Over-50s womenswear retailer Bonmarche is to put down roots in more garden centres after a trial run showed the sites delivered encouraging sales.
The Wakefield-based business, which runs 268 stores, tested concessions in three garden centres last year and plans to open 15 to 20 concessions in the next year, many of which will also be in garden centres.
Bonmarche said pre-tax profits jumped 66% to £8 million in the year to March 29 while like-for-like sales rose 10.4% as it also benefited from a store refitting programme.
The results are the first since Bonmarche floated on the stock market last November and represent a turnaround for the business which was sold in 2012 as part of the collapsed Peacock group to private equity business Sun European Partners.
The firm, which is chaired by the former Tesco deputy chief executive Tim Mason, carried out its garden centres trials at Lechlade, Bicester and Andover.
Bonmarche chief executive Beth Butterwick said that gardening was the fourth most popular activity among its customers and shoppers at these concessions tended to be "slightly more affluent."
In the new financial year it plans to add five stores to its estate.
The business said sales from its website leapt 84% last year, and it is working on mobile and tablet capabilities this year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article