The grocery store is no longer just for food shopping. Texas chain H-E-B, which operates more than 420 stores in Texas and Mexico, announced this week that it is partnering with retailer James Avery Artisan Jewelry to bring jewelry shops into its stores.
The first store in this partnership opened this week, with two more locations coming over the next month. Partnerships like these allow retailers to engage with consumers across more pillars of the connected economy — how consumers work, pay and are paid, shop, eat, bank, travel, connect with others, have fun, stay well and live — creating the opportunity to deepen their relationships with their shoppers, drawing them into stores and building loyalty.
See also: How Consumers Live in the Connected Economy
The Context
With this partnership, H-E-B follows the lead of supermarket company Hy-Vee, which has been especially ambitious among grocers in its store-within-a-store partnerships, noting the advantage to expand the in-store experience to encompass more of consumers’ shopping routines. These partnerships include one with DSW, one with nail salon chain The W Nail Bar, and most recently, the supermarket company announced earlier this month that it is bringing fitness equipment showrooms into stores.
Related news: DSW Shop-in-Shops Open in Hy-Vee Grocery Stores
And more: Grocery Roundup: Hy-Vee’s In-Store Nail Salons
These partnerships arrive as grocers struggle to make the traditional model work, facing supply chain and labor shortages that worsen the already razor-thin margins of the grocery industry.
“We’ve seen more commonality of effects in our stores than not, whether that’s in China, a block down from where the crisis began in Wuhan, to our stores in the U.S.,” IGA President and CEO John Ross told PYMNTS in a recent interview. “It has been a truly global crisis with hoarding activity by consumers, supply challenges and having to be a kind of mask police, all the while having to figure out how to maintain prices and service delivery when both labor and products are in short supply.”
You may also like: From COVID to Product Shortages to Labor Supply, Grocery Stores Adapt to String of Challenges
By the Numbers
The store-within-a-store trend has been flourishing recently. Here are just a few of the partnerships announced within the last year:
| Mini Store | Host store | Number of Locations |
|
| Sephora | Kohl’s | 200+ | |
| Tonal | Nordstrom | 40 | |
| Toys R Us | Macy’s | 400+ | |
| Target | Ulta Beauty | 800 |
Read more:
Kohl’s Teams With Sephora to Launch In-Store Shops
Nordstrom Plans to Bring 40 Mini Tonal Shops to Its Stores
Macy’s Brings Back Toys R Us, Exceeds Q2 Expectations
Target, Ulta to Make ‘Prestige Beauty’ More Accessible With Shop-In-Shops