Marks & Spencer Peterborough

The Marks and Spencer (M&S) store in Peterborough is situated in a key location, right at the heart of the Queensgate Shopping Centre. With over 90 shops, 15 places to eat and thousands of brands, Queensgate attracts a heavy footfall, acting as a real hub for shoppers in the area.

As part of the Shopping Centre’s £30million redevelopment plans, the M&S store underwent a complete refurbishment. Tarkett has worked with the M&S group for over five years and - given the success of their previous work - they were the natural partners for this project too.

The result was a trio of luxury bespoke flooring designs, with a mix of soft, neutral colours used to zone the different areas in the store.
Tarkett provided 3,000m2 of Royal Stone Light Grey for the Food Area, 500m2 of Timber Modern Oak Light tiles for the Lingerie Area and 1,000m2 of Royal Stone Slate Grey for the Foodhall Area. This helped to achieve a stylish and welcoming environment for shoppers to enjoy, while displaying a range of colours that tied in perfectly with the M&S brand.

As well as providing a unique look for the store, Tarkett also made a UK breakthrough by creating the first ever installation of 1m x 1m tiles in Britain. This innovative design, which has never been used anywhere else in the country before, offers dimensional stability with a modular flooring design, while at the same time staying on brand for M&S in terms of colour. As well as creating a stylish and luxurious result, this design also provided ease and speed of installation, which was one of the key criteria for the project.

The ceramic-effect luxury vinyl tiles (LVT) were designed in conjunction with M&S, to tie in with the store’s brand concept. This choice of tiles was key as it helped to maintain the original style created by the ceramic tiles that were in place before, while at the same time offering a more hardwearing solution.

While traditional ceramic tiles are difficult to replace if damaged, the advantage of using LVT is the simple maintenance – the tiles are easily replaced. For a store like M&S, located in the popular Queensgate Shopping Centre, this is key.

Paul Brackstone, UK & International Store Design Manager at M&S, worked closely with Tarkett to achieve this modular flooring design. He comments on the collaboration, "We have worked with Tarkett for the last five years so we were pleased to partner up with them again for the Peterborough store’s refurbishment".

The 1m x 1m tiles were the perfect solution for us as they were the closest match to the ceramic tiles we had in place before, and we were keen to maintain this element in the new design. We were able to work closely with the Tarkett team to create a bespoke design that would match our vision and tie in with the M&S brand. This is a really exciting time for the Queensgate shopping centre given the multi-million development plan currently underway, so this was an important project for us and we are delighted with the result.