With plush carpets and staff members positioned at every turn, department stores were once the kings of the high street, but as the retail landscape has changed these mighty retailers have had to come up with innovative ways to engage and delight shoppers while keeping a close eye on costs.  

To find out which retailers are firing on all cylinders, Retail Navigator by Lumina Intelligence compiled a ranking of the most productive department stores operating in the UK today calculated by each retailer’s total sales per employee. Here’s where they land. 

 

Selfridges has come out on top when it comes to the productivity metric, with each employee representing £270,000 of revenue for the London-based department store.  

Though you may assume Selfridges keeps a sharp productivity level by maintaining a lean team, the retailer actually has a high number of employees compared with some of its fellow luxury department stores.  

If you take the very simplistic view of employees per store, which overlooks the proportion of employees that work on its digital business, Selfridges has roughly 780 workers per store – more than any other retailer on the table.  

That’s three times as many as Fortnum & Mason, despite running one fewer location; roughly double the number of employees per store than Harrods; and about 340 more per store than Liberty has in its single store.  

Events and experiences 

Selfridges’ online success obviously has a lot to do with its position on this ranking, but the retailer’s executive for retail, Meave Wall, also points to the store’s reputation in the world of experiential retail. 

“Selfridges is known for creating immersive and world-leading retail spaces,” she says. 

“That’s down to our extraordinary team members who know how to amaze and delight our customers with experiences that keep them coming back. We love to keep finding ways to engage our customers with new and exciting ideas, and are focused on continually developing unique collaborations and unmissable destinations for them to experience.” 

Some of the recent collaborations that have caught shoppers’ attention include its swimwear activation with Kim Kardashian-owned brand Skims, its cuddly toy Fish & Chip shop with Jellycat (which became a TikTok sensation racking up hours-long queues) and its ongoing ‘Sportopia’ summer events where shoppers can traverse a 10-metre climbing column or have a boogie at the children’s disco.  

Harrods has also been leaning into the experiential but with a distinctly more decadent approach. Notable recent examples include customers being offered complimentary glasses of Moet & Chandon for its 175th anniversary and last year’s opening of the Prada Caffè, which has been tagged on Instagram more than 14,000 times. 

Fortnum & Mason made investments too. Last year, it unveiled the result of renovations to its third floor as a gourmet wonderland for foodies, featuring a studio kitchen, copper gin vacuum and a hamper emporium set alongside an array of tools and books aimed at cooks.  

Change at the top

Management teams at some of the UK’s most-famous department stores have been subject to a shake up of late. Here are some of the most recent:  

 

 

The second most productive retailer, just shy of the top spot by about £5,000 per employee, is Liberty.  

We can’t imply there’s a link to higher staff numbers equalling a higher productivity rate, but Liberty also comes third on the table as the retailer with the most staff per store. Disproving the trend somewhat is John Lewis with 602 employees per store (second to Selfridges), but ranking sixth from the top on sales per employee – that could be set to change, says Retail Navigator senior retail analyst Beth Bloomfield.   

“An expected uptick in sales at sister company Waitrose could lead to a further cash injection from the wider John Lewis Partnership (JLP) to strengthen its department store proposition in the next few years,” she says.  

“The news that it is to upgrade its beauty hall later this year in its flagship Oxford Street store should be welcomed, with new executive director Peter Ruis noting the retailer would roll out a host of enhancements across its estate in 2024.

“Yet, with store numbers having contracted heavily as a result of the pandemic, I’d question if it should be revisiting its store proposition now that the channel is resurgent.”  

Beauty battlefield

John Lewis isn’t the only retailer with big plans for its beauty hall: Selfridges has just completed a year-long revamp of the hall in its London flagship after Liberty opened the doors to a “first-of-its-kind fragrance destination” just a few months ago.  

 

Retail Navigator’s Bloomfield says this area is a key battleground because the activations and in-store theatre are funded by the beauty brands.  

“Beauty continues to be a lucrative category for the department stores,” says Bloomfield. “Harrods has had success with its standalone beauty stores H Beauty. They also help the brand to evolve outside of its home city, London, and openings have been targeted to key cities across the UK.”  

Harrods now has five H Beauty stores in Bristol, Edinburgh, Lakeside, Milton Keynes and Gateshead significantly boosting its total store numbers.  

Taking offline online 

Another way department stores are looking to drive growth is by expanding their digital operations, which also opens them up to audiences based outside of their home turf.  

We’ve seen marketplaces filled with third-party brands expand in the likes of Next and M&S, which are proving lucrative and creating a new flow of consumers drawn in by a brand and then encouraged to browse the retailer’s own-brand offer online. Retail Navigator’s senior retail analyst Kate Doherty says it’s something we’re set to see more and more.  

 

“The surge in established retailers creating marketplaces online could potentially lure previous department store customers who enjoy shopping across brands in one location,” she says.  

“This is a capital-light approach that brings new brands to the retailer’s audience. Debenhams is a good example here, having been relaunched by Boohoo as an online marketplace model.” 

Chasing loyalty  

Like the rest of the industry, we’re also seeing increased appetite from department stores for investment in their loyalty programmes.  

Selfridges launched theirs last year, offering their ‘Keyholders’ “exclusive invites, first looks, free shipping and monthly prizes”, while Harrods began a points-based programme with exclusive event invites for H Beauty shoppers at the end of 2022.  

“The introduction of SelfridgesUnlocked last year helps us take our customer relationships to the next level,”  says Wall. “The open-to-all community gives Unlocked Keyholders full access to the very best of Selfridges, including priority access to product launches and exclusive events.” 

John Lewis is also in line for a new loyalty scheme, says Navigator’s Bloomfield.  

“Its much-discussed pan-partnership approach – combining the strengths of Waitrose and John Lewis together – should give the retailer real opportunity to test whether elements of John Lewis could be brought into larger Waitrose stores, saving the costs of standalone stores which had hurt its bottom line after it overexpanded prior to the pandemic,” she says. 

“Its pan-partnership loyalty scheme is also expected this year, which may give more clues to its future strategy for the two brands together.”  

While many of these retailers rely heavily on heritage and tradition, it seems that in today’s retail landscape, it is embracing digital modernity and innovation that will give them the edge over the competition.

Methodology This ranking was compiled using Companies House data for the UK, reviewing retailers who operate in the department store sector and whose annual turnover was more than £100m in 2022/23.Revenues recorded up to and including June 30, 2023 are classed as 2022/23.Sales denoted with an ᵉ are Retail Navigator estimates.The analysis was based on data compiled by Retail Navigator, a trusted business development tool powered by Lumina Intelligence, offering curated insights and expert analysis on the UK’s leading retailers.

Topics