As Boots focuses on itself - It's fast fashion and beauty for Superdrug's customers
£23 million investment in fashionable pharmactes and 150 'Pink' stores

United Kingdom (12 March 2007)

As Boots is busy in its board room again focusing on its financial structuring, its nearest rival Superdrug unveiled a fast and fashionable customer driven programme to further endorse its position as the UK high street's most fashion conscious beauty and health retailer. Superdrug has been busy over the last two years stealing market share in core beauty categories and growing its number of stores by 270 in its quest to bring a Superdrug to every high street in the UK.

Pink is the order of the day and we're not talking about the financial pages we're talking stores. In a £23m programme it will launch a new fashionable pharmacy concept from April and following a successful trial launch of its new 'pink' store in Uxbridge in September 2006, 150 of these will be rolled out over the next two years.

This spring/summer season also sees over £25 million invested in new beauty and fashion collections, free spring beauty deals for customers and new fashion collaborations. The retailer is on target, half way through its five year plan to double its beauty business by 2009. In 2006, the beauty category at Superdrug had a record year taking market share from competitors with big winners being fragrance, premium skincare, cosmetics, sun care and bronzing.

This weekend it announced its partnership with Colin McDowell's Fashion Fringe, the competition to find and provide a platform for young design talent which has Tom Ford as its honorary chairman. This is off the back of its support of London Fashion Week over the last two years and its support of the Princes Trust that saw its 2006 charity 'IT' bag sported by celebrities such as Kate Moss. Its new Princes Trust charity must-have bag for 2007 hits stores in April and has been designed by urban designer Wale Adeyemi.

And just to add an extra beauty boost to customers this Spring the retailer invested a further £5 million with its 'Free Saturdays' activity. Over the next 20 weeks customers will receive free gifts from cosmetic bags, facial wipes and umbrellas to condoms as the retailer aims to spread a little free love amongst its customers on a Saturday.

Its new 'pink' Uxbridge store has been enjoying high single digit year on year sales increases since its makeover, delivering customers a fashionable beauty playground with an offer that focuses on new products every week, bigger beauty bays, a fun and interactive fragrance area, beauty specialists in store trained by the London College of Fashion, a stunning skincare area and a water font allowing customers to try out scrubs and products before buying whilst enjoying a hand massage or a manicure.

Ten more stores will get the pink treatment this summer, with a programme of 150 over the next two years. This season the fast fashion beauty retailer has introduced more beauty exclusives than ever before in to its stores - £20 million worth of new and exclusive beauty products from Sleek, the high street's first range developed for dark skins to Hugh Heffner's Playboy cosmetics range, making Spring Summer 2007 its most beautiful season yet.

The retailer has also been trialling a fashionable pharmacy concept since the late summer and will launch more of these over the next couple of months.

The fashionable pharmacy proposition focuses on a more tailored services driven approach offering customers convenient on-the-go healthcare services such as weight management, healthy heart checks and mole clinics which were trialled in three London stores last year and will be rolled out to 20 stores nationwide by July. Botox injections and skin testing will also be available later this Spring and Superdrug will be employing up to 45 nurses for the first time to support the new lifestyle services proposition.

Euan Sutherland, says; "We're making a major fashion statement this year on the UK's high street. Our customers have got to have the latest beauty and health must-haves at the best prices but we want them to have a must-have shopping experience too; white coats and clinical environments leave them feeling blue and we want our customers to feel in the pink when they shop with Superdrug."

At the beginning of this year, Superdrug announced its plans to have 962 stores by the end of this year with 15 new stores and the conversion of 200 Savers stores in a ten million investment programme creating 150 new jobs. Its new distribution centre in Dunstable will go live this summer creating 500 new jobs.

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For further information please contact:

Zaria Pinchbeck or Jenny Hill at ZPR on 020 7896 3404 / 07802 837975 or email zaria@z-pr.com

Notes to editors:

Superdrug is the United Kingdom's most fashion conscious beauty and health retailer with over 750 stores in the UK and Eire.

Superdrug is one of the health & beauty retail brands from the A.S. Watson Group (ASW) family - the world's largest health & beauty retailer and the largest perfumeries & cosmetics retailer. With a history dating back to 1828, ASW has evolved into an international retail and manufacturing business with operations in 36 markets worldwide.

A.S. Watson has a network of over 7,700 retail stores globally with store in over 1,800 cities, with over 98,000 employees and serves over 25 million customers a week.