Desks for a new generation of professional home workers, king-size beds and plush velvet sofas: the upmarket furniture retailer Heal’s has revamped its original London store along with its range to try to win over shoppers amid stubbornly high inflation and a cost of living crisis.
The company has been selling furniture to well-heeled residents of the capital from the same shop on Tottenham Court Road since 1840, long outliving many of its rivals.
Now the city centre site has had a big refurbishment – doubling the shop frontage to 100 metres of windows along what is known as London’s furniture street, and significantly rearranging the store’s interior – to cater to the demands of the modern home.
Heal’s has had a presence on the street for more than 200 years, and while it still bears the name of the family that founded the brand in 1810, its current incarnation is a far cry from its origins bringing feather-filled mattresses to Britain from France.
Heal’s chief executive, Hamish Mansbridge, says the new layout offers a better showroom experience to shoppers who visit the store, or Heal’s six other retail locations across England, to sit on sofas or lie on beds.
Enticing consumers back into stores is on the minds of many retailers trying to persuade their customers to keep spending and visiting shops in the post-Covid world.
“It is a difficult environment, and people are certainly talking about money more,” says Mansbridge.
He is banking on the importance of a high street presence, even in the age of online retailing, which now accounts for half of Heal’s sales.
“The evidence suggests that even when people are shopping online for bigger ticket items, they have been to a store to look at things. Generally speaking, people definitely like to come here and browse,” says Mansbridge.
After Friday’s relaunch of the store, Heal’s has moved back into the left-hand side of the building, into an extension that was purpose-built for the company in 1962, but which it has not occupied since 1983, when the family sold the business.
In more recent times, London shoppers will remember this part of the store as the main branch of the Habitat interiors brand, founded by Sir Terence Conran and friends.
After several tumultuous years, Habitat was bought by Sainsbury’s and closed its doors for good amid the upheaval of the pandemic in early 2021.
After the refurbishment of the Heal’s site – which has been owned since 2021 by the US private equity firm KKR and the property developer General Projects – the amount of retail space remains about the same as before, now split evenly across the ground floor and lower ground, totalling roughly 4,550 sq metres (49,000 sq ft).
Some of the internal walls that previously divided the building into two separate stores have also been taken down, once again revealing some of the original architectural elements, including two staircases.
One of these is home to the shop’s “mascot”, the bronze statue of a cat – which was loved by the author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians, Dodie Smith, who managed the toy department at Heal’s – and which was once mistakenly, and briefly, bought by a customer.
Stories abound about the history of the store itself – which over the years housed the brand’s mattress and fabric factories, as well as fabric department staff who switched to making parachutes during the second world war.
There are also rumours that rooms are haunted by the ghost of Fanny Heal, who made the unusual move for the time of taking over the running of the business in 1833 after the death of her husband, the company’s founder.
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The company’s history has given it insight into shoppers’ changing tastes and domestic requirements, which can be charted using its consumer research from 1960, when it became one of the first British retailers to conduct such a survey. At the time, only two in five homes owned a washing machine, while only three-quarters had a fridge.
In its latest survey, 97% of consumers said they couldn’t imagine living without a fridge, while 42% consider a smart TV to be essential and a quarter value a king-size bed.
Three-quarters of households believe a desk is the most practical piece of furniture after the rise of home working since the pandemic.
Sales of desks and office chairs have held up, Mansbridge says, although not at the volumes seen during the pandemic.
The company describes trading so far this year as “quite lumpy” as consumers adapt to stubbornly high inflation and a cost of living crisis, encompassing its best-ever week of sales in January, followed by a “tough” February. “March and April have been quite up and down. Right now is below where we would like it to be,” Mansbridge says.
“We are selling well at the lower end; the higher end is working well,” he adds. “It is probably the middle which is more challenging: people who would have traded up to something as an investment and find that step a little bit more difficult.”
At the high end, wealthier customers who aren’t having to tighten their belts seem happy to spend: In the past week Heal’s has sold four Eames lounge chairs – known in the trade as an investment piece and costing nearly £8,000 – and it remains one of their bestselling items.
Discretionary spending on gifts and smaller items such as scented candles has unexpectedly bounced back in recent weeks, and Mansbridge says the brand has worked hard to limit the impact of higher costs on the price of its own-brand items.
Heal’s has been owned privately for more than 20 years by Whittington Investments, the investment arm of the Weston family, who also have the high-end department store Fortnum & Mason, as well as a controlling stake in Primark’s parent company, Associated British Foods.
Mansbridge insists the prospect of a sale is “completely off the table” and says the Weston family was supportive of the Tottenham Court Road relaunch.
The collapse of the furniture brand Made.com last year highlighted the challenges of running an interiors brand in the current economic environment, but Heal’s is hoping a flashy new store and upmarket furnishings will retain its popularity among professional households; young and old.
