If Harvey Nichols can’t differentiate itself quickly, on a regional and global scale, it won’t re-embed itself as a cultural fixture. “The new owners will need to take a long hard look at regional stores to assess whether the cities they’re located in can properly support this. If not, the online presence can fill the gap,” says Neil Saunders, Globaldata’s managing director and analyst.
“Either re-assorting or closing some of the regional stores will be necessary,” says Petersson, explaining that a strong understanding of different cities’ needs, desires, and spending power will be essential to business success.
Investing in experiences
In order to distinguish its USP, Harvey Nichols needs to enhance its stores, treating them as experiential destinations. Goddard has already made big strides in this arena, especially in the London flagship, which she renovated last year to include a wellness space as well as a floor that is meant to house a restaurant with a late license.
Petersson applauds Goddard’s inroads into the wellness space, but thinks Harvey Nichols should go deeper, highlighting a space in the market for experiential offerings in smaller towns. “Most players forget that with less to do, the opportunity to activate the high-spending client in regional cities can have more traction than in overcrowded London, where clients are spoiled for choice,” she says. Currently, Harvey Nichols has six stores across the UK and Ireland, as well as outposts in the Middle East and Hong Kong.
Evidently, Harvey Nichols’s renovations are still evolving. In the bidding period, the company announced that the proposed bid minimum (between £50-60 million) would reportedly go toward retail renovation. While there’s potential in regional outposts, Le Rolland describes the potential flagship investments at the Edinburgh and London locations as an opportunity to create “cultural hubs” for a curated mix of high-margin brands and services, including spa treatments, fine dining, and hospitality — ideal for luring in wealthy consumers and international shoppers.
This is timely. Per Bain, experiences are leading growth in the luxury market, concurrent with consumers seeking meaning over basic ownership. In fact, luxury experiences are overtaking luxury physical goods in 2026, with consumer sentiment around the former growing at 1.5 times the pace of the latter. Hospitality and fine dining, private jets, and yachts all showed year-on-year growth from June 2025 to June 2026, signaling an appreciation for lived moments.
The gap for innovation is there, especially as Gen Z — infamously disloyal to brands — and Gen Alpha become increasingly important consumers for department stores. “Given that younger customers are keen to live in real life, not just on their phones, the stores lend themselves well to providing an event space,” says Critchlow. “You could tie that in with influencers, designers, and loyal customers.”
Harvey Nichols needs to innovate, fast. In 2024, Kantar published a paper predicting that, in 2035, Gen Z and Alpha will constitute 43% of the population. It noted that Gen Z consumers are more likely to shop in-store, proffering a seamless blend of digital and physical retailing. The study added that Gen Z need to see the mission and purpose behind a company they’re shopping with, such that a basic transaction process won’t cut it. For Gen Alpha, the paper reported a tendency to shop online, but with the caveat that 69% enjoy in-store shopping, versus 63% who enjoy shopping online. The takeaway for Harvey Nichols’s proprietor? Bricks-and-mortar stores need to wow.
