Harvey Nichols to open UK boutiques

The luxury department store chain Harvey Nichols is to open a string of boutiques across the UK, according to the Independent. The group, best known for its flagship seven-floor department store in London's Knightsbridge, is planning to roll out the 10 smaller stores by 2015.

The chain has already expanded beyond its London home, with another department store in Leeds, a three-storey outlet in Manchester and a five-storey shop in Edinburgh. The stores sell a wide range of goods, including designer labels and accessories, beauty products, homewares and food. They also boast restaurants, bars and cafés. But Harvey Nichols has increasingly turned its attention to boutique shops. It opened its first and only smaller UK store in Birmingham in 2001, and the success of this venture means that more will now follow. The chain is expected to announce the start of the expansion shortly by taking a site in Bristol, due to open in 2008.

Harvey Nichols has also been expanding overseas, and the compact store that opened in Dublin in September is likely to be the model for the UK expansion. It sells a smaller range of beauty products, fashion and food and has just one restaurant.

Branches of Harvey Nichols are due to open in Dubai and Istanbul, but these will be traditional large-scale department stores. The former, which will open next month, will be spread across 120,000sq ft. Given iconic status in the television series Absolutely Fabulous as the characters' favourite shopping haunt, Harvey Nichols is owned by the Hong Kong-based businessman Dickson Poon, who took the retailer private in 2003.

Earlier this year the chain, which also owns the Oxo Tower and Prism restaurants in London, reported full-year pre-tax profits of £2.4m, a slide on the previous year's £5m. It blamed the challenging conditions on the war in Iraq and the outbreak of the Sars virus in Asia. As well as smaller UK stores, Mr Poon is known to be keen to expand the chain into Asia and is also considering opening in Moscow, to take advantage of the surge in levels of personal wealth in parts of Russian society in recent years.