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Bodycare plots 17-store return after 2025 collapse
Bodycare plans to reopen 17 stores, roughly 12% of its original footprint, after collapsing in 2025. The test relaunch signals caution, not recovery for UK retail property.
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Bodycare has picked the locations for 17 stores it plans to reopen, two years after shutting all 147 outlets and entering administration. The beauty and fragrance retailer will return with a new format and a refreshed product mix, the company said.
The stores represent roughly 12% of the original footprint. The chain collapsed in 2025, a year that saw a wave of high-street failures across UK retail. Bodycare did not disclose which locations it selected or set a timeframe for the openings.
The small scale of the comeback is the story. A 17-store relaunch does not signal a broader recovery for brick-and-mortar specialty retail. It is a controlled test. Bodycare's previous iteration was heavily dependent on footfall in secondary shopping centres and high streets. Those locations have not regained pre-pandemic traffic levels. The new format will have to prove it can work in a smaller, more expensive set of properties.
For the sector, the move offers a data point on how distressed retail assets can be restarted under new ownership or a downsized model. One 17-store reopening is not a trend. The administrators who handled the original closure likely had multiple bidders for the brand. The chosen plan suggests the winning bidder saw value in the name and the supply chain, not in the lease book.
Landlords of the selected stores get a tenant back. Landlords of the other 130 do not. That asymmetry is the real read-through for retail property investors. A partial revival of a failed chain does not relieve pressure on secondary retail real estate. It may even underscore how selective the market is: only the best-positioned sites, in the best catchment areas, can support a specialty beauty store in 2026.
The wider market context reinforces that point. Consumer spending on discretionary goods like beauty has been squeezed by higher living costs. The premium segment -- Boots, Space NK, the department store beauty halls -- is absorbing demand. Value-focused players like Superdrug and The Body Shop, which underwent its own restructuring, face margin pressure. Bodycare occupied the budget end of the aisle. Its new format will have to compete on price and convenience without the scale that once gave it buying power.
No timeline for the openings has been announced.