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H&B International is one of the world’s leading...
…health and wellness retailers and the largest in Europe supplying its customers with a wide range of vitamins, minerals, health supplements, specialist foods and natural beauty products. With over 145 years of experience in the industry, our name is a familiar sight in almost every major city and town across the UK and is becoming increasingly more visible further afield, in markets as diverse as the Netherlands and Malta to the UAE, China and India.
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Standard stores: our stores vary in size averaging at 1,100 sq ft, with smaller standard shops selling our core traditional products across the supplements, fruit, nuts and seeds categories. Larger stores have a more extensive range of health foods, including frozen, chilled and sports nutrition alongside a wide range of natural beauty products.
We want our stores to be full of discovery, where our customers can touch, feel and interact with our products. That’s why we’ve been introducing new store features over the past five years including the Pick n Mix stations with dried fruit, snacks and seeds, the Tea Bar, where our customers can purchase their favourite infusion and the popular Oil and Vinegar station.
More stores: in 2015 we opened the doors to our first Holland & Barrett “More” store in Chester. These are the largest stores in our portfolio. The More stores are designed to take the experiential element of our store proposition to the next level, giving our customers access to the widest selection of health food and natural beauty products on the high street.
The More stores introduced our new Deli Counter, offering a wide selection of olives and sundried tomatoes along with much more. The Natural Beauty area is also much larger, with a huge range of make-up, cosmetics and haircare completely free from parabens, SLS and Microbeads. Customers are also able to make their own products personalised for them at our Make Your Own’ counters
At around 5,500 plus sq ft the More stores have a huge range of vegan and vegetarian-friendly foods, as well as wheat-free, dairy-free and gluten-free products covering all of the main Free From categories defined in legislation, from gluten and dairy free through to nut, egg and fish allergies. In addition each More store includes a Sports Nutrition area where trained associates can measure customers’ Body Mass Index, hydration levels and fat percentage.
We currently have five More stores in Chester, York, Plymouth and Marble Arch.
We are proud to be not just a financially successful business, but an award winning one too. Below is a selection of our recent awards:
- Ranked Number 7 in The Sunday Times Grant Thornton Top Track 250
- The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise: International Trade
- 2016 Retail Week Speciality Retailer of the Year Award
- 2016 Retail Week Rising Stars Awards - IT or Technology Individual of the Year
- Customer Service Individual of the Year 2016
- Coventry Telegraph Business Award 2016 – Retail Business of the Year
- Midlands and Yorkshire Contact Centre Awards 2016 – Support Person of the Year
- Natural Beauty Retail Awards 2016
When it comes to rewarding our loyal customers, we focus on offering them the best advice and solution we can. Holland & Barrett International launched its Rewards for Life programme in 2011. With over 10 million members in the UK, the programme is free for customers to sign up to and offers four points for every £/€1 spent in store, online and via direct mail. Benelux also has its own version of the loyalty card.
Rewards for Life customers are spread far across the globe. Premiering on the UK high street, members now shop with Rewards for Life cards online from Russia to Gibraltar, from Lithuania to Kazakhstan.
2014 saw the launch of the Rewards for Life mobile app, helping to cater for a younger Holland & Barrett audience looking to rack up points on the go.
We believe in innovation not just for innovation’s sake, but in sourcing products to fulfil our customers’ health and wellbeing needs from the comfort of their high street. In 2015, we set out our aim to become the UK’s largest Free From retailer with the launch of the largest Free From food range available in the UK and the country’s first ever Free From concept store –Holland & Barrett More.
Catering for the needs of the estimated 10 million of food allergy and intolerance sufferers in Britain, our proposition listed 600 Free From products at launch with the aim to go on to list 3,000 products, covering all the main Free From categories defined in legislation, from gluten and dairy free through to nut, egg and fish allergies.
This wasn’t just a business move for us. One of the drivers for the new proposition was the personal experience of our former CEO Peter Aldis whose son has a nut allergy. This experience prompted Holland & Barrett to partner with national charity Allergy UK, which campaigns to ensure allergy is not a forgotten condition, and provides advice, information and support to people with allergies and food intolerance.
Holland & Barrett International’s wellbeing ethos means charity is a big deal. Our own foundation Healthy Hope supports fundraising efforts of our associates across our business with the key focus on health and wellbeing, education relating to health, wellbeing and the environment and the protection and improvement of the environment.
Every year we donate a large amount of money from various fundraising events to Rainbows Children’s Hospice in Loughborough. Here, life-limited children and their families can find care and support.
