Boots Under New Ownership: What Actually Changes
The Weston family’s Wittington Investments takes on 1,800 stores in the chain’s 178th year, having bought it for about £6.7bn. Retail analysts expect money spent on smaller branches, an expansion of healthcare services including weight-loss drugs, and no early change to the Advantage card.
The card is the asset nobody expects them to touch. Launched in 1997, it pays three points per pound with each point worth a penny — a rate Jackie Naghten, a retail veteran of Top Shop, Marks and Spencer and Debenhams, calls “the best-value store card in terms of bang for your buck”. Natalie Berg of NBK Retail makes the commercial case for keeping it: it gives Boots “a unique understanding of their customers”, something new owners “will want to double down on”. The estate is the problem. Sofie Willmott of GlobalData Retail says smaller stores “have really lacked investment over time” and that the chain has “a bit of a disconnect” between its best and worst branches. Ms Naghten wants them “more functional” rather than health hubs “squeezed in the corner”. Customers quoted in the reporting are blunter about the immediate irritations: sanitary product prices described as “ridiculously expensive”, and rewards points that only pay out against a full transaction. The Westons owned Selfridges from 2003 to 2021, and a separate branch of the family controls Associated British Foods, which owns Primark — so this is a family that already knows the British high street. One number to hold lightly: some reporting rounds the price to £7bn, which is the headline figure rather than the £6.7bn in the body.