Melton Mowbray has seen a new lease of life injected into Thorpes Health Store which has now rebranded to Melton Health Store and moved into a more central location.
Neil Rockett, who took over the shop in 2009, told Natural Products the story behind the move. “Over the last couple of years people’s buying patterns have changed so much that if you’re not in the town area you lose out. Footfall dropped about 40% on the street I was on and so I had to seriously look at moving but also try to find rent in the town that was affordable. I eventually did, finding nice premises on the ‘shopping list route’.
After realizing that the name no longer held links to the town Rockett decided to rename the shop Melton Health Store to rebrand it, with a more modern company logo and look.
“The layout is much more modern – before it had all wooden shelving which wasn’t particularly appealing and was quite dated. The shop was also fairly dark – it just became difficult there. The move just had to happen.
“I’ve now got more modern retail shelving – there are no barriers, uprights or angles. It’s just one long flow, so people’s eyes aren’t restricted to an 800mm section of product. They can now see seven metres of shelving quite happily.”
“We miraculously moved the whole store from 2pm on Saturday afternoon and were trading at 9am on Monday morning. It was pretty hectic!”
Rockett describes the shop as a health store with a mix of about 50% food and beauty and 50% VMS. “I tend to focus on the gluten-free, sugar-free, organic side of things, and this is the same with beauty– vegan-friendly, vegetarian-friendly. I support local as well – local flour, honey, eggs, etc.”
As well as introducing more sports supplements, Rockett is also going to look into more of a lunchtime offer. I tried to do it where I was but it didn’t sell enough, mainly because of where I was. I believe that here I will do more because since I’ve been here people are coming in and buying snacky things so I’ve put more chilled snacks and I’m looking to find something like chilled wraps or healthy noodles, that kind of thing.”
As to the aim of the store, Rockett explains: “I want to close Holland & Barrett! They are in the square but I just couldn’t afford to go to the square and take the fight to them, as much as I’d have liked to. The aim is to grow the business to what it should be for the town.”
