John Lewis boss Peter Ruis has revealed on £800m reboot for the department store chain that has an anchor store at the Westgate Centre in Oxford.
Mr Ruis, the chain's managing director, says expansion is now “definitely something we are looking at”.
The 161-year-old retailer is spending £800m by 2029 on giving its 36 remaining outlets a reboot.
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This is a turnaround from the chain's closure of 16 stores during the pandemic and shedding thousands of jobs.
Mr Ruis said: "Ruis, who returned last year after more than a decade away to lead the revival of John Lewis, told the Guardian: “The store is a perfect invention, and we’ve seen only too well, coming back from Covid, how people have gravitated back to the stores.”
Mr Ruis added that there are “definitely no plans to close anything” and there are parts of the country the department store chain would like to step into.
The managing director, who started his career as a graduate trainee at Marks & Spencer, was credited with bringing fashion back into John Lewis before going on to lead retailers including Jigsaw and Anthropologie.
He said his current job was about bringing “radical relevance” to the group’s once staid outlets.
“We are getting rid of the old stuffy department store and replacing it with something more experiential,” he added.
The employee-owned department store chain, part of the wider John Lewis Partnership, made a £10m profit for the year to January.
John Lewis remains the anchor store at the Westgate Centre after opening as part of the £400m revamp of the centre in 2017.
On the opening day, crowds of shoppers queued at the store's entrance to get a chance to snap up some bargains and special offers.
The chain's Christmas ad, featuring a father and son bonding over a vinyl dance track, which Mr Ruis claims has 'gone viral' as far afield as Germany and Hong Kong, is an indication that John Lewis is hoping to attract teens and twentysomethings as customers, as well as their parents and younger siblings.
Fashion brand Topshop is partnering with John Lewis to be sold in their stores starting in February 2026, and others include Carhartt and Charlotte Tilbury.
John Lewis is also planning to expand a link with Uber Eats on a 45-minute delivery service being tested in two stores, where customers can order products such as headphones and beauty products.
Mr Ruis said he wanted to create “that sense of a day out, but with a more modern vision about that day out,” whether it is picking up a parcel ordered online, having a massage, or going for lunch in the cafe.
Womenswear is the next big opportunity with “some big, announcements coming” on new brands next year after John Lewis became the only national host for Topshop on the high street.
“The brands are queueing up to come into us, whereas that was, you know, a few years ago, we were probably trying to convince them," Mr Ruis added.
“They see all of this change, all this excitement and suddenly the relevance of what we can offer them.”
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