It would spend another R20m on opening 24 'new-look' stores in the current financial year, the group said yesterday.

Clicks' brand leader Trevor Vroom said that the sales and profitability of the new-look stores would be monitored before a decision was taken to spend substantially more on revamping the rest of the Clicks stores within the group.

However, early indications from the Clicks store in Gardens, Cape Town the first store to adopt the new look were that sales had grown 25% in the four weeks since it was upgraded.

The purpose of the revamp was to offer a more 'emotional and feminine' design for Clicks customers, 83% of whom are women. Five Clicks stores will be refurbished before Christmas with the programme resuming next year.

Although some changes had been made to the design and layout of the larger Clicks stores in the past few years, this was the first store revamp that would affect such a large number of existing and new Clicks stores, Vroom said.

As well as refurbishing the stores, Clicks is relaunching the Clicks ClubCard, which has about 2,4-million active members. The relaunch includes new benefits, including 20% discounts on NuMetro and Imax theatre tickets for the first six months of next year, and discounts on certain healthrelated products.

These upgrades have followed a repositioning of the Clicks brand identity statement to 'Live Life Beautifully'. Until now Clicks' predominant slogan has been 'You Pay Less'. While this slogan was not being abandoned, Vroom said the new slogan was intended to move away from simply a functional promise on price to a broader focus on advice and lifestyle. Vroom said however that Clicks was not redefining its target market upwards.

In its recently released results for the year to August, New Clicks Group set aside R225m for capital commitments, compared with R195m last year. During the current financial year the group repositioned its Discom brand, which has 180 stores.

New Clicks' share price lost 1,41% to close at 700c on the JSE Securities Exchange SA yesterday.

Business Day