Next shop report

Next

The retail chain was launched February 1982 selling an exclusive collection of stylish clothes, shoes and accessories for women. It wasn’t until later on that collections for men, children and home-wear was introduced. Next has an in-house design team which produces good quality and value for money clothing with a contemporary fashion edge.

I wasn’t overly impressed with the display window upon entrance to the store, which showed the current childrens-wear. I am a big fan of minimalism and monotones but there needs to be an ‘oompf’ factor when it comes to store windows and unfortunately I didn’t get that here.

After entering there was a section of woman’s shoes on the left alongside bikinis and beachwear. The entire downstairs was purely womenswear. Upstairs was the childrenswear and menswear. The layout of childrenswear clothing was quite compact, everything was fairly close together and almost wasn’t enough room to move! The menswear was more spaced out and the women’s was fairly similar to the child’s section.

There wasn’t a huge amount of staff on the floor as far as I could see, although I was approached by a sales assistant asking if I needed any help which is always a good thing in terms of customer support and interest.

The clothing although was slightly higher in price than a store similar to primark, however I do believe that for the quality of clothing it is worth the extra money. With a wide range of womenswear covering a whole floor, to a range of suits and casualwear for men.

The childrenswear was covered from new born up till the age of 16, from baby grows to almost grown-up-like jeans and dresses.

With a big variety of fabrics including jersey, cotton, nylon and polyester, it was clear that in terms of practicality and comfort for children that the designers have done their research appropriately.

I felt there was a rather big gender separation in terms of the boys and girls clothing, for example: the majority of the girls clothing from baby upwards, it was simply florals, pastel colours and lots of pink. Whereas the boys was dark denims and colours and digital prints instead of embroidery. There was no in between for children that could be experiencing gender dysphoria.

For the childrenswear area it seemed that the customer base was a range of (potentially) mum’s aged from 25-40 with the occasional older lady that could have been buying for a grandchild.