Marks & Spencer will open its first Simply Food convenience store outside of the UK in the Netherlands.
A store will open in September at a BP forecourt based in Utrecht, with five more following by November 2013 in locations including Amsterdam and The Hague. M&S already has over 160 Simply Food stores set up in co-ordination with BP garages throughout the UK and is expected to build on that partnership for the Dutch market.
To mark its re-entry into the Netherlands, for the first time in over a decade, M&S has launched a Dutch-language website and opened up a 500 square metre store in Amsterdam's Kalverstraat shopping centre. The UK upmarket retailer also confirmed the creation of two full-line stores in The Hague (4,800 square metres) and Amsterdam (6,100 square metres) over the next two years.
'We are extremely happy to be returning to Holland after receiving such huge customer demand,' said M&S CEO Marc Bolland.
With the Kalverstraat store containing free Wi-Fi, digital rails and staff equipped with iPads, Bolland said that M&S will be entering the Netherlands with a fresh approach.'We're coming back in a new way because Holland is one of the most internet-savvy countries in Europe.'
