Next opens new department store in Watford

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Apr 4, 2022

Next has opened its first department store-style location with an upsized opening in the Atria centre in Watford. It comes at the same time as M&S is moving towards a department store model, selling more third-party brands, after UK retail lost Debenhams as a physical stores business due to the impact of the pandemic.

The new Next in Watford brings together its regular clothing and homewares offers, all well as including the beauty ranges that it has been diving deeper into in recent years and adding a Victoria’s Secret to the mix as part of its UK licence deal for the giant US lingerie brand.

The company is also working on another megastore inside the Trafford Centre in Manchester.

It already had a legacy branch of Next in the Atria mall and has closed this, relocating to the site next door to its still-new Next Beauty & Home store in the shopping centre’s extension. 

The new ‘department store’ covers almost 95,000 sq ft across three floors with an extra 4,500 sq ft Victoria's Secret branch that has its own entrance as well as being accessible from the Next branch.

Atria is one of the more successful UK malls with a tenant mix that includes big names such as Flannels, M&S, Mango, JD Sports, Boots, Apple, H&M, River Island, Primark and Zara.