Pets at Home chief consumer officer Kathryn Imrie takes Retail Week on a tour of one of the retailer’s new look stores.
Pets at Home Brentford has been freshly groomed. The West London store is one of the latest new-look formats now being rolled out across the pet care retailer’s estate that it hopes will be the perfect physical manifestation of its new all-in-one-place pet care platform ethos.
The format intends to bring more harmony to the combination of retail, grooming and the independent veterinary practices that operate out of the stores by implementing a new layout, tech upgrades, warmer branding and more space dedicated to services for pet owners.
“We’re on the mission to be world’s best pet care platform and ensure that customers know that we often have the full offer for your pets at our stores,” says Pets at Home chief consumer officer Kathryn Imrie.
“We’re also really elevating our colleague’s expertise because we’ve invested hours and hours of training and 80% of them have a pet so they really understand the bond – the amount they know just blows my mind. But we weren’t really elevating that, so this brings it all together.”
Outside, the biggest change is the new branding, logo and slogan ‘We’re all for pets’, decorated with charming illustrations of cats, dogs and other furry friends. The illustrations replace the pet photography the brand has always used as it found that the images could age the look of the store as photography styles evolve more rapidly in the age of social media.
For now, photography will only be used on the many digital screens found across the store, which are updated centrally.
“We’ve gone digi screen crazy in this store because we want to test them and we’re trying to understand what’s going to work at different locations,” says Imrie.
“I believe if we haven’t got anything that fails in the store, we haven’t pushed it far enough.”
Inside, grooming services and the vet practice have been brought to the fore, instead of tucked at the back and in mezzanines where most currently are. This change, along with updating their look, aims to bring more attention to the broader offer in addition to retail.
The vet area has been freshened with a large welcome desk, price menu screens and, of course, separate cat and dog waiting areas.
It’s accompanied by a new health and wellbeing section, with pet weighing scales and a fold out consultation area. The grooming section now features wide, clear windows perfect for shoppers to watch the action or even snap a picture for social media.
A new nutrition centre is also one of the first things shoppers will meet when they enter the store, with fresh and raw pet food fridges, a treat bar with pick-and-mix and a place for customers to sit down with staff to discuss their pet’s nutrition needs and work out a diet plan.
“Our vets weren’t so keen on us doing raw food because they can see the negative consequences when it’s not done correctly,” Imrie says.
“So, we’ve really invested time with working with them and doing longitudinal surveys because we’ve got over 10 million customer records. We’re seeing that feeding raw can be great if it’s done the right way – so now we’ve created this space where we can do that education and make sure the consumer is making the right choice for their pet.”
Gesturing to the display of posh serrano ham dog treats, Imrie says “the treat bar is a bit of theatre and a bit of excitement. We’ve actually had to source new products that we weren’t selling previously to fill it but now the problem is actually keeping it full!
“We were worried about going a bit more premium in store, that people would think that we’re more expensive.
“But our research said nobody thought we were more expensive, and 40% of people thought we were actually better value. So that’s good news.”
Deeper into the store, Pets is experimenting with influencer capsule collections and cross-merchandising on gondola-ends to create excitement for shoppers preparing to welcome a new puppy or kitten to their family.
Typically shoppers would find the live pets closer to the front of the store, but in this new format the retailer has decided to move them further back next to the aquatics section in the hopes that shoppers may venture through more of the store and discover the wider offer on the journey.
The store is the second of the Pets estate to get the refit, but Imrie has ambitious plans to get the format rolling out across the UK and bring more of what she calls “home knit charm” to the shopping experience.
“One of the things I really love is when you come into our stores is that we’ve got sawdust in our hair, and we’ve been lifting massive big bags of dog food so we’re a bit dusty, but we are really knowledgeable,” she says.
“We can really connect with customers when we’re talking about the things we know about. For me, that’s our home-knit charm, so we’re trying to bring that into stores and make sure everybody feels part of it and feels at home.”
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