At Holland & Barrett we don’t just want to be good for our customers, we want to be good for the planet too. That’s why in 2007 we launched the Plan-it Green project to ensure we are environmentally responsible retailers. We are very proud of our achievements here:
We were the first retailer to abandon plastic bags in store, six years before the 5p charge was introduced by the Government this year
We are the only national retailer to have introduced an entire range of toiletries free from parabens and sodium lauryl sulphates
We look to source over 95% of our products from suppliers in the UK to considerably reduce the need for sea and air freight
We have introduced carbon offsetting initiatives with the Carbon Trust and switched to renewable materials for all advertising materials
In addition to these achievements, we are particularly proud to be the first national retailer to ensure all of our products are free from plastic microbeads which have been found to cause harm to the oceans and the marine life that live there.
Our products are made from natural ingredients taken from Mother Nature and so we want to help look after the environment in return. From waste, energy and the products we sell through to the suppliers we work with, we want to make our impact on the planet as small as possible.
We are an omnichannel retailer and have invested c. £30m in recent years in technology that has transformed our online and mobile propositions. Our website is now fully integrated with our network of high street stores providing an easier and more seamless shopping experience for our customers. Building on our existing home delivery service, click and collect means customers will no longer need to wait in at home for deliveries and can order from the convenience of their mobile phone or tablet, collecting from their local store. Our store associates are also able to use iPads to review products and solutions with customers and then help them to choose products in store or to place orders online.
We have also invested in developing online propositions to support our international franchise network. Our franchisees in China, Singapore and UAE are all supported by the local market Holland & Barrett website, and in China we have also launched the Holland & Barrett proposition on Tmall’s local and international websites. India is our fastest growing franchise market and online sales are now available through the website of the local franchisee, Apollo Hospitals.
Overall, Holland & Barrett ships products to more than 30 countries, well beyond its existing store network covering 14 territories.
As one of the world’s leading health and wellness retailers, we understand that it is our duty to set a gold standard in terms of regulation, consumer safety and labelling.
Holland & Barrett International is a long-standing member of the Health Food Manufacturers’ Association, working effectively to represent the interests of the UK natural health products industry at all levels of the legislative, regulatory and Parliamentary process.
As part of our membership, we comply fully with the HFMA’s Code of Practice to raise standards across the entire industry when it comes to labelling and marketing of our products, in line with the Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation, set out by the European Food Safety Authority. We ask all of the thousands of suppliers we work with to adopt the same high standards when it comes to the production and marketing of their own products.
We are committed to the safety of our customers with all our products. Our charter includes a commitment that every sales associate is 'qualified to advise', but at our head office, our technical and safety advisory ensure that our products are produced in a way that ensures the safest possible experience for our customers, and we always urge all customers to speak to their GP before embarking on a new nutritional routine.
Our business is headquartered in the town of Nuneaton in Warwickshire, where the Holland & Barrett International business is proud to support the local community, providing over 350 local jobs, in a location which has become the heart of Holland & Barrett International.
Our warehousing and international distribution centre is located in Burton-Upon-Trent, Staffordshire, and is the backbone of the global supply chain for our 1300+ stores as well as fast-growing internet retailing division. The centre manufactures and packs bespoke finished products in some ranges, includes a sports powder production line and controls storage and distribution for the entire Holland & Barrett product range. To help service our rapidly growing international network of owned and franchised stores, we have invested in opening new distribution and warehousing centres in Dublin, Ireland, and Beverwijk, Netherlands.
More than 4,000 talented and dedicated individuals work as part of the Holland & Barrett International team, including those helping to grow the Holland & Barrett franchise across the globe. The majority of our associates (3400) work in the UK and Republic of Ireland, including our stores in both markets, our Nuneaton headquarters and our distribution, production and warehousing facilities. Approaching 700 associates look after our owned stores and distribution in Belgium, Holland and Sweden.
There are a total of 1,368 Holland & Barrett stores around the world, with a presence in 16 country markets. The majority of our portfolio is based in the UK with 715 owned stores. We also own stores in Belgium (20), Sweden (4), Holland (182) and the Republic of Ireland (52) all of which have fully supporting websites. The remainder of our portfolio comprises franchised stores and store-in-stores.
Our rapid international expansion has been driven by a combination of franchising and acquisition. Our first acquisition, of the De Tuinen chain (67 stores, now 182) in the Netherlands was made in 2003 and our first overseas franchise was agreed in 2008. We subsequently acquired Belgium’s health and wellness chain Essenza (13 stores, now 20) in 2013. Both of these businesses operate under the Holland & Barrett brand. We opened our first owned store in Sweden in 2015 and in the same year celebrated ours 100th franchised store opening, in the city of Taiyuan in China.
