From John Lewis launching new ‘social-cising’ Sports hubs to Dunelm diving into conversational commerce and Asda deploying Auror’s crime prevention platform, what’s been making waves in retail this week?

John Lewis taps into ‘social-cising’ trend with Sports hubs

As Brits increasingly blend socialising with healthy lifestyle activities, John Lewis is meeting this growing trend by launching ‘social-cising’ hubs in four flagship stores.

Original research by John Lewis showed that 57% would choose an exercise activity, such as a run, padel or a fitness class, combined with socialising over traditional social activities, such as drinks or eating out.

In response, it will create several new Sports departments, transforming four stores – Oxford Street, Liverpool, Cheadle and Glasgow – into curated sport and wellness destinations. These hubs bring together tech alongside elite recovery tools and apparel, creating a one-stop-shop for training, performance and recovery.

“Our new format integrates wearables, recovery and fitness equipment directly alongside apparel,” Enni Charlton, Sports Buying Manager at John Lewis, commented. “By zoning the floor by activity, we’re able to offer our customers a brand new discovery space.”

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Asda taps Auror’s retail crime platform to boost store safety

Asda has taken further steps to tackle retail crime, rolling out Auror’s crime reporting and intelligence platform across its UK store estate.

This comes after a successful 30-store trial in London, where the solution helped increase prevention rates by 55% and recover £100k worth of goods that would otherwise have been stolen.

The Auror platform consolidates information on crimes committed in-store, enabling faster identification of repeat offenders and security incident reporting.

“The results demonstrate the value of a faster and more effective way to report incidents and identify repeat offenders,” David Lepley, Chief Operating Officer at Asda, said. “Through a shared intelligence network, we can focus our efforts where they will have the greatest impact.”

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B&M completes POS rollout across 790+ stores with PMC

B&M has partnered PMC to deploy a modernised Point of Sale (POS) solution across its entire estate, modernising store operations, improving agility and enhancing customer experience.

Working closely with B&M, PMC alongside its POS partner Flooid, delivered a zero-touch, automation-led POS rollout.

The POS upgrade has afforded B&M a more reliable, standardised and maintainable platform, helping to reduce faults while improving the experience for store colleagues, with increased uptime, faster transaction speeds and improved functionality to enhance UX and speed up colleague onboarding.

“The synergy in communication and a joined-up working approach across the board has significantly enhanced our operational efficiency, enabling remarkable progress with this project,” said David Laithwaite, Implementation Services Manager at B&M.

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IMRG unveils raft of retailers speaking at its 2026 Growth Summit

Leading brands and retail innovators, including The White Company, Crew Clothing and Google, are confirmed to speak at IMRG‘s 2026 Growth Summit.

Taking place on Wed 23 Sep 2026, the event will focus on the use of AI in digital retail and where brands can leverage tech advancements to spearhead growth. 

“Retailers know they need to build AI into their processes and customer offering – many see great potential in the technology – but exactly what, where and how is proving a challenge to ensure they get maximum benefit from it”, said Andy Mulcahy, Strategy & Insight Director at IMRG.

Registration for IMRG’s Growth Summit is now open – to find out more, visit: https://www.ecommerceexpo.co.uk/growth-summit.

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Dunelm launches new AI assistant for conversational commerce

Dunelm has launched ‘Ask Dunelm’, a new AI-powered shopping assistant, to help customers discover products, styles and inspiration through conversational commerce. 

Partnering with Google Cloud, Dunelm becomes one of the first UK retailers to launch the new multi-modal shopping agent on the Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience product suite. 

Ask Dunelm lets customers describe what they are looking for, ask questions about products, visualise items in their homes and receive tailored recommendations. The move, designed to offer a more “intuitive” customer experience, builds upon the retailer’s broader investment in AI and digital.

“Retail is entering a new era of conversational commerce,” Andrea Williamson, Director of Retail, Consumer and Travel UKI at Google Cloud, added. “Dunelm’s agent can help turn customer inspiration into reality… [and] bridges the gap between digital browsing and expert advice.”

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Lidl opens up food redistribution via Olio app nationwide

Lidl GB and Neighbourly will expand their partnership with food-sharing app, Olio, to give more shoppers the chance to collect surplus food from Lidl stores, cutting food waste while supporting communities with access to groceries.

Lidl said it hopes to extend the initiative, which is currently available at around 200 stores, to a nationwide rollout by the end of the year.

This builds on a successful trial of evening collections in 20 stores, which has already prevented ~1,200kg of food waste per week.

It is hoped that once the programme is live nationally, it will be able to redistribute 5,000 tonnes of surplus food each year, the equivalent of nearly 11.9million meals.

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Retail Insight adds new predictive AI to WasteInsight solution

Retail Insight has added new predictive AI capabilities within its WasteInsight platform, which will enable retailers to support ESG efforts by reducing food waste while improving profitability.

Designed to improve sell-through and sustainability, the new Predictive Waste feature proactively manages waste risk in-store. Using forward looking data, including delivery schedules, item perishability and store-level demand, the solution flags “at-risk” stock.

Leveraging these signals to identify items that risk not selling through in time, it prompts retailers to intervene with discounts days earlier than traditional waste management processes, cutting waste while maximising margin.

“Instead of treating markdowns as an isolated event, sell-through signals can feed back into buying decisions, so teams can see where they have been consistently over ordering,” Alex Considine Tong, Chief Product Officer at Retail Insight, commented. “Retailers can pull back before the problem repeats and see real shifts in margin and sustainability.”

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