Debenhams Share News (DEB)

(Sharecast News) - Watford is the scene for Debenhams to launch a new department store 'vision of the future', integrating digital features and putting a greater emphasis on services, such as personal shopping and a beauty club. The concept store, which includes new Debenhams branding and a highly flexible layout, will open on Thursday and include a gin bar as well a revamped beauty hall offering a facial, a blow dry, a multibrand 'minibar' area allowing shoppers to experiment with travel-size samples of different brands, and in-store assistants at a beauty 'clubhouse' offering independent advice and a number of 'labs' for men, colour, hair and skin.The in-store product offer will be 25% smaller than similar-sized stores thanks to the use of digital data to analyse customer preferences, while "digital integration" will also be used to encourage customers to visit a store rather than shop online and the Beauty Club community creating a place for shoppers get advice from other members and create buzz for product to be brought into the physical store.Richard Cristofoli, managing director of beauty and marketing at Debenhams, says: "Beauty is a hugely engaging category where customers want to meet, talk and play with the latest products and brands. By creating the UK's first online beauty community and designing Beauty Halls of the Future we are creating easily accessible destinations to explore and discover the latest exciting brands and products."We know that customers have high trust of peer to peer recommendations and aim to capitalise on the collective power of beauty conversations to create Europe's largest Beauty Community."Analyst John Stevenson at stockbroker Peel Hunt said the new store showed "clear and tangible progress" on the Stevenage trial store last year to create a more service-focused environment, "with clear evolution in clothing merchandising, gifts and home" and the beauty hall showed a clear emphasis on experience."Store environment aside, there has also been visible progress in range developments, albeit there is still some way to go yet on this front. Questions on how to roll this across the chain remain unanswered as yet; while the good people of Watford may get the message that Debenhams has changed, the rest of the country may take more convincing."