Our strategy

The Works is a favourite destination among our loyal customers, but we want even more people to discover and love what we do.

Progress in FY26

Continued to build brand awareness as the home of affordable, screen-free activities for the whole family.
Increased focus on sharper brand-led campaigns, more targeted customer communication, including the Find Your Story Book Bus and Boredom Board, and a clear focus on our Time Well Spent proposition.
Continued development of our product proposition by focusing on newness, year-round relevance and key customer moments across the calendar.
Improved in-store customer experience, introducing a new Customer Experience Programme to recognise and reward colleagues who go above and beyond for customers.

Priorities for FY27

Focused brand marketing strategy to amplify Time Well Spent and ‘screen-free’ messaging through targeted campaigns and increasing our marketing investment following a successful test and trial approach in FY26.
Continue to drive all-year-round appeal in product proposition through trend-led newness and innovation, delivering compelling value for money.
Enhance in-store experience through colleague training, mystery shopping and increased customer events and activations, ensuring our colleagues bring our brand to life for customers.

Customers love The Works, and we are focused on making shopping in our stores easier and more convenient.

Progress in FY26

Improved product availability and stock distribution across the estate, particularly in our high turnover platinum stores.
Trialled initiatives to make better use of space in our stores, providing customers with the products most relevant to them in their local store.
Started to utilise demographic data to inform store ranging decisions, initially focused on providing an extended range of art and stationery products in locations with a higher student demographic.
Continued optimisation of store estate with a net five new store openings, which included 14 new store openings, three relocations and nine closures in line with our strategic plans.
Launched “What Good Looks Like” guide for stores teams to improve operational execution and the consistency of standards in our stores.

Priorities for FY27

Further optimise store estate, including net ten new store openings and targeted investment in the portfolio.
Expand space optimisation and ranging initiatives, embedding learnings from trials across the estate alongside developing the software solution to accelerate progress in this area in FY28.
Improve operational execution in stores through embedding and evolving the ‘What Good Looks Like’ guide.
Focus on stock optimisation to further improve customer product availability, maximise space return and increase our stock turn.

To continue offering customers great value, we need to be more efficient and keep our costs low.

Progress in FY26

Continued to grow our product margin with an improvement of 240 basis points reflecting a continued focus on supplier negotiations, tighter control of stock and promotional markdowns, and product mix improvements.
Successfully delivered a £2.0m cost reduction programme across central and operational costs.
Invested in operational infrastructure, including a new mezzanine level at our Retail Distribution Centre to improve capacity and operational efficiency.
Developed a roadmap for our medium-term plans to modernise and transform our systems.

Priorities for FY27

Deliver further product margin improvements and targeted cost-savings initiatives.
Undertake a review of our store labour model to identify opportunities to improve in store customer and colleague experience and drive more effective use of labour in our stores.
Start to transform the way we work through a c.£5m, four-year systems transformation programme, delivering a new Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) platform and best-in-class solutions. In FY27, this will include a new financial and commercial planning tool to strengthen stock, intake and margin planning, and select our preferred vendor for our new ERP system.
Upgrade store connectivity and deployment of new point-of-sale tills to support future growth.

Our strategy is supported by our people and planet commitments.

Progress in FY26

Delivered strong colleague engagement survey results with a 76% average happiness score, which resulted in a three-star ‘Excellent’ accreditation.
Placed in The Sunday Times Best Places to Work 2026 and recognised by the Financial Times as one of the UK’s Best Employers 2026.
Upskilled key talent by investing in leadership development, High Potential Programme and apprenticeships.
Supported the National Literacy Trust and the National Year of Reading 2026, which continues to be brought to life through the Find Your Story Book Bus tour (read more on page 13).
Conducted a strategic review of our climate targets, resulting in a revision to our Scope 3 strategy, and a continuation of our existing Scope 1 and 2 targets.

Priorities for FY27

Further embed purpose, mission and the ‘It All Starts With You’ campaign throughout colleague and candidate experience.
Launch a structured supplier engagement programme to strengthen the credibility of Scope 3 emissions data and inform the development of a revised Scope 3 emissions target.
Drive further packaging optimisation and data quality improvements to reduce environmental impact and support the effective management of compliance costs.

Built on purpose, focused on growth