What: Fenwick's Strategic Partnerships Director Leo Fenwick discusses the family-owned retailer's continued transformation, from a new beauty hall and loyalty programme to expanded hospitality and homeware.

Why it is important: Fenwick's evolution shows how a still family-owned department store is applying the same levers now defining sector-wide turnarounds — loyalty data, beauty investment, and hospitality — while retaining the governance freedom that peers like Von Maur credit for their resilience. 

Founded by John James Fenwick in 1882, the retailer operates eight sites across the UK plus an online store, with Newcastle remaining its flagship and cultural anchor. Significant recent investment has gone into a new beauty hall there, alongside a beauty edit reoriented around K-beauty and beauty innovation. The MyFenwick loyalty programme, launched in September 2025, already counts hundreds of thousands of members and is built around service and hospitality rather than discounting, supported by a newly implemented CRM system. The fashion offer is evolving toward more contemporary, accessible brands, while homeware is being expanded with Neptune launching soon in Newcastle. Local partnerships, including Barbour and a Newcastle United club shop, sit alongside the returning Mercury Awards collaboration and ongoing cultural crossovers in music, art and fashion. Hospitality is also expanding, with cafés, restaurants, cocktail bars and the family-oriented Hopscotch space positioning the store as a multi-generational destination. Digital and physical channels are being unified so customers get a consistent experience regardless of platform. Leo Fenwick frames the company's task as balancing innovation with stewardship, ensuring Fenwick remains well positioned for the next generation while anchoring its communities.

IADS Notes:  Fenwick's own trajectory bears this out: the retailer cut its full-year operating loss by 40% in the first year of a three-year transformation, a result attributed to omnichannel infrastructure, unified CRM and the MyFenwick loyalty scheme (Retail Week, August 2026), building on the programme's original September 2025 launch, which was framed at the time as a shift toward tiered, experiential rewards over transactional points (Drapers, September 2025). The beauty-hall investment described in the interview sits within a broader UK pattern of department stores expanding beauty as a footfall and margin driver outside their capital-city flagships, as seen in Selfridges' Birmingham reopening (Retail Week, October 2025). The hospitality push mirrors a comparable move at John Lewis, where an owned, vertically integrated dining concept now drives more than a fifth of in-store transactions across an £800m investment programme (Press Release, August 2026). And the family-ownership framing running through the interview has a direct US analogue in Von Maur, where private ownership is credited with the curatorial agility and long-term investment horizon that has let the retailer expand while listed peers retrench (Modern Retail, October 2025).

Custodians of Heritage and Culture — Fenwick's Leo Fenwick on stewarding the next generation