Waitrose Limited, trading as Waitrose & Partners, is a brand of British supermarkets, founded in 1904 as Waite, Rose & Taylor, later shortened to Waitrose. It was acquired in 1937 by employee-owned retailer John Lewis Partnership, which still sells groceries under the brand. Its head offices are located in Bracknell, Berkshire.
Next plc (styled as NEXT) is a British multinational clothing, footwear and home products retailer, which has its headquarters in Enderby, England. It has around 700 stores, of which circa 500 are in the United Kingdom, and circa 200 across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Next is the largest clothing retailer by sales in the United Kingdom, having overtaken Marks & Spencer in early 2012 and 2014. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
British Home Stores, commonly abbreviated to BHS and latterly legally styled BHS Ltd, was a British department store chain, primarily selling clothing and household items. In its later years, the company began to expand into furniture, electronics, entertainment, convenience groceries and fragrance and beauty products.
GUS plc was a FTSE 100 retailing, manufacturing and financial conglomerate based in the United Kingdom. GUS was an abbreviation of Great Universal Stores, the company's name before 2001, while it was also known as the Glorious Gussies amongst stockbrokers. The company started out as Universal Stores, a mail order business created by the Rose family. In 1931, Isaac Wolfson joined the mail order company and would, through a series of takeovers, turn it into a retail, manufacturing and financial conglomerate, becoming Europe's biggest mail order firm and with over 2,700 physical stores. His son, Leonard Wolfson, followed him as chairman, to be succeeded by his nephews David Wolfson (1996–2000) and Victor Barnett (2000–2002). During the 1980s, the business divested much of its physical retail and manufacturing subsidiaries under Leonard Wolfson to concentrate on mail order, property and finance. In October 2006, the company was split into two separate companies: Experian which continues to exist, and Home Retail Group which was bought by Sainsbury's in 2016.
Budgens Stores Limited, trading as Budgens, is a chain of grocery stores in the United Kingdom. The business was founded in 1872 by John Budgen, who opened the first shop in Maidenhead, Berkshire and was incorporated as a private limited company on 28 May 1962. The company is a subsidiary and retail fascia of Booker Group, part of Tesco plc.
Argos Limited is a British catalogue retailer operating in the United Kingdom and formerly in the Republic of Ireland, acquired by Sainsbury's supermarket chain in 2016. It was established in November 1972 and is named after the Greek city of Argos. The company trades both through physical shops and online, with 29 million yearly shop customers, and nearly a billion online visitors per annum. It has also franchised overseas to countries such as China.
Habitat is a brand of household furnishings in the United Kingdom and the main homewares brand within the Sainsbury's group.
MFI Group Limited was a British furniture retailer, operating under the MFI brand. The company was one of the largest suppliers of kitchens and bedroom furniture in the United Kingdom, and operated mainly in retail parks in out of town locations. Anecdotally, it was said at one stage that one in three Sunday lunches in the United Kingdom were cooked in a kitchen from MFI, and 60% of British children were conceived in a bedroom from MFI.
Home Hardware Stores Ltd. is an independent home improvement retailer located in Canada. Co-founded by Walter Hachborn in 1964, and headquartered in St. Jacobs, Ontario, the company has close to 1,100 stores that operate under one of four banners: Home Hardware, Home Hardware Building Centre, Home Building Centre, and Home Furniture.
ILVA is a Danish chain of furniture stores, offering mostly Scandinavian-style bed-, dining- and living room products. The company was founded in 1974, and currently runs eight stores in the Nordic countries. It also had three stores in Britain for about two years, but these were forced to close down during the 2008 financial crisis.
Cadogan Group Limited and its subsidiaries, including Cadogan Estates Limited, are British property investment and management companies that are owned by the Cadogan family, one of the richest families in the United Kingdom. They also hold the titles of Earl Cadogan and Viscount Chelsea, the latter used as a courtesy title by the Earl's eldest son. The Cadogan Group is the main landlord in the west London districts of Chelsea and Knightsbridge, and it is now the second largest of the surviving aristocratic Freehold Estates in Central London, after the Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor Estate, to which it is adjacent, covering Mayfair and Belgravia.
Hygena is a dormant brand of fitted kitchen and furniture in the United Kingdom.
Allied Carpets was a small retail chain specialising in floor coverings, mainly carpets (80%) and then also laminate and wood flooring and curtains, in the United Kingdom. Following financial difficulties and several changes of ownership, the company was dissolved in 2015.
Stollers is a British-based home furnishings retailer. It is located at Walney Road, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England. It is currently one of the largest single site furniture stores in the country.
Dwell is a retailer of furniture in the United Kingdom. The company was originally established in 2002 as Dwell Retail Ltd., and opened its first store in London the following year. The company was acquired by British retail group DFS in August 2014.
EziBuy is a New Zealand and Australian multi-channel retailer. It sells clothing, homeware and gifts through a multi-channel model in both countries.
Loaf is a British company, which operates as a high street retailer. Charlie Marshall founded the retail brand, which was formerly known as The Sleep Room. Their showrooms are mainly focused around the London area.
Schreiber was a brand of fitted kitchen and furniture operating in the United Kingdom.
The retail format influences the consumer's store choice and addresses the consumer's expectations. At its most basic level, a retail format is a simple marketplace, that is; a location where goods and services are exchanged. In some parts of the world, the retail sector is still dominated by small family-run stores, but large retail chains are increasingly dominating the sector, because they can exert considerable buying power and pass on the savings in the form of lower prices. Many of these large retail chains also produce their own private labels which compete alongside manufacturer brands. Considerable consolidation of retail stores has changed the retail landscape, transferring power away from wholesalers and into the hands of the large retail chains.
