbury’s early on in 2021 and seeing how Next also bought the scraps leftover from Made.com’s administration process for £3m at the end of last year, it’s does not come as a surprise to hear that GlobalData forecasts a 2.8% dip in the furniture market this year – despite inflation covering up the fall in volumes. 

With this operating environment in mind and knowing that people are more likely to shop for furniture online due to cheaper prices and more readily available discounts and promotions, it’s a wonder that Heal’s has decided to remodel its flagship on Tottenham Court Road at all. 

The store, which has been in that same location since 1840, underwent work to uncover more space into the Fitzroy Robinson north extension of the building, as well as add a ground floor showroom spanning 24,000 sq ft after more than 40 years, which doubled the size of the entire store and returned to its original 1980s dimensions.

The current chief executive, Hamish Mansbridge, joined the esteemed furniture retailer in September 2015 after “a job well done” at Snow and Rock, which “was making money, but not enough”. He managed to turn it around and find a seller three years later. 

Mansbridge’s career began at The White Company where he was finance director for nine years. In his own words, this was “the most exciting period of growth” for himself personally and for the company as a whole. In that time, The White Company had grown its profits from £20m to £120m, and increased its stores from three to approximately 40. 

Throughout his career, Mansbridge has gained experience growing the profits of floundering businesses. Admittedly, when he joined Heal’s in the mid-2010s, the company had been on the rocks for quite some time. According to the chief executive’s approximations, the business had been losing money consistently for 14 years at the point when he joined and his professional opinion told him it would take three years for the business to return to profit.  

“I had been talking to Will Hobhouse, the then-chairman, for about a year about what was happening at Heal’s,” Mansbridge says. “I told him I would be delighted to come and help after getting the job done at Snow and Rock.”

He continues: “It actually took four years for the business to return to growth, so in around 2018/19, we began to break even.”

Talks of a flagship refurbishment began two years ago after the current landlord, General Projects, bought the building in a multi-million-pound investment. The real estate developer also specialises in caring for and refurbishing old heritage buildings, so they were also tasked with undertaking the well over £100m refurbishment of the historic store. 

Speaking about how the refurbishment came about in the first place, Mansbridge says: “To some extent, it was a coincidence that they bought it at that point, but also our lease was coming to an end anyway. So, we would have carried on regardless, but it was a good opportunity to renegotiate commercial terms and to ask the landlord to carry out a lot of the work on our behalf and under our direction.”

The Tottenham Court revamp brought back bits of history, such as the very famous Cecil Brewer staircase that was added to the store in 1917 and the Edward Maufe staircase in “the other end of the building” that was only added in 1936. The interior was repositioned to have the store’s original doors added near the 1936 staircase.

“We’ve brought back bits of history, but at the same time, we understand that things move on and that you’ve got to live with the times, adapt accordingly, make the business commercially viable, and keep attracting customers to come to the store,” he says. “It might be people who haven’t shopped with us for years and they hear about it, or they happen to be passing by, or someone tells them. You want them to be curious about the new store and think, ‘I must go in and have a look’.”

The refurbishment also aimed to make it easier to shop, so the fact that there are now only two floors of equal size, rather than three floors that Mansbridge conceded made “wayfinding quite difficult”, made the set up much more logical. 

Post-refurbishment, customers walk into the sofa display first, as it is “the biggest and most important” department for the retailer. The beds and bedroom section is directly below, where there will be a third staircase connecting that and sofas “in due course”. 

Mansbridge continues: “Rather than being dotted around the building, all of our brand partners are now much more accessible. They’re really happy with it. When you come in, you’re on a route around the entire store. There are both commercial reasons, as well as being striking from the outside, which is why it’s such a statement.”

The unveiling came just as Heal’s release of some research dating back to the 1960s that offered ‘a rare insight into the transformation of the modern home’. In 1960, the retailer found that only two in five homes had a washing machine, three in four owned a refrigerator, and four in five had a landline telephone. 

In the present day, a new study commissioned by the furniture retailer found that 97% of the UK population now considers the fridge to be a must-have item for their home, with other essentials including a king-size bed for one in four people and a smart TV for 42% of those surveyed. 

While it should go without saying that interior trends have changed through the decades, Heal’s has witnessed “the importance of design longevity”, being one of those brands to have introduced iconic furnishings such as the Anglepoise lamp and the ‘Egg’ chair. Style trends changed once again thanks to hybrid working becoming a norm post-pandemic, as three in four homes consider a desk to be the most practical piece, according to Heal’s research.  

Mansbridge has expressed a lot of reverence for the legacy he has taken responsibility for – both to respect the ethos of the brand to craft long-lasting quality furniture and to maintain its survival for “200 more years to come”. In an effort to achieve that Heal’s is currently working with historian David Olugosa, who has a lot of insight into how people’s homes have changed. 

“Home is much more of a haven now and people want to be surrounded by things that might have been deemed a luxury many years ago, and are now deemed more essential,” he says. “It is critical that we understand our customers, the journey that they’re on and how they see us. People who buy stuff online almost always have come into a store to have a look and try the products, so understanding that journey is really important also.”

The new flagship has now been open for nearly a month, yet Mansbridge believes that, “there will be many months of tweaking” before the store looks exactly as management wants it. 

“I’m incredibly proud of it, it’s amazing,” he finishes. “But equally, I’ll look at the little things around the store to see how we can make the shopping experience even better.”