Brown Thomas and Arnotts to offer pre-booked shopping slots

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Jun 1, 2020

Brown Thomas and Arnotts, the Irish department stores owned by Selfridges Group, have revealed customers may have to pre-book shopping time slots when they reopen.

Large stores will be allowed to welcome back customers from June 29 if Ireland determines it’s safe to move forward to Phase 2 of its coronavirus exit plan next week. 

The luxury stores said they will limit the number of customers coming in by offering the option to book time slots via an app. Walk-ins will also be allowed with a queueing system. 

Capacity will be reduced by as much as 70% to facilitate social distancing, with a cap of 1,100 customers at Arnotts at any one time. Brown Thomas’s Dublin branch will allow a maximum of 450 customers. Customer numbers will be electronically counted and displayed on screens for others to see, reported Irish Times.

Other Brown Thomas stores in Cork and Limerick will introduce similar measures.

Finally, access to fitting rooms will be tightly controlled. Customers can expect garments to be sanitised and quarantined after handling to minimise the risk of Covid-19 transmission. Make-up testers will be removed from counters, but Donald McDonald, managing director of both stores, said digital screens will be installed to offer virtual try-on experiences.

Some of these measures have already been tested at Holt Renfrew stores in Canada and De Bijenkorf in the Netherlands, which are also owned by Selfridges Group, so it will be interesting to see what approach Selfridges in the UK takes when it reopens.